Collectanea. 369
to have been made for liini as a door for his palace, and some said that he was buried under the early Celtic tombstone in its recess. He was, of course, actually buried at Armagh Cathedral, in accordance with his will.
I got a doubtful story, from a suspected source near Broadford, that Brian hid his cattle from the Danes in the fort called Lisnagry ("cattle fort") near the pass of Formoyle. I learn from Dr. G. U. MacNamara that Brian Boru's well at Elnivale near Inchiquin Lake is locally said to be named from a red cow {bo-ruadh) and not from the King. The modern story that "Brian Boru was made King of County Clare " at the mound of Magh Adliair did not exist there in i8yi, and I forced the old man who told it to me to confess that he had "got it from a knowledgeable man, a sapper" on the Ordnance Survey, about 1895. Much history, spread during this survey, is becoming bogus antique tradition. i*^
7. Other Traditions up to a.d. 1270.
The Annals tell how, in 1086, three named Connaught chiefs fell in a raid into Corcomroe. Two curious stories, evidently genuine folk versions of the raid, are attached to the great cairn of Cairn Connachtagh in the marshy fields at Ballydeely between Ennistymon and Lisdoonvarna. I was told in 1878 (and Dr. W. H. Stacpoole Westropp remembered the legend as extant long before then) that the King of Connacht went to Loop Head and returned "with lots of men and cows chained together," and the Clare men (some said " under the O'Briens," comparatively late settlers in that district), attacked the Connaught men and killed all except three chiefs, and buried the dead (or the chiefs) under the big cairn. Others said only that a king was killed in a battle there and buried under it.^^ In 1839, and long after, it was told how a Connaught army hunted a big serpent to the spot and killed
I'Mr. P. J. Lynch gives a still later "antique"' tradition, told to him on the spot, that an old tree grew there and an Orangeman came from Ulster and cut it down, — an obvious modernization of the Bili Maigh Adhair, a venerated tree, felled by the Ulstermen in 976, or of its successor cut by Aedh O'Connell of Connacht in 105 1.
- ^ So the late Professor Brian O'Looney.
