and the placing of twelve stakes there. The Acallamh[1] says men wore at it “special and gorgeous attire.” The Book of Rights[2] attests that the King of Oirghealla (in Co. Louth and Meath) sat “a sword’s length distant from the King of Erin,” as he did at Uisnech, and the Stewards of the King of Uladh were present to collect the marriage fees. We read in the Annals of the forad seat of the President, the benches on which the men of Erin sat, and the curtas at Tailltiu in 783. The Church, in its endeavours to Christianize the old pagan Assemblies, used to send its clergy and at least two reliquaries, in 1006, when they elected a comharb, or successor, of St. Columba and, as we saw, interfered in a less friendly manner two centuries before; the crozier of St. Kieran is said to have been sworn upon there. Boys’ contests are mentioned at Tailltiu in the legends of Finn,[3] and local tradition tells of “aquatic sports.”
In the next three centuries I have only found one allusion to “Rathken, que nunc vocatur Teltyn, in Machyrigalyn,” in a deed of St. Mary’s Abbey, Dublin, in 1246.[4] Machaire gaileoin, the present “Morgallion,” then contained Telltown, Oristown, Donaghpatrick and Gibbstown, but these are now merged into Kells Barony. The MacFeorais, Hibernicised Berminghams, evidently held it and gave their name to the present Oristown. In 1538 Patrick Plunkett of Gibbstown held Tallyton[5] and Mary Cruys (posthumous daughter of Christopher Lord Rathmore and heroine of a romantic tradition), about 1550, made a poem, which alludes to “the coursers of Tailltiu”[6] and implies
- ↑ Silva Gadelica, ii. p. 256, but not in the same in Irische Texte, iii. p. 234.
- ↑ Leabar na g Ceart, pp. 137-143
- ↑ “Duanaire Finn” (Irisk Texts Soc.), ed. MacNeill, pp. 133-4. Finn was fifth in descent from Nuada, so closely connected with the place.
- ↑ Reg. S. Mary’s Ab. No. 16, p. 199.
- ↑ Inq. Exchequer, Hen. VIII. No. 45.
- ↑ “Rathmore and its Traditions,” M.E.M. (Trim. 1880), p. 11.
