reply intelligibly and the islander struck him with all his strength on the forehead, laying him dead. When the Pope got to know of it (how, I was not told) he cursed Clare Island and all its people and no attempt to benefit them has ever since been of any use. The improvements of the Congested Districts Board are regarded by local pessimists as misguided kindness, certain to end in failure on this account, no success of the islanders being ever more than temporary. In Achill "four tyrants, Henry, Púca, Coman and Cuimin, broke the stone cross of St. Colman's killeen."[1] Was Henry the bluff Tudor destroyer of monasteries? The Púca is at times an alias for Satan himself in the islands and elsewhere.
Lynott and Barrett.—I find no definite legend till we touch on the horrible story of the Lynotts and the Barretts embodied, so grimly and vigorously, in Sir Samuel Ferguson's Lays of the Western Gael as "The Vengeance of the Welshmen of Tirawley." The more brief account found in the Tribes and Customs of Hy Fiachrach, by Duald MacFirbis in the mid-seventeenth century is remembered at two places. Tobernascorney, in Carns, where the prototype of the tax assessor slain by Wat Tyler preceded him in a like offence and a like fate, Sgorna bhuid bhearrtha, the Barrett's bailiff, was slain at the "Scrag's Well," is still known. The legend at the ford and stepping-stones of Clochán na ndall (or blind man's crossing) on the river four miles north of Crosmolina in Garranard, across which the blinded Lynotts were left to pass, all save their destined avenger being drowned, has an echo of the tale. I believe the instrument of his crafty vengeance, Tibbot Maol Burke, has (or had) a place in legend at the spot where the Barretts slew him. The verse among the people in 1838 called him "Teabod Mwylee," and showed the place of his death at the ford of Cornassack. "The Barrets" (said the rhyme) "came into the country, they committed an act which was not right; they left the Lynots blind and Teabod Maol in a sack; at the narrow stream of Cornassack." This spot was in Creeves townland, near Ballycastle. People at that time also showed where the Barretts defeated the Lynotts, and blood (in red veins)
- ↑ Ordnance Survey Letters, Co. Mayo (MSS. K.I. Acad.), vol. i. p. 342.
