were heathen in other respects, and had no true faith in God, yet they had this belief so steadfastly, that they thought that whatever the king judged was rightly judged, and never thought that wrong judgment should be given from that king's seat. Now, where the height of the hill seemed to be, there the king had a fair castle and well made. In that castle the king had a fair and large hall, such as it behoved him to sit in as a judge of men. But once it so happened that matters came before the king to be tried, in which were his friends on one side, whose cause the king greatly favoured, and on the other his enemies. And thus it happened that the king inclined his judgment more after his pleasure than according to justice. And when, against all expectation, false judgment had come where people thought that right judgment should be, the tribunal, the palace and castle, and the whole place, were overthrown and collapsed. And thus it has remained ever since. And on account of this great miracle neither kings nor other inhabitants dare to dwell in that place, which otherwise is the most pleasant of all. And it is also said that if anyone dare to inhabit that place, a new prodigy happens daily.
Not in the Ir. Mir. nor in Giraldus. Nor does it tally very well with the traditional Irish account, according to which Tara was deserted in 565 after the death of King Dermot mac Cerbaill, in consequence of the curse of St. Ruadan. See Petrie's Tara, p. 125; O'Grady, Silva Gadelica, ii, p. 83.
17. There is also in that land one wonderful things which will seem very untruthful to men. Yet the people who inhabit that land say that it is certainly true. And that befell on account of the wrath of a holy man. It is said that when the holy Patricius was preaching Christianity in that land, there was one great race more hostile to him than the other people that were in the land. And those men tried to do him many kinds of injury. And when he preached Christianity to them as to other men,
