66 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



improbable that they had Crom and his terrors specifically in mind. Among 

 the Sen-Tuatha he never forfeited a jot of his pristine authority and might. 

 It is in their settlements the mementoes of his personality are yet chiefly to 

 be found. Cromm Cruaich was the name of his idol at Magh Sleacht. Idols 

 in abundance he had elsewhere, but their story has everywhere vanished out 

 of memory. In " Domhnach Chruim Duibh " his name was treasured among 

 the national institutions, and admitted to partnership with the names of 

 Ireland's most distinguished saints, when the gods of all those contending 

 races, whose rise and fall he had witnessed, were forced to hide from Patrick's 

 anger under earth-mounds and raths. 



Nor do I hold that all indications of Crom's influence have been 

 effectually excluded from our bardic literature. His potency being concealed, 

 we often hear but ambiguous utterances ; and, like a Greek chorus, we are 

 reduced to wonderment by being kept in ignorance of the power behind 

 actors and stage. But in one instance, at least, the figure of Crom is 

 uncurtained, and he is exhibited as Crom na Cairge, " who dwells at a rock on 

 the eastern sea," whence his son the Piast (Monstei-), Ard na g-Cath, is 

 despatched to demand battle of the Fianna.^ If the Pianna be taken to 

 represent, as Keating's introduction of them would warrant, the military 

 arm of Cormac MacAirt — the monarch whose vigorous statesmanship finally 

 established Milesian supremacy in Ireland — the interpretation of this 

 challenge presents no serious difficulty. The Milesian poet, in stigmatizing 

 Crom as " an everlasting monster that is in Greece " — " at a rock on the 

 eastern sea " — evidently intends to set him down as an evil power, 

 unrecognized in the selecter Gaelic Olympus, and imported originally from a 

 far distant Mediterranean habitat.- The wife of this wicked deity was also 

 '' a Piast of great valour," by which no doubt was meant a religious cult, 

 firmly rooted in the country, and maintained there in defiance of the govern- 

 ing classes.' Their son, the challenger of Pinn, stood for the unruliness, the 

 turbulence, the seditious revolts of Crom's orthodox flock, the down-trodden 

 Sen-Tuatha.* 



' " Ossianic Society's Publications," vol. ii, p. 58. 



- This passage should not be overlooked by those who would speculate on the com- 

 parative mythology of Crom, and on the etlmology of his first introducers into Ireland. 



^The popular belief that St. Patrick banished the "serpents" from Ireland 

 originated, I apprehend, in a like metaphor — the use of the word Piast to represent a 

 pagan rite. 



'' In this connexion it may be recalled that Cairbre Cinnceat, the usurping high-king, 

 was fostered by a branch of the Cathraighe. A similar explanation would apply to one of 

 the boasted exploits of "the expedition of eight" — eight mighty leaders of the Fianna — 

 recorded in the " Dean of Lismore's Book " (p. 76), viz. : 



" We bore along ' Crom nan Carn,' 

 O'er the fierce, stormy sea." 



