357 



fourth cam, it appears that the magical feat would be accomplished ; 

 but, in giving the jump, she slipped and fell in the townland of Patricks- 

 town, in the parish of Diamor, where she broke her neck. Here she was 

 buried ; and her grave was to be seen not many years ago iu the field 

 called Cul a' rhoca (*. e. back of the moat), about two hundred perches 

 to the east of the moat in that townland ; but it is now destroyed. 



" This is the very old lady whose shade still haunts the lake and 

 earn of Slieve Guillion in the county of Armagh. Her name was JEvlin i 

 and it would appear from some legends about her that she was of De 

 Danannite origin. 



" She is now a Banshee in some parts of Ireland, and is represented 

 in some elegies as appearing before the deaths of some persons. I know 

 nothing more about her, but that on one occasion she turned the cele- 

 brated Fin Mac Cooil into a grey old man ; but his soldiers dug through 

 the mountain of Slieve Guillion injArmagh until they drove her out of her 

 cave, and forced her to restore Fin to his former beauty and symmetry. 



" Does her name, Giblfn bheupca ingin ghuilmn, appear in the 

 genealogies of the Tuatha De Dananns ? 



"A quatrain of her poetic composition is yet repeated at Carnbane, 

 but I calculate it is a post-original : 



IThr-e Ccnlleac bhenpea bocc 

 lo"m6a lOTigriaD b' arhapcap piarh 

 Chonaiceap Cdpn bdn 'na loc 

 5io 50 bpuil cmoip 'na pliab. 

 ' J am poor Cailleach Bera, 

 Many a wonder I have ever seen — 

 I have seen Carnbane a lake. 

 Though it is now a mountain 



"What a pity that she is not alive now to throw light upon geology ! 

 Could Mr. Curry, from his vast knowledge of fairyology and hagiology, 

 give me any account of the old hag who left her name on this range 

 and on Slieve Guillion ? 



" There is an eminence in the townland of Knocklough called Slieve 

 Guillion, and a rude stone chair on the summit of Slieve Nacally called 

 caeaoip na caillige beupca, i. e. Calliagh Bera's Chair. It is a large 

 stone, about two tons weight, ornamented with a cross sunk (cut) into 

 the seat of the chair, in which three might sit together. This hollow 

 seems to have been made in the stone with a hammer : the cross is pro- 

 bably the work of a modern stonecutter. The back of the chair was 

 broken by some human enemy to old Evlin." 



That this enumeration of the cairns was very imperfect, we shall 

 see presently ; and it may not be uninteresting in this place to allude 

 to some broken stanzas with which I have been furnished, having the 

 following local tradition associated with their authorship. Mr. Wins- 

 low, a gentleman of antiquarian tastes, was living in the early part of 

 the last century near Fore, about seven miles west of Sliabh-na-Cail- 

 lighe. On one occasion he invited Dean Swift, who was then sojourn- 

 ing with his friend, Dr. Thomas Sheridan, at Quilca, in an adjoining 



R. I. A. PBGC. VOL. IX. 3 B 



