were born, ordered thorn to be burnt, that the incest might not remain in the land. 'Give me,' said Cairbre's druid, 'that Corc[1] there, that I may place him outside Erinn, so that the incest may not be within it.' Corc was given to the druid, and the latter, with his wife, whose name was Bói, took him to an island. They had a white cow with red ears, and an ablution was performed by them every morning on Corc, placed on the cow's back; so in a year's time to the day the cow sprang away from them into the sea, and she became a rock in it; to wit, the heathenism of the boy had entered into her. Bó Búi, or Bói's Cow, is the name of the rock, and Inis Búi, or Bói's Isle, that of the island. The boy was afterwards brought back into Erinn. Such is the story[2] how Corc was purged of the virulence of his original sin, and the scene is one of the three islets called the Bull, the Cow and the Calf, not far from Dursey Island, in the gulf called Kenmare River.
Now I have only to reproduce, word for word, as it occurs in the Book of Leinster, the account of another
- ↑ Corc means croppy or cropped: in this instance the name refers to the bearer's ears, and the verb used as to the action of his brother maiming him is ro-chorc. The correctness of this interpretation is borne out by a passage in the Bodley MS. Laud 610, fol. 98a1, where we read of a boy called Corc or Conall Corc hidden under the hearth, where fire dropping on him burnt off one of his ears (? both), and caused him to be named or surnamed Corc. The original runs thus: 'Foluigi amac foantellug fontalam . . . . Bruinnith intene forsin mac conloisc ahó isde bacorc corc mac luigthig.'
- ↑ Bk. of the Dun, 54a; see also O'Curry's Magh Lena, p. 28, note, where he calls the druid Dinioch. That is probably the word dinech, which I have ventured to render by 'ablution,' on the supposition that it is the same word as the Welsh dinea, 'the act of pouring or shedding a liquid.'
