Another sunken island off Loop Head is named by the Rev. John Graham and the Halls,[1] and called Kilstiffin or Kilstapheen. I heard no such tradition in Moyarta, but O'Curry alludes to it without contradiction, although he was a native and son of a veritable repertory of the local legends of the Irrus.[2] The towers and other edifices were visible at times under the waves, and its inhabitants sometimes raised destructive storms over its site when all around was calm.
The large lake of Cullaun (Cullaunyheeda) near Tulla is reputed to cover a palace or a city. Tradition said that a chief, Sioda MacNamara, (probably the restorer of the beautiful "Abbey" of Quin in 1402), was carried into the depths by a "water horse" which he had caught and trained. The rock off which his treacherous steed leaped was shown before 1870, and the chief was believed to be sleeping till "the last weird battle in the west," doomed to win Ireland her liberty and a glorious place amongst the nations. It seems likely that it was from the same lake that magic cattle issued, as I heard about Kilkishen, near it, in 1877. A local bard, Michael Hogan, refers to the lake in one of his poems,[3] but how far he embodies local legend I am unable to say. His light-hearted, if lawless, hero is surprised on coming to "Cullaun's fairy waters" to see a noble park instead of a lake. He hits his cow in surprise, and she leaps the fence. Following her he reaches the palace of an ancient chief, who entertains him and dismisses him with his marvellously fattened cow. He finds at the fair that he has been absent for a year under the waters of the lake.
"Thro' wild Cullane's embowering shades—
Beneath the silver starlight, sleeping,
He pass'd—the trees, with silent heads,
Upon his darken'd path hung weeping.
- ↑ Mason's Parochial Survey, vol. ii., p. 490, collected by Rev. J. Graham from the Behanes, Landers, Contis, and Coonerties of Kilrush and Carrigaholt; Mr. and Mrs. S. Hall, Ireland: Its Scenery etc., vol. ii., p. 436.
- ↑ Ordnance Survey Letters, (Co. Clare), vol. ii.
- ↑ Lays and Legends of Thomond, pp. 13, 20.
following other romances, and contradicting the genuine legends in several particulars.
