CH 12 - Muhr

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Place-names and the understanding of monuments
KAy MUHR
Medieval and later Irish literature contains many references to archaeological

monuments such as cairns, megalithic tombs and standing stones. ese
monuments were clearly respected for their antiquity and usefulness as landmarks,
and many stories about legendary characters remain attached to them, although it
is unprovable whether any of the significances attributed to them were inherited
from their original builders. Stone monuments of various types and natural rock
features are discussed together here, since Irish narrative tradition has not been
concerned with modern scientific distinctions.
Dindshenchas – the ‘Irish lore of places’

In his book e learned Tales of Medieval Ireland, Proinsias Mac Cana included
the Irish among societies for whom the landscape itself is the key, and the
mnemonic used, to recall local mythology:
the Irish landscape and the dindsenchas ‘the history of places’, which was its
collective reflex in tribal myth and history served together as an effective
mnemonic index and treasury of a great part of native tradition.1
Kathleen Hughes, referring to the Dingle Peninsula in the 1950s, was ‘astonished
and impressed by the remarkable knowledge of place-lore which some of the local
farmers possessed’.2
According to medieval Irish literary theory, every place of significance in early
Ireland not only had a name but also a story explaining its origin, and it was the
poet’s job to remember and recite them. By his eighth year of study, a professional
poet had to learn dinnsheanchus ocus prímscéla Érend fria n-aisneis do ríghaib ocus
flaithib ocus dagdhoínib, ‘the lore of high places and the chief tales of Ireland for
telling to kings and rulers and men of substance’.3 The extent of the task is
illustrated by an early legend which tells how Mongán, a historical king’s son in
Ulster, embarrassed the poet Eochu Rígéces (the ‘royal poet’) into admitting to his
patron, Mongán’s father Fiachna mac Baetáin, ignorance of who erected certain
landmarks. The landmarks Eochu was to explain were archaeological, some
1 P. Mac Cana, learned tales of medieval Ireland (1980), p. 27. 2 K. Hughes, Early Christian Ireland
(1972), p. 166. 3 Dá ernail déc na filidheachta, in R. Thurneysen (ed.), ‘Mittelirische Verslehren’ (1891),
pp 29–66: 49–50, §91. For more detail, see K. Muhr, ‘Dindshenchas’ (2006).
232
Place-names and the understanding of monuments 233
potentially much older than the story: six standing stones (coirthi cloche), an
aelráth (‘limewashed ringfort’) and ‘other ringforts’ (ráith eile). In retaliation,
Eochu cursed Mongán. Eochu’s failing was not forgetfulness but intellectual
laziness: nicon fil for menmain damsa sin uile, ‘I cannot remember all that’;
Sochaide lasa ndéntar rátha … co nach talla for menmain, ‘So many build raths
[‘castles’ in the editor’s translation] that they do not all find room in the memory’.4
Stories explaining place-names, and the interconnectedness of places, can be
found in a wide range of sources from early Irish literature to modern folklore. Far
more visible before the enclosure of fields, prehistoric monuments clearly
functioned as important markers in the landscape, in some cases long after they
were built. The term dind itself means an ‘elevated place’ and many but not all of
the place-names and monuments in the dindsenchas texts were connected with
hills. High places could be seen from afar and, when ascended, also provided a
view of other places in the surrounding hinterland and beyond – a conceptual
triangulation of Ireland.
For this essay, I have chosen a varied set of locations in the northern half of
Ireland to illustrate the distinctive Irish interest in ancient monuments and their
names and stories. Three places in Ulster, in Cos Antrim, Armagh and Tyrone, are
discussed first, followed by three sites linked with Queen Medb of Connacht, in
Cos Antrim, Tyrone and Roscommon. The range of sources drawn upon covers
recent oral tradition, including the collections of the first Ordnance Survey of
Ireland in the 1830s,5 and Máire MacNeill’s study of surviving traditions of
assemblies at harvest-time, Irish lughnasa.6
T HRE E SITE S IN ULST E R
(1) e Bloody Hill, Ballyligpatrick, Co. Antrim

Although older place-names were Irish-language, this first place-name story
features names in English. Nevertheless, these current local place-names reveal the
existence of archaeological monuments that no longer survive but lasted long
enough for some of the traditions about them to be recorded. In the Braid valley,
Co. Antrim, between Slemish Mountain and the church and rock of Skerry on a
hill to the north, in the now almost entirely Presbyterian parish of Racavan, is a
low hill called ‘the Bloody Hill’ (with a ‘Graveyard Field’), located in the townland
of Ballyligpatrick. Although the seventh-century lives of St Patrick mention both
4 E. Knott, ‘Why Mongán was deprived of noble issue’ (1916), 157, 159. 5 The place-name scholar John
O’Donovan, and his Ordnance Survey letters; other documents by various authors, the Ordnance Survey
memoirs (OS memoirs), the Ordnance Survey name books (OSnB). 6 M. MacNeill, Festival of lughnasa
(1962, repr. 2008).
234 Kay Muhr
Slemish – where St Patrick was said to have herded sheep and swine – and the
rock at Skerry, where Patrick’s guardian angel left his footprint,7 they contain no
reference to Ballyligpatrick. However, the townland of Ballyligpatrick clearly took
its name (Baile leice Pádraig, ‘Townland of St Patrick’s Flagstone’) from a
monument associated with, and believed to be marked by the saint, as described
in the Ordnance Survey memoirs in 1837:8
At a distance of a few fields from the Bloody Hill, and at the eastern side of
it, there is a broad flat stone with a surface of four square feet and with the
remainder … firmly buried in the ground. is is called St Patrick’s Stone.
It is believed that he left the print of his knee in it while praying on it during
his journey from Slemish to Skerry.
The location was not marked on the first Ordnance Survey map, and the
Ballyligpatrick flagstone is now lost. However, oral tradition in the 1830s told of
a Scotsman from Islay who was killed during a skirmish in the 1641 rebellion at
the Bloody Hill, from whence it got its name, and when, ‘On account of the
slaughter that took place then, St Patrick’s chapel lost its sanctity’.9 The account
thus reveals that Ballyligpatrick’s ‘Graveyard Field’ once contained a church. Like
the church at Skerry, the now-destroyed St Patrick’s chapel in the townland had
probably been a place of pilgrimage, involving a visit to the knee-print stone. In
addition, the story of the Bloody Hill indicated that the chapel on it had also been
situated beside a cairn:10
Adjoining the house of the Revd W. McClintock Wray, minister of Buckna

