504 Collectanea.
innish. Tradition in 1839 made O'Daly a brother of the sorcerer Macamli of Iniscreamha, County Galvvay."*^ I heard that he was the head of Corcomroe Abbey, and he was probably one of the Finvarra O'Dalys of the seventeenth century.
I have now set out all the quasi-historic tales of County Clare that have come within my reach, but, although I have collected them from childhood, and with careful diligence during the last thirty years, I am sure that many more might still be gathered. I have even heard of "probable people" near Carrigaholt and in the hills between Tomgraney and Killaloe who had stores of " old tales " (though I fancy stories rather than histories), but whom I have been unable to approach.
To record carefully and without leading questions is very slow work, but the result, even if bald, is of course far more valu- able than matter polished into attractive shapes or procured through intermediaries possibly untrustworthy.
There is a great temptation to "tell a good story," and I have always discounted the testimony of those who appeared to yield to it, while regarding as invaluable the old people who repeated simply and crudely what had been handed down to them. I have indicated my sources as far as possible, and, where manu- scripts and books have been used, I have tried to help the reader to assess their value. I may add that my feeling is to distrust the form, rather than the siibstance, of the tales supplied by Croker'*^ and Lady Wilde, but to trust Graham. The Ordnance Survey Letters 1 believe to be most reliable. My own collected material is only employed when I consider it trustworthy. So I have now brought home the sheaves I have reaped in the hope that others may be impelled to garner what is still left standing before it perishes or is trampled down.
Thos. J. Westropp.
- ^ Ordnance Survey Letters (Co. Clare), voL.i., p. 32. The tale perhaps
arose from a certain Donough O'Daly writing a poem to the shade of a sorcerer who was one of the Tuatha De Danann.
- ^ Except the "soul cages," for which s&e Journal of ike North Miinster
Archaeological Society, 1914, pp. 122-3.
