Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

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Vruidical IVlazic.
o> o:)
the Boinn, it was given thee that to whomsoever tliou
shouldst give a drink from the palms of thy hands, he
should after that be young and sound from every sickness."
Unhappily, Fionn was so long debating with himself as to
this gift to his enemy, that, when he walked towards him
with the water, life had departed from the boar-stricken
Irish Adonis.
Dr. W. R. Sullivan has a translation of the Fair of
Carman, concerning three magicians and their mother
from Athens
:
*'
^y charms, and spells, and incantations, the mother
blighted every place, and it was through magical devastation
and dishonesty that the men dealt out destruction. They
came to Erin to bring evil upon the Tuatha de Danann, by
blighting the fertility of this isle. The Tuatha were angry
at this ;
and they sent against them Ai, the son of Allamh,
on the part of their poets, and Credenbel on the part of
their satirists, and Lug Laeban, i. e. the son of Cachcr, on
the part of their Druids, and Becuille on the part of the
witches, to pronounce incantations against them. And
these never parted from them until they forced the three
men over the sea, and they left a pledge behind them. i.e.
Carman, their mother, that they would never return to
Erin."
A counter-charm is given in the Scnclins Mor. W hen the
Druids sought to poison St. Patrick, the latter wrote over
the liquor :
" Tubu fis fri ibn, fis ibii anfis,
P>is bru uatha, ibu lithu, Christi Jesus."
Me left it on record that whoever pronounced these words
over poison or liquor should receive no injury from it. It
might be useful with Irish whisky ;
only the translat^^r adds
that the words of the charm, like most of the charms cf the
Middle Ages, appear to have had no meaning.