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tions. Looking up, he perceived overhead three men of the Tuatha de 

 Dannan enemy, who were about to seek his life. One of his own at- 

 tendants, however, came to the rescue, fought with and killed his three 

 assailants upon an adjoining hillock, and there fell dead of his wounds. 

 The Firbolgs, coming up to look after their king, there and then in- 

 terred the hero who so bravely defended him ; and each taking, it is 

 said, a stone in his hand, erected over him a monumental cairn. The 

 well is not named in the ancient account of the battle ; but the little hill 

 on which the conflict took place is called Tullagh-an-Trir, " The Hill of 

 the Three," and the monument erected thereon Carn-in-en Fir, " The 

 Carn of the One Man." Such is the simple narrative of the transaction sent 

 down to us through bards and wandering poets and chieftains' laureates, 

 who perhaps recited it at feasts and in public assemblies — as the tales 

 of Troy were sung possibly before Homer was born — until the days 

 of letters, when the tradition was transmitted to writing, and the an- 

 nalist sped it on to the present time, although it has never yet been 

 printed. 



Is it true ? Can it be that a trifling incident of this nature, occur- 

 ring so far back in the night of history, can possibly bear the test of 

 topographical investigation, while many of our classic histories have 

 been questioned, and in some instances their statements disproved? 

 Yes, there it stands at the present day — the deep well in a chasm of 

 the limestone rock through which the high waters of Lough Mask per- 

 colate into Lough Corrib — the only drop of water that is to be found in 

 the neighbourhood — and so deep under the surface, that the king must 

 have looked upwards to see his enemies overhead. Adjoining it, on 

 the south-east, stands the hillock referred to in the manuscript, and 

 now crowned with a circle of standing stones, 1 76 feet in circumference, 

 in the centre of which are the remains of a cairn, as shown by the ac- 

 companying illustration. The well is now called Meaneen uisge, "The 



Small Water Place;" and the adjoining monument is still called Cam 

 Meaneen-uisge. 