meeting house, is a hill called the Bloody Hill, said to be so called from a
battle once fought there by some of the Irish clans, and in a field belonging
to Mr Wray was a fort, or as he calls it a cairn, which he has lately had
levelled, where he found a stone grave containing an urn and many bones
… ere is near the Bloody Hill a field called the Graveyard. It was at one
time surrounded by a large ditch or rampart, and adjoining there appeared
to have been some extensive building.
e site of the chapel was further described in the section ‘Ancient Topography’:11
on level ground at the side of a small stream, there are [ruins, a cove, a mill-
7 L. Bieler (ed.), Patrician texts (1979), pp 82–3, § II 15.13 and pp 162–3, §50. For further discussion of
this stone, see C. Doherty, ‘Kingship in early Ireland’ (2005), p. 10. 8 OS memoirs, xiii, p. 101. 9 Ibid.
10 Ibid., pp 86–9: p. 89 (1832). 11 Ibid., p. 101.
race and] a field known by the name of the Graveyard and a spot beyond
the field which was formerly covered by foundations now uprooted. is
place is altogether called St Patrick’s chapel. It is difficult to ascertain,
among the various remains of square buildings, which may be called the
chapel.
Also described were the cairn and its story:12
On the summit of a hill close to the Presbyterian minister’s house, and

known by the name of Bloody Hill, a large cairn of small stones, 63 feet in
width by 84 in length, stood up to the year 1831. It was then removed by
him. In the centre he found … a square cell made of five flagstones and
containing a highly ornamented urn. … It contained a quantity of bones …
e tradition about this spot is that it is the burial place of Callum McClean
of Isla[y] (one of the Scotch Hebrides), who came over here during the
rebellion of 1641 and fell in battle with the Irish.
Faced with the circumstantial oral tradition, the memoir-writer John Stokes was
prepared to think that Calum MacLean’s followers might have buried their chief’s
bones in an urn under the cairn, ‘though it may appear to antiquarians
unaccountable’, and that ‘though the cairn is of pagan form it may possibly be of
modern date’. Certainly Stokes considered that ‘e Islay men could not in a
foreign and enemies’ country have taken a better way of preserving the body of
their chief from insult’. His drawings for the memoirs thus included one labelled
as a ‘fragment of Collum McClean’s urn, now in the possession of Mr Wrey’, and
another showing the ‘Remains of St Patrick’s Chapel’ and ‘e Grave yard
Field’.13
A hasty burial in c.1641 could have been placed in an existing cairn as a
landmark, maybe because it was known that these usually covered graves. The urn
must have been genuinely prehistoric, but a new cairn could have been thrown
together and added to by well-wishers. Certainly, there are circumstances in which
people were either buried (or said to have been buried) in an ancient monument,
or given a memorial of ancient type. The memoirs record similarly late burial
traditions associated with cairns, ringforts and standing stones, including the
following example from Co. Antrim: ‘In the townland of lismority is a small cairn
in which a friar is said to have been buried’, on which stones were cast by the
people.14 Another cairn is located on the crannóg at Lough Lynch, now-drained,
12 Ibid., p.102. See also K. Muhr, ‘Place-names and Scottish clan traditions’ (2009), pp 80–5. 13 OS
memoirs, viii, pp 103–4. 14 Lismorrity, Grange of Drumtullagh. OS memoirs, xvi, pp 100, 102.
236 Kay Muhr
in the parish of Billy: ‘Tradition says that the last male of the MacQuillans,
murdered in the above county, was buried in the above island and the cairn raised
to denote his burial ground’.15
Ringforts were not infrequently reused as places of burial. For instance, Legar
Hill fort, near the Blackwater river in the townland of Corr and Dunavally, Co.
Armagh, has been described as ‘an ancient earthen-ringed fort, now in use as a
graveyard’.16 The mid-seventeenth-century Irish diary Cín lae Ó Mealláin says
that there were cannons at Dún dá Bhaile (Dunavally) in 1643, when some
soldiers were killed: ‘Tradition states they were buried within the fort and that its
use as a burial place dates from then’.17 The memoirs say of Glenchuil, a townland
in the parish of Errigal Keeroge, Co. Tyrone:18
ere is one ancient fort in this townland and one built lately and walled in.
ere is a man buried in the latter. When this man, Mr Neely died, he was
buried in the old churchyard of Ballynasagart, but according to the accounts
of the people, he returned to his dwelling house several times, and from a
request that he had made before he died and while building this fort, that
he should be laid in it, they thought it was from that he came back; and they
afterwards removed him from the churchyard to the above-mentioned fort
and he has not appeared since.
In Co. Antrim, there was Slaught Shane Roe, a pair of standing stones said to
mark the death and burial place (sleacht) of Sean Rua Mac Domhnaill in the battle
of Glenshesk in 1565.19 In this case, as with Calum MacLean’s cairn, sixteenth-
century standing stones are unlikely. However, earlier burial practices were
sometimes revived. Elizabeth O’Brien has noted an example of a secondary burial
recorded in the Annals of loch Cé in 1581, when an eminent cleric disillusioned
with his fellow Christians asked to be buried in the ‘mound of Baile an Tobair’,
near Ballintubber Abbey, Co. Mayo.20
Returning to Racavan parish, the named features described in the memoirs do
not all appear on the early nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey maps, and have
to be pieced together. The earliest six-inch map (Antrim sheet 33) shows the
townland of Ballyligpatrick and, near the south-west corner, just north of a road
and north-west of buildings by it, a double-ringed fort near a spot height of 410
feet (125m). These features can be identified with the minister’s house, now called
Woodvale; the site of the cairn, sometimes referred to as a rath (ringfort) in the
15 Ibid., p. 74. 16 D.A. Chart (ed.), A preliminary survey (1940), p. 62. 17 Ibid. See also K. Neill,
Archaeological survey of County Armagh (2009), pp 366–7; see C. Dillon, ‘Cín lae uí Mhealláin’(2000), p.
353. 18 OS memoirs, xx, p. 53 (1835). 19 OS memoirs, xxiv, p. 79; Muhr, ‘Place-names and Scottish clan
traditions’, pp 94–5. 20 Ann. loch Cé, [vol.?] p. 436; E. O’Brien, ‘Literary insights’ (2008), p. 289.
12.1 Drawing by John Stokes of the ‘Remains of St. Patrick’s Chapel’ (Ordnance Survey
Memoirs box 15, parish of Racavan, Ancient Topography, drawing 2 (1837); cf. OSM, xiii,
p. 104). Reproduced by permission of the Royal Irish Academy, © RIA.
memoirs; and the Bloody Hill. Although the Bloody Hill is named on later maps,
no monuments are marked. Nevertheless, the tradition of a death at a skirmish at
the Bloody Hill, and the name ‘Graveyard Field’, were still remembered by local
residents in 2006, although the last remains of St Patrick’s chapel and graveyard
behind Woodvale had just been cleared away. Thus John Stokes’ 1837 sketch-map
is the only record of its extent and ground-plan (fig. 12.1). Stokes coloured the
more prominent foundations darker and, although he said that it was ‘difficult to
ascertain’ which building had been the chapel, his guess was the circular area to
the north, where he wrote: ‘site of another group of square foundations, now
238 Kay Muhr
however destroyed; some were not square’.21 Despite the almost complete loss of
the monuments, the place-names meant that some of the stories endured.
(2) Slieve Gullion, Co. Armagh

