Legendary fictions of the Irish Celts

246 Fictions of the Irish Celts.
and when the boy
swallowed the sack, body and bones ;
found himself in his belly, he got out his skian and gashed
away under him, and the piastha finding something going
wrong in his inside, rolled away to the ]3ool. The pain
was growing worse and worse, and just as he was tumbling
heels over head into the water, his belly was cut through,
and out tumbled the Munster man safe and sound on
the sod.
He lost no time till he made a fire ; and, by my word,
there was another fire soon on Mount Leinster, and
another on Black Stairs and every hill round, and such
joy and delight as there was well never see any way.
But the brave boy was devout, too. He determined
he'd build a church out of gratitude, and he prayed that
he might be shown a proper place to make the foundation.
So he had a dream, and the next morning he saw
a duck and mallard flying along. He followed them
across Thuar Bridge, and over the hill to Templeshambo.
There they lighted, the drake on the near side of the
stream, and the duck on the far one. So he built a
monastery on one side and a nunnery on the other, and
even when there Avasn't a stick nor a stone of either of
them left, there was not a woman buried on one side, nor
a man on the other, till the devil bewitched the people of
Ballinlugg to bury Blue Cap on the men's side, within a
foot of the body of brave ould Daniel Jourdan, that
fought with Sarsfield at Aughrim, and )-ou all know how
it fared with her.
There is scarcely a lake in Ireland without its legend
of a worm or piastha, destroyed by Fion Mac Cumhail, or
one of the old saints. As the early missionaries were
unable to induce their converts to give up the recitation
of these pagan fables, they turned them to account by
investing them with a new character. The worai or
serpent was the devil, and his conqueror was St.
Michael. Kilmeashil churchyard lies a little better than
a mile away from Lough-naT^iastha : the name is a cor-