any impression on the daughter. However, he continued to play on until the ground burst under his feet, and the lake which is on the top of the mountain sprang up in the spot: that is Loch Bél Séad." One of the previous names of the lake was Loch Crotta Cliach, or the Lake of Cliach's Harps, as O'Curry renders it; but the instrument was a crowd, not a harp, and its bulging shape may have helped to give a part of a hill a highly descriptive name. The passage goes on as follows to explain the name Loch Bél Séad:—"Coerabar boeth, the daughter of Etal Anbuail of the fairy mansions of Connacht, was a beautiful and powerfully gifted maiden. She had three times fifty ladies in her train. They were all transformed every year[1] into three times fifty beautiful birds, and restored to their natural shape the next year. These birds were chained in couples by chains of silver. One bird among them was the most beautiful of the world's birds, having a necklace of red gold on her neck, with three times fifty chains depending from it, each chain terminating in a ball of gold. During their transformation into birds, they always remained on Loch Crotta Cliach [that is, the Lake of Cliach's Harps], wherefore the people who saw them were in the habit of saying: 'Many is the Séad [that is, a gem, a jewel, or other precious article] at the mouth of Loch Crotta this day.' And hence it is called Loch Bél Séad [or the Lake of the Jewel Mouth]. It was called also Loch Bél Dragain [or the Dragon-Mouth Lake]; because Ternôg's nurse caught a fiery dragon in the shape of a salmon, and St. Fursa induced her to throw it into Loch Bél Séad. And it is
- ↑ The original means 'every second year.'