Slieve Gullion is an isolated hill, 577m high, in south Co. Armagh. Its distinctive
rounded profile and main summit cairn are visible from a great distance, probably
as far north as Slemish. e cairn (NISMR ARM 028:007; fig. 12.2), locally called
‘Calliagh Berra’s House’, is described in the Northern Ireland Sites and
Monuments Record as follows:
A round cairn c.100ft diameter and originally c.16ft high … It contains a

passage grave of dry-stone walling with a lintelled roof to the passage and a
corbelled roof to the chamber. e chamber is octagonal, with a small end
chamber set in the wall opposite the passage. e outer edge of the cairn was
bounded by a kerb. A gap of 9 feet seems to have contained a ‘porch’, now
destroyed. Finds from the passage and chamber included cremated bone.
Another nearby cairn (NISMR ARM 028:006), north of the tiny Calliagh Berra’s
Lough, contained cist burials.22 The surrounding area is presented as wild and wooded
in early Irish literature. The tale Tochmarc Emire, which relates the Ulster hero Cú
Chulainn’s wooing of his wife Emer, mentions Forkill (from oirceal, ‘trough’) as a
wood on the road between Sliab Cuillinn (Slieve Gullion) and Sliab Fuait.23 In the
Táin Bó Cuailnge (‘Cattle-raid of Cooley’), the mighty and supernatural bull Donn
Cuailnge, which was the cause of the attack on Ulster by Queen Medb of Connacht
and her army, was kept hidden ‘in the wastes of Slieve Gullion’.24
e Slieve Gullion summit cairn also attracted attention in early Irish texts as an
otherworld dwelling named Síd gCulind, referred to with Slieve Gullion in the
‘Descendants of Ir’, the first-millennium AD genealogy of the Downpatrick kings of
Ulster, Dál Fiatach. e tract begins by saying of their ancestor-figure Fiatu or Fiatach
that ‘by him the otherworld dwellings were attacked’, four of which are named:25
Is leis ar-robad [ro-robad] for sidib: Síd mBresse, Síd nenta, Síd Femin, Síd
Culind quod dicitur Tech Cermnai i Sléib Chulind.
21 OS memoirs, xiii, pp 101, 104. 22 www.ni-environment.gov.uk, accessed 29 April 2010. See also E.
Evans, Prehistoric and Early Christian Ireland (1966), p. 61; Neill, Archaeological survey of County Armagh,
pp 128–30. 23 A.G. Van Hamel (ed.), Compert Con Culainn (1933), p. 35, §33; K. Muhr, ‘Early place-
names of County Armagh’ (2002), 30. Sliab Fuait, ‘Mountain of the Sod’ (or ‘wilderness’) is the old name
for the Fews Mountains in south Co. Armagh. 24 i ndiamraib Slébe Culind: TBC I, pp 30–1, ll. 963, 998;
see TBC II, p. 36, l. 1319. 25 CGh, pp 10–14 (ll 330b). The alternative reading in brackets is from The
Book of Ballymote. See also M. Dobbs, ‘History of the descendants of Ir’ (1922), 332–3 and n. 6.
12.2 The summit

