Dai.ton — Croinin Cruaich of Mdgh Sleacht. 65 



Dinnsenchus rhapsodist grow poetic ; and what more expressive name could 

 have been given the disowned deity than Crom Dubh ? This, there can be 

 no doubt, was his universal name throughout Ireland. As siich he was 

 specially reverenced near the higher mountain massifs,' because it was 

 around their craggy sides his roar was most appalling ; and it was over their 

 summits his flame- discharges shot their most lurid glare. With the ruling 

 breeds of the Gael his worship was not in fashion. They had their newer 

 gods, who had accompanied them from Gaul, and helped them to victory and 

 conquest. ISTeither was Crom in favour among the race whom these later 

 Gaels had humbled in battle, driving them from their homes and demolishing 

 their shrines. In pagan times there were diversities of religion in Ireland, 

 just as there are to-day. So likewise was there active antagonism of races. 

 The subjugated peoples appear but little in history, for neither historically 

 nor socially was the life of those unregarded rent-payers deemed worthy of 

 notice by their governing superiors. 



The humbler folk-units stood apart from the usurping Gaels, sundered 

 from them by baseness of blood, by political status, by hostility of agrarian 

 interests. The literati of the Gaels confined their relations to the deeds of 

 the Gaelic aristocracy, disdaining the plebeian tribes as too mean for 

 admission to chant or record. They treated pre-Gaelic institutions and 

 religions with the contemptuous indifference which Christian hagiologists and 

 calendarists have observed towards the common paganism of all.- For this 

 reason Crom Dubh is unadvertised in early Irish literature, and his name 

 has been saved from perishing only by the preservative power of peasant 

 traditions. But, Gael or pre-Gael, all paid tribute to Crom, for his power 

 was too preponderant, and the dread of him too deeply rooted. " Until 

 Patrick's advent he was the god of every folk that colonized Ireland."^ 

 When the pagan Irish swore by "the sun, wind, and elements,"* it is not 



theu architraved into horizontal layers overhead — framing the mysterious fire of which 

 everybody stands in awe — on those sultry days of autumn when the barometer portends 

 a coming thunderstorm. 



' " Croin Dubh, a celebrated personage, who was contemporary with St. Patrick, and 

 of whom there are traditions at the highest mountains in Ireland, viz., at Sliabh Donard 

 ... at Croagh Patrick . . . and at Brandon HiU"(R. Hitchcock in Trans. Kilk. Arch. 

 Soc, vol. ii, p. 130). Cuilcagh and Slieve Anierin may be added to the mountain list. 



- Even Bury loses sight of these considerations when he writes that, if St. Patrick's 

 achievement at Magh Sleacht had been of much importance, " it would inevitably have 

 stood out in the earliest records as one of the decisive victories, if not the supreme 

 triumph " ; and " the later accounts impute to it a significance which it did not possess " 

 ("Life of St. Patrick," pp. 124-5). 



^ "Revue Celtique," xvi, p. 35. 



* See "Tripartite Life," vol. ii, p. 567 (Verse quoted from " Leabhar ha h-Uidhri," 

 folio 118); also " Silva Gadelica," p. 407. 



