was used as a cure for rheumatism as well as several other ailments, and there are hundreds throughout Ireland.
According to legend there is an invisible enchanted island between Inishmurray and the mainland, which is said to be seen every seven years. In the nineteenth century, a Sligo man named Patrick Waters claimed to have seen it. The island is said to be inhabited by the invisible ‘gentry’. Hy Brazil, another enchanted place, is said to have been seen at the same time. Some say that Hy Brazil is associated with a place known as Bruach Gráinne or Grace’s Bank, about one mile south of Inishmurray, which appears occasionally on the surface of the water. The last ‘sighting’ of Hy Brazil was during the summer of 1908; it too ‘appears’ every seventh year.
As on Tory Island, holy clay was used on Inishmurray to expel rats, and thus no rats are said to survive on the island. The clay was apparently given to St Molaise when he was on a pilgrimage to Rome. Swans on the island were never harmed, as it was felt that they might be the Children of Lir.* Other customs persisted on the island; for example, when pointing to a boat, you never pointed with your finger but rather with your thumb or with your whole hand. As on much of the mainland, it was always better to move clockwise in order to avoid bad luck; this particularly applied to boats, for when bringing a boat around it was always turned clockwise or deas sol (‘right to the sun’).
LEINSTER
CARLOW
Ceatharloch, ‘four lakes’
The four lakes, according to tradition, were formed by the River Barrow (An Bhearú), but today of these lakes there is no trace. The tradition of the lakes existed up to the end of the eighteenth century, as the following verse from a 1798 song shows:
That glorious plan, the rights of man,
with sword in hand we’ll guard it;
the power to quell these infidels,
down by the lakes of Carlow.
The plain surrounding the River Barrow is called Magh Fea, after one of the oxen of Brigit in her role as fertility goddess.
Dind Ríg (‘the fortress of kings’) [61], the palace of the Kings of Leinster and the ancient capital of the province, is on the River Barrow, a quarter of a mile south of Leighlinbridge in the townland of Ballyknockan. It has been equated with Dunon as listed among the city names given in Ptolemy’s Geography of Ireland written about 150 AD, in which the Barrow is named Birgos. Dind Ríg today stands well off the tourist track, and the visitor may see it either as ancient and neglected or as a royal fortress and residence untouched by time and retaining its Iron Age atmosphere in a calm river setting. Dind Ríg is a high, steep-sided and flat-topped mound, similar to Bruree (Brug Ríg, Co. Limerick) and to Cú Chulainn’s* mound at Dún Delca, Castletown, Co. Louth. The mound at Dind Ríg is situated at the S-end of a gravel ridge and junction of two rivers. It measures 237 yards in circumference at base, is sixty-nine feet above the river and forty-five yards in diameter at the top.
The site is also known as Duma Sláinge or ‘the burial place of Sláinge’, a king of the Fir Bolg* who died in the fourth century BC. The Lebor Gabála Érenn (‘The Book of Invasions’) states: ‘No king, so called, took the kingship of Ireland, till the Fir Bolg came, and they gave the kingship to Slanga son of Dela, for he was the eldest of the sons of Dela. A year at first had Slanga, till he died in Dind Ríg.’ It continues:
Bliadain do Shláine, is fír so,
conerbailt ‘na dég-dumo;
cet-fher d’Fheraib Bolg na mbend
atbath I n-inis Érend.
A year had Slanga, this is true,
till he died in his fine mound;
the first man of the Fir Bolg of the peaks
who died in the island of Ireland.
[Translated by R.A.S. Macalister]
The Laginian invasion (from which Leinster, or Laighean in Irish, derives its name) was the last invasion before that of the Gaels, and their story is contained in the tale Orgain Denda Ríg or (‘The Plunder of Dind Ríg’), the hero of which is Labraid Loingsech. Known as the first story of the Leinstermen, it was probably written in the ninth century. According to the Lebor Gabála, ‘The Plunder of Dind Ríg’ is dated to 307 BC. This date is not seriously contended by scholars, as the third century before Christ is generally agreed to be the time of the Laginian invasion. Although the invasion of the Lagin is not disputed, the idea of Labraid being exiled, a word implied in the epithet Loingsech or ‘exile’, is not given much credence. However, it allows for a good story while preserving the invasion and the plunder intact. In the original version, rather than being exiled Labraid is the leader of an Armorican (Fir Morca) invasion from north-west France. The later story also allows Labraid to lay waste to Dind Ríg as an act of legitimate revenge rather than a work of invasive destruction. Labraid was said to have come up from Munster and failed in his first attempt to capture the royal fortress and its king, Cobthach, who was within. Thus, the tale provides a solution, namely that the harper Craiphtine was to lull the enemy to sleep by playing sleep music (suantraighe) on his harp while the besiegers put their faces to the ground and their fingers in their ears. The result was that the defenders of Dind Ríg fell asleep and were slaughtered and Dind Ríg was destroyed. According to the original version, Cobthach was spared and lived in peace with Labraid who then became King of Leinster.
A later version tells how Labraid invited Cobthach to a feast in Dind Ríg, where he and his followers were roasted in an iron house that Labraid had spent a year building in total secrecy (thus giving rise to the proverb: ‘every Leinsterman has his secret’). The Book of Leinster has the following verses:
Ro hort in rigrad moa ríg,
(ba gním olc, ba domna hír);
loisc Labraid méit gaile
Cobthach Cóel mac Ugaine.
Ba Túaim Tenbath cosin olc
in ríg-dind rán, in rochnocc,
coro n-oirg Labraid, lán ngaile,
diar chuir ár a maccraide.
The princes were slain round their king
(it was an ill deed, it was matter for wrath):
the Dumb Exile of martial might burnt
Cobthach Cael, son of Ugaine.
Till that crime, Tuaim Tenbath was the name
of the noble kingly hold, the noted hill,
till Labraid full of valour sacked it,
when he made a slaughter of its young men.
[Translated by Edward Gwynn]
Tuaim Tenbath was the old name for Dind Ríg. Tuaim has been translated as a moat mound or burial mound, and Tenbath has been glossed as a ‘red flaming wall of fire’.
In 1934, The Irish Times reported that a ‘most compact and regular cist’ containing cremated bones had been found in the townland
