Blair Collection > Beside the fire

I go NOTES.
The Well of D'Yerree-in-Do\vax.
Page 129. There are two other versions of this story, one a rather evapo-
rated one, filtered through English, told by Kennedy, in which the Dall Glic is
a wise old hermit ; and another, and much better one, by Curtin. The Dall
Glic, wise blind man, figures in several stories which I have got, as the king's
counsellor. I do not remember ever meeting him in our literature. Bwee-
sownee, the name of the king's castle, is, I think, a place in Mayo, and
probably would be better written buTOe-CAiiiiiAij.
Page 131. This beautiful lady in red silk, who thus appears to the prince,
and who comes again to him at the end of the story, is a curious creation of folk
fancy. She may personify good fortune. There is nothing about her in the two
parallel stories from Curtin and Kennedy.
Page 133. This " tight loop " ^Uib ccAiin) can hardly be a bow, since the
ordinary word for tliat is bógha ; but it may, perhaps, be a name for a
cross-bow.
Page 136. The story is thus invested with a moral, for it is the prince's piety
in giving what was asked of him in the honour of God which enabled the queen
to find him out, and eventually marry him.
Page 137. In the story of CAilleAC ik\ pACAile yAT)A, in my icAbliAiA
SgeuUiijheAchcA, not translated in this book, an old hag makes a boat out
of a thimble, which she throws into the water, as the handsome lady does here.
Page 141. This incident of the ladder is not in Curtin's story, which makes
the brothers mount the queen's horse and get thrown. There is a very curÍDus
account of a similar ladder in the story of the " Slender Grey Kerne, "of which
I possess a good MS., made by a northern scribe in 1763. The passage is of
interest, because it represents a trick something almost identical with which
I have heard Colonel Olcott, the celebrated American theosophist lecturer,
say he saw Indian jugglers frequently performing. Colonel Olcott, who came
over to examine Irish fairy lore in the light of theosophic science, was of
opinion that these men could bring a person under their power so as to make him
imagine that he saw whatever the juggler wished him to see. He especially