Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/315

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The Irish "Mirabilia".
307

for trial, then have they afterwards said that they have suffered there as many pains and torments as is told that souls suffer in hell. But in the other half of the island there is a church and a churchyard around it, and both halves are now deserted. And it is said that over that half of the island in which the church stands the devils have no power.

Not mentioned in the Irish Mirabilia. Cf. Gir. ii, 5, who does not mention the name of the lake nor of the island. I do not know which island is meant by Kertinagh.

13. There also happens in this land what must seem very wonderful, that men have caught in a wood a certain animal, of which no man could say whether it was a man or a beast, because men have not heard speech from it, nor did they observe that it understood the speech of men. And yet it was grown in all things like a man, both with hands and feet and a man's face, save that hair grew all over its body as with other animals. And along its back there stood a mane as on a horse, which fell down on both sides, so that it dragged on the earth whenever the creature stooped down.

Gir. ii, 21: 'The half-ox man' (?). Nothing like this in Todd.

I think now that I have mentioned most of those things that are there of the nature of the land itself, and of which men think that they are true. Yet there are some other wonderful things which are not of the nature of the land, but of the miracles of holy and wise men, which we know for certain to be true. Some things there are, of which we do not know for certain whether they are true or not, otherwise than from the talk of men, and that they are in general report there in the land. But the following things we know to be certainly true.

14. In that lake which we mentioned before, and which is called Loghri (Loch Ree), there lies a small island called Inisclodran. There was a holy man who was called Diermicius, and he had there a church for himself, where he

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