driven westwards to the islands including Arann.[1] The third brother is called Cairbre Rigfota, who is described as assisting his brothers to avenge their father;[2] but he is chiefly known as the ancestor of the Dál Riada, 'the division or tribe of Riada,' better known as the Dalriad Scots of Antrim and Alban, Riada and Rigfota being the same name, which Bæda wrote Reuda.[3] These three Cairbres are usually mentioned together as the sons of Conaire;[4] but sometimes a fourth, Cairbre Baiscinn, is added to them; and from him were supposed to be derived the Corco Baiscinn, a people in the south-west of the present county of Clare.[5] Probably Cairbre, king of Kerry and father of the poetess Crede (p. 252), should be added to our Cairbres; and identification with the Culture Hero has been suggested in the case of the harpist Cairbre, who had the so-called chord of knowledge in his lyre (p. 255). The meaning also of the reign of the tyrant Bres the Fomorian being disturbed by the Cairbre who
- ↑ See a poem by Mac Liag in the Bk. of Leinster, 152a, 152b, and O'Curry's Manners, &c. ij. 122-3.
- ↑ Bk. of the Dun, 54a.
- ↑ Historia Ecclesiastica, i. 1, where it is not quite evident whether Bæda left out the consonants gf as being both silent even in his time, or subsequent etymologists have thrust them into a word where they had no business. Cairbre Rigfota would mean Cairbre of the long elle or fore-arm, but this spelling does not appear to occur in connection with the name of the Dalriad Scots.
- ↑ But there were doubtless plenty of accounts inconsistent with this. For instance, Cairbre Niafer is made son of Ros Ruad, or R. the Red, and brother to Ailill the husband of Medb, and to Finn of Ailinn: see the passages cited in O'Curry's MS. Mat. pp. 483, 513, 515; also the pedigrees in the Bk. of Leinster, fol. 311a.
- ↑ O'Donovan's note to the Bk. of Rights, p. 48, and to the Topographical Poems, p. lxxi, note 616.
