Blair Collection > Beside the fire

NOTES. 187
Slieve Belgadaun occurs also in another story which I heard, called the Bird
of Enchantment, in which a fairy desires some one to bring a sword of light
''from the King of the Firbolg, at the foot of Slieve Belgadaun." Nephin
is a high hill near Crossmolina, in North Mayo.
Page 89. StongiryaCTCAii5Aii\e), a word not given in dictionaries, means, I
think, a " mean fellow." The dove's hole, near the village of Cong, in the
west of the county Mayo, is a deep cavity in the ground, and when a stone
is thrown down into it you hear it rumbling and crashing from side to side of
the rocky wall, as it descends, until the sound becomes too faint to hear. It
is the very place to be connected with the marvellous.
Leeam O'Rooneys Burial.
Page 95. Might not Spenser have come across some Irish legend of an imi-
tation man made by enchantment, which gave him the idea of Archimago's imi-
tation of Una :
" Who all this time, with charms and hidden artes,
Had made a lady of that other spright,
And framed of liquid ayre her tender partes,
So lively and so like in all men's sight
That weaker sence it could have ravished quite," etc.
I never remember meeting this easy deus ex machiiid for bringing about a
complication before.
Page loi. Leeam imprecates "the devil from me," thus skilfully turn-
ing a curse into a blessing, as the Irish peasantry invariably do, even when in
a passion. ITonnam one d''youl — " my soul />w« the devil " is an ordinary
exclamation expressive of irritation or wonderment.
GULLEESH.
Page 104. When I first heard this story I thought that the name of the hero
wasSoitbif, the pronunciation of which in English letters would be Gul-yeesh ;
but I have since heard the name pronounced more distinctly, and am sure that
it isÍSioLÍAOif, g'yulleesh, which is a corruption of the name 5iollA-iofA,
a not uncommon Christian name amongst the seventeenth century Gaels. I
was, however, almost certam that the man (now dead) from whom I first got this