and Longford, two large stones are shown as the place where the pig was killed. The people say that the French troops passed through this district in 1798, and followed the Valley of the Black Pig all the way to Ballinamuck, where they were defeated.[1] Rev. Canon Naylor, in identifying the course of the Black Pig's Valley at the Bundoran end, says, "The Moy (Magh), a plain near Belleek, is known traditionally as the Plain of the Black Pig,—here they say it was actually killed." Mr. Kane calculates that the total length of the earthworks, exclusive of river and lake connections, must have been about 130 miles.
Of the legends, ancient and modern, connected with the Dyke, the earliest seems to be that found in The Tale of the Fate of the Children of Tuireann, one of the three Sorrowful Tales of Erin, where Cian, Father of Lugh, changes himself into a Druidical pig and begins rooting up the earth to save himself from the three sons of Tuireann, who are bent on his destruction. Two of the sons of Tuireann, however, are struck with a Druidical wand, and become two slender fleet hounds, and they pursue the man-pig till he reaches a grove of trees, where the third brother flings a spear at him and kills him. The main portion of the story is taken up with the terrible "eric" laid upon the murderers by Lugh and the almost insurmountable difficulties they meet with in obeying his demands.[2]
Later versions vary the legend by making the ancient
- ↑ O'Donovan writes: "Ballinamuck, 'the mouth of the pig's ford.' What pig? The Black Pig who rooted up the Dane's Cast in Co. Armagh." The Dane's Cast is a portion of a second or inner rampart which passes through Scarva and Poyntz Pass. See W. F. De Vismes Kane's "Researches on the Black Pig's Dyke," in Proc. Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxvii. sec. C. No. 14; and vol. xxxiii. sec. C. No. 19. Also Miss M. E. Dobbs' paper on the same subject in Sidelights on the Táin Age, pp. 79-86.
- ↑ The tale has been published by the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, 1901. Cian's grave, called Cnoc Cian mic Cainte, or in English, Killeen, was in existence up to a recent period, when an ignorant farmer tore it down. It was about 1½ miles north of Dundalk.