cairn of Slieve
Gullion, Co.
Armagh, showing
the entrance to
the passage grave,
Tech Culind or
Calliagh Berra’s
House (photo:
Paul Tempan,
April 2009).
e supernatural beings who represented the gods of the pagan Irish were
supposed to live in a parallel world in these sída, which can be translated: ‘the
otherworld dwelling of Bres, the otherworld dwelling of Nenta, the otherworld
dwelling of Femen, the otherworld dwelling of Culend, which is called Cermna’s
house in Culend’s mountain [Slieve Gullion]’.
Sída, ‘otherworld dwellings’, are a class of place-name that feature regularly in
Irish mythological tales, and those which can be identified are often hills with
summit cairns. Síd nenta and Síd Femin are fairly frequently referred to, and
represent different parts of Ireland. Síd nenta, often called al uisce, ‘beyond the
water’, is located in Connacht in Tochmarc Étaíne (‘The Wooing of Étaín’),26 and
was identified by John O’Donovan in 1856 as ‘Mullaghshee near Lanesborough,
in the county of Roscommon’.27 The large townland and hill (145m high), a
26 O. Bergin & R.I. Best (eds), ‘Tochmarc Étaíne’ (1938), 190–1, §23. 27 AFM, i, p. 89, n. w.
240 Kay Muhr
foothill of Slieve Bawn at the northern end of Lough Ree, is now translated
‘Fairymount’, in the parish of Kilgefin. The second-edition Ordnance Survey six-
inch map of the area shows the eastern boundary enclosing the summit, with the
legends ‘Fairy Mount Castle’ and ‘Church’, while the modern 1:50,000 map
marks instead a barrow. An aerial photograph from 2005 shows a ring of bushes,28
and a visit in 1979 found that the small summit feature was locally called ‘the
Steeple’, and was enclosed in a grazing field named ‘the Steeple Garden’. At the
time, it was said that Croagh Patrick can occasionally be seen from it.
Síd Femin was sometimes called Síd al Femin, ‘Otherworld-dwelling beyond
Femen’, as Femen or Magh Feimhin was a plain in Munster covering three
baronies, extending from Cashel to Clonmel. Síd Femin is usually identified with
the mountain of Slievenamon or Sliabh na mBan, ‘Mountain of the Women’, Co.
Tipperary. According to Estyn Evans, ‘this conspicuous hill, renowned in
mythological tales, has a large cairn diameter 30 yards and 9 feet high, situated on
almost the highest point [722m]’.29 Many of the early Irish tales mention incidents
that took place there, including Tochmarc Étaíne, in which Étaín and her
otherworld husband Midir escaped to Síd Femin in the form of two swans, and
their human pursuers tried to dig up the otherworld dwellings or sída of Ireland
to recapture them.30
Síd mBreise seems most likely to refer to Bres, a legendary king of Ireland,31 but
‘The descendants of Ir’ contains the only reference to the place-name. In one late
Ulster Cycle tale, a similar name, Cnoc Breis ‘in Ulster’, is linked with the name
Knockmany (Cnoc mBáine), Co. Tyrone, to be considered below.
Cermna of Tech Cermna, ‘Cermna’s House’, was from Ulster and is another
early king of Ireland, whose name is more often linked with the place-name Dún
Cermna, ‘Cermna’s Hillfort’, at the Old Head of Kinsale.32 The word tech
(‘house’), here apparently used, like síd (‘otherworld dwelling’), to refer to the
summit cairn, appears again in the townland name of Drumintee (Droim an Tí ,
‘Ridge of the House’), at the southern end of the hill.33 Tech was sometimes used
to name early churches, but there are other instances where it seems to indicate a
megalithic structure, as in Ticloy townland (Tigh Cloiche, ‘Stone House’) near
Slemish, where a surviving chambered tomb is known as ‘The Stone House’.34
Elsewhere, the genealogy of Ulster kings mentions Mongán’s adversary, the poet
Eochu Rígéces or Dallán Forgaill of Dál Fiatach, qui hospitatus apud Daimíne et
qui sepultus est i nDomnuch Culind, ‘who was lodged with Daimíne and buried at
28 Ordnance Survey of Ireland: www.osiemaps.ie, accessed 8 Feb. 2010. 29 Evans, Prehistoric and Early
Christian Ireland, p. 196. 30 Bergin & Best, ‘Tochmarc Étaíne’, 184–5, §15. 31 See, for example, lGÉ,
iv, p. 112, §310. 32 Ibid., v, pp 210–11, §507. 33 P. McKay, Dictionary of ulster place-names (2007),
p. 62. 34 K. Muhr, ‘Manx and (northern) Irish monument names’ (2008), p. 225.
the ancient church of Culend’.35 The ‘early church of Culend’ presumably refers
to the nunnery now in ruins at the foot of the mountain, from which the parish
is named Cill Shléibhe, ‘Church of the Mountain’.36 The Annals of ulster record
the death of the founder of the ‘church of Slieve Gullion’ in 517: Quies Dar Ercae
Cille Sleibe Cuilinn.37
The element Culend looks like the word for ‘holly’ (modern cuileann), but
many síd sites are qualified by a personal name, which Culend can be, and this is
also how the name is explained in later written tales and folklore linked with the
Ulster epic Táin Bó Cuailnge. In the eleventh-century version of the tale, the chief
hero, Cú Chulainn, earned his name ‘Hound of Culann’ by a boyhood feat that
involved killing and then acting as a replacement for the guard dog of Culann the
smith.38 However, when Cú Chulainn guarded the approach to Navan Fort from
the south, the spellings clearly indicate that no connection was made between his
name and Slieve Gullion:39
Co n-accai ní intí Cú Chulaind: Bude mac Báin ó Shleib Chulind.

