Page 142. The court of Crinnawn is an old ruin on the river Lung, which
divides the counties of Roscommon and Mayo, about a couple of miles from
the town of Ballaghadereen. I believe, despite the story, that it was
built by one of the Dillon family, and not so long ago either. There is
an Irish prophecy extant in these parts about the various great houses
in Roscommon. Clonalis, the seat of the O’Connor Donn—or Don, as they
perversely insist on spelling it; Dungar, the seat of the De Freynes;
Loughlinn, of the Dillons, etc.; and amongst other verses, there is one
which prophecies that “no roof shall rise on Crinnawn,” which the people
say was fulfilled, the place having never been inhabited or even roofed.
In the face of this, how the story of Crinnawn, son of Belore, sprang
into being is to me quite incomprehensible, and I confess I have been
unable to discover any trace of this particular story on the Roscommon
side of the river, nor do I know from what source the shanachie, Mr.
Lynch Blake, from whom I got it, become possessed of it. Balor of the
evil eye, who figures in the tale of “The Children of Tuireann,” was not
Irish at all, but a “Fomorian.” The _pattern_, accompanied with such
funest results for Mary Kerrigan, is a festival held in honour of the
_patron_ saint. These patterns were common in many places half a century
ago, and were great scenes of revelry and amusement, and often, too,
of hard fighting. But these have been of late years stamped out, like
everything else distinctively Irish and lively.
[This story is a curious mixture of common peasant belief about haunted
raths and houses, with mythical matter probably derived from books. Balor
appears in the well-known tale of MacKineely, taken down by O’Donovan,
in 1855, from Shane O’Dugan of Tory Island (Annals. I. 18, and cf. Rhys,
Hibbert Lect., p. 314), but I doubt whether in either case the appearance
of the name testifies to a genuine folk-belief in this mythological
personage, one of the principal representatives of the powers of darkness
in the Irish god-saga.—A.N.]