The Well of D'Yerree-in-Dowan.
Page 129. There are two other versions of this story, one a rather evaporated one, filtered through English, told by Kennedy, in which the Dall Glic is a wise old hermit; and another, and much better one, by Curtin. The Dall Glic, wise blind man, figures in several stories which I have got, as the king's counsellor. I do not remember ever meeting him in our literature. Bwee-sownee, the name of the king's castle, is, I think, a place in Mayo, and probably would be better written Buiḋe-ṫaṁnaiġ.
Page 131. This beautiful lady in red silk, who thus appears to the prince, and who comes again to him at the end of the story, is a curious creation of folk fancy. She may personify good fortune. There is nothing about her in the two parallel stories from Curtin and Kennedy.
Page 133. This "tight-loop" (lúb teann) can hardly be a bow, since the ordinary word for that is bógha; but it may, perhaps, be a name for a cross-bow.
Page 136. The story is thus invested with a moral, for it is the prince's piety in giving what was asked of him in the honour of God which enabled the queen to find him out, and eventually marry him.
Page 137. In the story of Cailleaċ na fiacaile fada, in my Leabhar Sgeuluigheachta, not translated in this book, an old hag makes a boat out of a thimble, which she throws into the water, as the handsome lady does here.
Page 141. This incident of the ladder is not in Curtin's story, which makes the brothers mount the queen's horse and get thrown. There is a very curious account of a similar ladder in the story of the "Slender Grey Kerne," of which I possess a good MS., made by a northern scribe in 1763. The passage is of interest, because it represents a trick something almost identical with which I have heard Colonel Olcott, the celebrated American theosophist lecturer, say he saw Indian jugglers frequently performing. Colonel Olcott, who came over to examine Irish fairy lore in the light of theosophic science, was of opinion that these men could bring a person under their power so as to make him imagine that he saw whatever the juggler wished him to see. He especially