Cú Chulaind saw someone: Bude son of Bán from Slieve Gullion.
However, hero and place are linked in the possibly thirteenth-century text called
Cóir Anmann (‘Fitness of Names’), where Cú Chulainn’s name is spelled Cú
Chuillinn, after Cuillinn the craftsman whose hound he had killed.40 Around
1786, Archdall recorded that the mountain called Slieu Gullen got its name from
‘Cuilean, an artificer, who lived in the reign of Conchobhar mac Nessa, king of
Ulster, and by whom the celebrated Cuchullain was fostered’.41
An early modern Fenian Cycle tale, Feis Tighe Chonáin (‘The Feast in Conán’s
House’), provides a story to explain the origin of a small lough near the summit
of Slieve Gullion, along with other elements surviving in recent folklore.
According to the tale, two supernatural women (de chloind Cuillinn Chuailgne,
‘children of Cuillinn of Cooley’) created a lake on Sliabh Cuillinn, and one of
them lured the hunter Fionn mac Cumhaill there by taking the shape of a doe.
35 CGh, pp 40–4 (ll 330b). Daimine was of Clogher. As Knott points out, there is a problem with dating,
as the genealogy would put Eochu/Dallán in the fourth century rather than the sixth: Knott, ‘Why Mongán
was deprived of noble issue’, p. 155 n. In the genealogies of Irish saints, he is given a different descent, from
Colla Uais: P. Ó Riain (ed.), Corpus genealogiarum sanctorum hiberniae (1985), pp 58 (380.2), 77 (633), 92
(662.105), 64 (426). This agrees with the more ‘western’ version of his legend, where Dallán is closely
associated with St Conall of Donegal and buried on Inishkeel. See L. McGill, In St Conall’s footsteps (1992),
pp 95–6; M.B. Ó Mainnín & G. Toner, Place-names of northern Ireland, vol. 1 (1992), pp 54–6. 36 Muhr,
‘Early place-names of County Armagh’, 20–1. 37 Au, p. 64. 38 TBC I, p. 19, l. 603; see TBC II, p. 25,
l. 914. 39 TBC I, p. 46, l. 1491; similarly in TBC II, p. 48, l. 1775. 40 S. Arbuthnot (ed.), Cóir Anmann
(2005–7), ii, pp 72, 145, §279. Arbuthnot dates this later version to the thirteenth century (ibid., i, p. 72).
41 M. Archdall, Monasticon hibernicum (1786, new ed. 1876), p. 51, n. 43.
242 Kay Muhr
When he arrived, she was again a girl, weeping by the lake, and asked him to
rescue two gold rings that she had lost in it. The gallant Fionn emerged from the
water an old man, and at first neither his hounds nor his warriors recognized him.
In retaliation, his men began to destroy Síth Cuillinn, Cuillinn’s síd, on top of the
mountain. After three days and three nights of this, Cuillinn appeared with a
golden drinking cup that restored Fionn’s youth, but when he attempted to share
it with his companions, the cup leapt back under the earth.42
As is reflected in its modern name, later oral tradition connected the
supernatural woman of the wild known as the Cailleach Bhéara (‘Hag of Beara’)
with Slieve Gullion’s summit cairn, which was regarded as her dwelling house.43
Gearóid Ó Crualaoich’s Book of the Cailleach deals with folklore about her in
Ireland and Scotland, while recognizing that she appears in earlier literature as
well. Ó Crualaoich is most interested in her aspect as a ‘female nature and
wilderness spirit’, ‘earth mother and fertility goddess’, rather than her role in the
literary myth of early Irish kingship, whereby the king marries his land as ‘divine
consort of the rightful ruler’.44 The Cailleach Bhéara was also associated with other
megaliths elsewhere in Ireland, most notably, in early tradition, the site of Cnogba
(Knowth), Co. Meath, which dindsenchas explains as Cnoc Buí, ‘Buí’s Hill’, using
her personal name.45 Tomás Ó Cathasaigh has gathered and assessed the early Irish
material concerning the Cailleach Bhéara, intending (like the present writer) to
trace the ‘larger design’, ‘drawing data … from a number of disparate sources’, of
great complexity.46 From the ninth-century poem in which she laments her
withered arms that once embraced kings, while envying the renewal of nature in
the landscape,47 it is evident that she once represented ‘the role of the earth-
goddess in relation to sovereignty’ and, moreover, that her dwelling at the tomb of
Knowth was perceived as ‘a telluric womb’.48 As well as Knowth, which became
the residence of the southern Uí Néill kings of Brega, the Cailleach Bhéara is also
associated with the royal site of Dún Caillighe Bhéara (‘Cailleach Bhéara’s
Hillfort’), the inauguration place of the O’Byrnes in present-day Co. Wicklow.49
In the nineteenth century, John O’Donovan repeated the tradition that Slieve
Gullion got its name from ‘Cuileann an artificer’, who was ‘Cuchullin’s tutor’, and
42 M. Joynt (ed.), Feis Tighe Chonáin (1935), pp 34–8. 43 The Beara peninsula, Co. Cork. See G. Ó
Crualaoich, Book of the Cailleach (2003), p. 29; N. O’Kearney (ed.), Feis Tighe Chonáin (1855), p. 204;
MacNeill, Festival of lughnasa, pp 162, 477; T.G.F. Paterson, harvest home (1975), pp 208–9. 44 Ó
Crualaoich, Book of the Cailleach, pp 82–91: p. 88. 45 Ó Cathasaigh, ‘Eponym of Cnogba’ (1989), 29.
MacNeill (Festival of lughnasa, pp 160–1, 412–13, 477) notes the Cailleach Bhéara’s association with two
sites in Armagh, as does Neill (Archaeological survey of County Armagh, pp 128–31), the second being a
standing stone at Tullyvallan townland. Evans (Prehistoric and early Christian Ireland, p. 158) adds a wedge
tomb near Monasterboice, Co. Louth, and Ó Crualaoich (Book of the Cailleach, p. 83), a standing stone in
Co. Kerry. 46 Ó Cathasaigh, ‘Eponym of Cnogba’, 26–7, 37. 47 Ibid., 35–8; poem quoted in Ó
Crualaoich, Book of the Cailleach, pp 48–50. 48 Ó Cathasaigh, ‘Eponym of Cnogba’, 38. 49 E.
that the Cailleach Bhéara was ‘supposed to be Gullen’s daughter’. An Ordnance

