baiscinn, occupied the Baronies known down to Tudor times (and still as a rural deanery) as Corcavaskin,—now Moyarta and Clonderalaw, with the Barony of Ibrickan, (which takes its name from a settlement of fugitives from the Norman conquest in Leinster about 1180).
Burren.—Irghus or Eerish, a Firbolg in the oldest of Clare legends,[1] is commemorated by Caherdoonerish stone fort,[2] on Black Head. Finn MacCumhail gives his name to Seefin, on the same hills. The "silver bells" of Kilmoon church are said to be recalled by Cahercloggaun fort and Owenacluggan brook near Lisdoonvarna. In Kilcorney Parish we have two forts, Lisananima and Caherlisananima, named from ghosts; the first name is older than 1652. Beara, another Firbolg, brother of Irghus, gives his name, (found in a poem dating before 1014), to Finnavarra Point,—but not to Kinvarra, which is akin to Kenmare and Kinsale, "Head of the Sea" or "of the brine." The name Bohernamish, or "way of the dishes," with its legend of the miraculous rapine of King Guaire's Easter banquet, about a.d. 630, is found in the mediæval Life of St. Colman MacDuach.[3]
Corcomroe.—The reef of Kilstiffin, Kilstapheen, or Kilstuitheen has a legend of a sunken church and city, of which the golden domes appear once in seven years. The submerged forests and bogs inside the reef in Liscannor Bay, and the record of the great
- ↑ "Legend of Carn chonaill," "Dindsenchas," Revue Celtique, vol. xv. (1894), pp. 478-80.
- ↑ "Fort" in this paper means one of the entrenched residences, (usually circular,) of the early inhabitants. These are called in Irish rath, liss, and dun; the dry stone equivalent is caher.
- ↑ Mish also means an altar in early works. Cf. Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, (ed. W. Stokes).
Armada on the coast, heard by me down to 1878, have been since confirmed by the publication of long-forgotten letters. So historical tradition, even under the unfavourable conditions of recent centuries, has kept wonderfully accurate versions of events. The continuity of the schools and families of the hereditary bards and ollamhs favoured still greater accuracy in early times. Ireland had "books and philosophers" in the fourth century, according to Ethicus of Istria (Social History of Ireland, vol. i., p. 403), and, possibly for the same period before Christianity as the Armada lies behind our own time, history was handed down truly, at least in its broad outlines.
