Blair Collection > Beside the fire

NOTES. 195
and weds her, in spite of her being dumb. "When she bears her first child, the
Virgin appears, and promises to give her back her speech if she will confess
her fault ; she refuses, whereupon the Virgin carries off the child. This
happens thrice, and the queen, accused of devouring her children, is con-
demned to be burnt. She repents, the flames are extinguished, and the Virgin
appears with the three children, whom she restores to the mother. Can there
have been any similar form of the forbidden chamber current in Ireland, and
can there have been substitution of Grainne, Finn's wife, for the Virgin Mary,
or, vice versa, can the latter have taken the place of an older heathen god
dess.?— A. N.]
Page 169. See Campbells "Tales of the Western Highlands, vol. III., page
[20, for a fable almost identical with this of the two crows.