Survey name books informant for Forkill parish commented that Giolla Goiline,
‘the Messenger of Gullin’, is the name the Irish give the Devil!50 The 1855 edition
of Feis Tighe Chonáin noted that Croslieve, the fair-sized hill (310m high)
immediately west of Forkill, was made from the spoil created when Fionn tried to
dig out from her síd the Cailleach Bhéara, the name later given to the woman who
lured him into the lake.51 Traditions of the ‘Calley Berry’ survived into the
twentieth century, as collected by T.G.F. Paterson:52
Do ye know her house on the mountain and the lake beside it? Shure it was
into that very lake she coaxed fool Finn … An’ in he went fresh an’ youthful
an’ out he came a done old man … ye know a weddin’ party went into her
house once, and they were turned till stone. Her house goes down and down
and in the bottom chamber sits the Calley Berry herself till this very day …
e oul’ lake is haunted right enough.
e idea that summit cairns contained long tunnels leading down through the
mountain recurs in various places.53
Here we have a more complex succession of stories involving male kings,
warriors and poets, and female supernatural beings, from early Irish literature and
modern oral tradition. The Slieve Gullion cairn is presented as an otherworld
dwelling, not a grave, linked with stories from three cycles of early Irish narrative
– the Mythological, Ulster and Fenian cycles – and also connected to the church
of Killeavy at the foot of the mountain.54 The place-name scholar Joyce rejected
the stories explaining the name, noting that ‘in the oldest and best authorities it is
Sliabh-Cuillinn … the mountain of holly’.55 A more recent study has left open the
question of whether the tree-name cuileann (‘holly’) or a personal name is
involved, but certainly Sliabh Troim and Síd Troim, ‘mountain’ and ‘otherworld
dwelling of the elder tree’, also occur as place-names.56 Whatever the original
meaning of the name ‘Slieve Gullion’, both the hill and cairn have become the
focus of a complex storytelling tradition based on its place-names.
Fitzpatrick, Royal inauguration (2004), pp 33–4, 95–7; F.J. Byrne, Irish kings (1973), pp 87–8. 50 AFM,
i, p. 168 n. (AD 517); OSnB, A/E 165 (parish of Forkill). 51 O’Kearney, Feis Tighe Chonáin, p. 204.
52 Paterson, harvest home, pp 208–9. 53 MacNeill, Festival of lughnasa, pp 175, 185–7, 405, 407, 571,
589–91, 668, 679–80. K. Muhr, Place-names of northern Ireland, vol. 6 (1996), p. 78, mentions a souterrain
emerging at the summit cairn of Knock Iveagh, Co. Down. 54 Muhr, ‘Early place-names of County
Armagh’, 20–1. 55 P.W. Joyce, Irish names of places (1869–1913), i, p. 513; see ii, pp 131–2. 56 G.
Toner, ‘Re-assessment of the term cuilleann’ (1996–7), pp 98–9.
244 Kay Muhr
(3) Knockmany, Clogher, Co. Tyrone

Another significant hill in Ulster, also with a megalithic tomb on its summit, is
Knockmany, which marks the north side of the routeway through the Clogher
valley in Co. Tyrone. Its distinctive profile is shown on Richard Bartlett’s map of
south Ulster (c.1602), and it is probably as a landmark that Knockmany was
recorded as the limit of a hostile expedition by Donnchad mac Domnaill in 772.57
e well-preserved Neolithic passage tomb (NISMR TyR 059:001; fig. 12.3) on
the summit of Knockmany hill is now known locally as ‘Annia’s Cove’ and has
wide views over the Clogher valley. Excavation of the monument in 1951 revealed
a stone cairn capped with earth within a stone revetment originally covered the
burial chamber, off-centre within the cairn.58
A story in the eleventh-century manuscript lebor na huidre tells how Mongán,
the Ulster prince, sent a poor scholar on an errand from the royal site of Moylinny,
Co. Antrim, to fetch treasure from several otherworld dwellings in Ireland. The
first of the places the student reached was Knockmany, do Chnuc Báne, where a
‘distinguished couple’ welcomed him to the otherworld dwelling there, Síth
Chnuic Báne.59 The place-name, however, is explained near the end of the
legendary history lebor Gabála (‘The Book of Invasions’), in which the early king
Feidlimid Rechtaid is described as mac Báine ingine Scáil dia tá Cnocc Báne la
Airgiallu .i. is and ro adnacht, ‘son of Báine daughter of Scál from whom is
[named] Knockmany in Airgialla, since she was buried there’. Báine, whose name
means ‘whiteness’, is said to have dug Ráth Mór Maige lemna (‘Great Fort of the
Launy Plain’) in the Clogher valley, just as the tutelary goddess of Armagh, Macha,
dug Emain Macha (Navan Fort) outside Armagh.60 Báine’s father’s name is often
extended as Scál Balbh, ‘Dumb Spectre’ – one of the names of the father of the
god Lug – so that she herself is clearly of otherworld origin.61
Cath leitreach Ruibhe (‘The Battle of Leitir Ruibhe’) is a late Ulster Cycle tale
that describes the route of an attack from Emain Macha west on Tyrone, part of
which reads:62
tar Dul na gCarbat risi nabar Magh leamna

(over the Going of the Chariots called the Launy plain),
tar Cnoc mBreis risi nabar Cnoc mBaine
(over Breas’ Hill called Knockmany).
57 logadh Donnchada co Cnocc mBane: Au, pp 224–5. 58 A.E.P. Collins & D.M. Waterman,
‘Knockmany’ (1952). 59 K. Meyer (ed.), Voyage of Bran (1895–7), i, pp 53, 55; lu 134a. 60 lGÉ, v,
pp 328–31, §595 (see text omitted at pp 262–3); AFM, i, p. 102 (AD 111). Magh leamhna is the Clogher
valley, where the River Blackwater was called the Launy: OS memoirs, v, pp 25–7. ‘Navan Ring’ was a local
usage for what is no ordinary ringfort, but an Iron Age ceremonial enclosure: see MacNeill, Festival of
lughnasa, p. 476. 61 lGÉ, iv, p. 116, §311. See also J. Carey, ‘Tara and the supernatural’ (2005), p. 42
and notes. 62 M.E. Dobbs (ed.), ‘La bataille de Leitir Ruibhe’ (1922), 6, §3.
12.3 Photograph of ‘Knockmany Carn’, Co. Tyrone, taken in 1916 by R.J. Welch
(1859–1936) and reproduced with permission of the Ulster Museum, Belfast.
The tomb has since been covered to protect the decorated stones.
Like the mention of Knockmany in the Annals of the Four Masters, Cnoc mBáine
la hOirghiallaibh,63 this tale shows that the nasalization in the place-name had
become fixed, presumably from use in the accusative case (place-to-which), while
more commonly place-names become fixed in the dative (place-at-which). In
recent folklore, Báine has been forgotten, and Knockmany has been associated
with a goddess and fairy queen called Áine (‘brightness’), known best from oral
tradition, although she appears in lebor Gabála as daughter of the chief pagan
Irish god, the Dagda. Áine’s most famous otherworld dwelling was at Cnoc Áine
(Knockainy), ‘Áine’s Hill’, Co. Limerick, but she was known throughout Ireland.64
Not only was the chambered tomb on Knockmany called her ‘cove’ or ‘cave’
locally, but she was also associated with a fortification on the neighbouring hill of
Mallabeny, known as ‘Annia’s Race’.65
In this case, the summit cairn has been identified as the tomb of a king’s semi-
divine mother, an otherworld dwelling and the ‘cave’ of a supernatural woman of
63 AFM, i, p. 102 and n. g. 64 MacNeill, Festival of lughnasa, pp 206, 305, 349, 690; Ó Crualaoich, Book
of the Cailleach, pp 155–6. 65 Richard Warner, pers. comm. The hill-name seems to be Mullach Binne,
‘Summit of the Crag’.
246 Kay Muhr
folklore. The megalithic burial monuments at Slieve Gullion and Knockmany

respectively have been named after, or are associated with, two Irish goddesses, the
Cailleach Bhéara and Áine.
SIT ES ASSOC IATE D W ITH QUE E N ME DB
Medb, the wife of Ailill, king of Connacht, is another queen in early literature
who appears to represent the sovereignty goddess, since she is associated with the
royal sites of both Tara and Cruachain (Rathcroghan).66 Her description of herself
to Ailill, culminating in the statement in Táin Bó Cuailnge that ‘I was never
without a man in the shadow of another’,67 and the title of the tale Ferchuitred
Medba, ‘Medb’s Husband-allowance’, indicate her authentication of successive
kings rather than a mere succession of lovers. Medb also appears associated with
the landscape in place-names.
Medb queen of Connacht’s military expedition to Ulster to carry off the
supernatural bull that ultimately killed the prize bull of Connacht is told in the
chief tale of the Ulster Cycle, Táin Bó Cuailnge. Although Dáire, the bull’s owner,
lived in Co. Louth, the Brown Bull and his herd were allowed to roam widely over
the southern parts of Cos Down and Armagh, and we have already met him
hidden in the ‘wastes’ of Slieve Gullion. e story says that, as Medb and her
armies searched for the bull on the routeway north through east Ulster, many
points were commemorated by place-names:68
Wherever in Iveagh Medb placed her horsewhip is named Medb’s Tree.

Every ford and every hill by which she spent the night is named Medb’s
Ford and Medb’s Height.
(1) Carmavy, Co. Antrim

Although not part of this set of place-names, several places on the eastern shore of
Lough Neagh seem to bear Queen Medb’s name, notably the parish grange of
Carmavy. This church was appropriate to the Abbey of Muckamore, and in the
Visitation of 1622 it was reported ruined. Revd Dubourdieu, writing in 1812,
mentions the ruins of a church still existing in this townland.69 The Ordnance
Survey name books recorded in 1832 that no traces of the church survived at that
time. The site of the church and the graveyard, marked on Ordnance Survey
66 T. Ó Máille, ‘Medb Chruachna’ (1927).This association is never explicit: see below and discussion by
Carey, ‘Tara and the supernatural’, p. 48. For the Irish spellings of Crúachu and Cruachain, see R. Ó
hUiginn, ‘Crúachu, Connachta and the Ulster Cycle’ (1988), 22–3. 67 TBC II, p. 2, l. 35. 68 TBC I,
p. 47, ll. 1534–6. 69 J. Dubourdieu, Statistical survey of the county of Antrim (1812), p. 594.
maps, are on the slopes of Carnmavy Hill, in the centre of the townland. From
spellings such as Carnemeve in 1605 and Carmew in 1657, one can deduce that
the name was Carn Meadhbha, ‘Medb’s Cairn’. The place-name scholar Deirdre
Flanagan did fieldwork there in 1954 and reported:70
In the graveyard is the site of what is locally believed to be a fort but seems
much more likely to be a small denuded round cairn. I was informed by Mr
McCreight, a native of the townland, that the summit of this fort was the
site of Maeve’s carn (he pronounced it mi:vz karn). ere is no trace of the
cairn today, nor do the OS memoirs record the existence or memory of such
in the early 19th century. e Maeve in question, Mr McCreight informed
me, was Queen Maeve of Connaught, but I doubt it.
Despite Flanagan’s doubts, the existence of similar names means that Medb of
Connacht is the likely origin.
(2) Ballypitmave, Glenavy, Co. Antrim

South of Carmavy there is a townland called ‘Ballymave’, apparently ‘Medb’s
Settlement’, and another called ‘Ballypitmave’. Ballypitmave is an elevated
townland, containing Cairn Hill (187m) in the north, and extending south
towards the summit of Crew Hill (179m). Crew Hill stands in the south-east of
the townland of Crew, approximately 5km south-east of Glenavy village, and is
the highest point in the parish of Glenavy. e wide view from ‘the Crew-hill’ was
described in 1814 as encompassing ‘Lough Neagh, Loughbeg, Ram’s Island,
Shane’s Castle, Langford Lodge; part of the counties of Derry, Tyrone, Armagh,
Monaghan, Louth, Antrim and Down; also the towns of Moira, Dungannon,
Charlemont, Stewartstown, Lurgan and Hillsborough’.71
Crew Hill is no doubt the origin of the townland name – modern Irish Craobh
Thulcha, ‘Branching Tree of the Mound’ – and the hill seems likely to have been
an assembly and inauguration site, since its sacred tree was the focus of reprisals
launched from the Uí Néill inauguration site of Tullaghoge, near Cookstown, Co.
Tyrone. Craeb Telcha was the site of two famous battles between the Uí Néill and
the Ulaid in 1003 and 1099. Both times the Ulaid were defeated, and in 1099, to
emphasize their conquest, the Uí Néill party cut down the sacred tree that grew
on the hill.72 Twelve years later, in 1111, the Ulaid felled the trees at Tullaghoge
(Tulach Óg, ‘Hill of the young Warriors’) on the opposite shore of Lough Neagh.73
The place-name ‘Crew’ has been studied in detail by Flanagan. She noted that
70 D. Flanagan field note-book in the archive of the Northern Ireland Place-Name Project, QUB. 71 W.
Shaw Mason (ed.), Parochial survey of Ireland (1814–19), ii, p. 235. 72 Au, pp 534–5; AFM, ii, pp 750,
962. 73 Au, pp 552–3; AFM, ii, p. 990. On Tullahogue, see also FitzPatrick, Royal inauguration, pp
248 Kay Muhr
the Old Irish spelling Craeb Telcha also occurs in the description of a journey from
Scotland to Navan Fort contained in the early Ulster Cycle tale Immaccallam in
dá Thuarad, ‘Colloquy of the Two Sages’, which tells of a debate at Emain Macha
between two poets, Néde and Ferchertne, about which of them should be the
chief poet of Ireland.74 References on maps of the Plantation period to
Knockcruhollogh, ‘Hill of Cru-hollogh’, establish the link between the Irish name
and Crew Hill, which local tradition held to be the inauguration site of the ‘kings
of Ulster’.75
As noted above, Ballypitmave is the townland adjacent to Crew. Associations
with goddesses are a common feature of ancient assembly sites, such as those
named for Tailtiu, Óenach Tailten, at Teltown (Co. Meath), and Macha, Óenach
Macha, near Armagh.76 It has long been suggested from her dominant role in the
tales, and her association with the kingships of both Connacht and Tara, that
Medb the warrior-queen is also a goddess of the earth. Carey, negotiating ‘the
wealth of potentially relevant material’, points out that ‘no figure named Medb is
accorded supernatural traits or associations anywhere in Irish literature’ and yet
concludes that she is ‘very possibly the goddess of the land’, although ‘her divinity
is never acknowledged’.77
The name Ballypitmave can be interpreted as Baile Phíte Méabha, ‘Townland
of Medb’s Vulva’. The likely referent is a lost megalithic tomb which had been
regarded as an entrance to, or point of communication with, the underworld. The
1904 edition of the Ordnance Survey map for the area still showed ten upstanding
stones, marked ‘Giants Grave, site of ’, at an elevation of 600ft (183m) beside a
farm on Cairn Hill, which were interpreted as ‘the peristalith of a destroyed
wedge-shaped cairn’.78 The tomb was described by the local rector in 1814, when
it already had an alternative, English name:79
At Pitmave is to be seen an ancient cemetery called the Giant’s Grave, at the

spot whence that townland derives its name. It is an enclosed vault,
composed of large square stones, being about 35 feet long, 4 and a half feet
wide, and 2 feet deep … At the head of this ancient cemetery stands a
venerable thorn of a remarkable size. Two other vaults of smaller dimensions
are on each side.
139–55, passim, and E. FitzPatrick et al., ‘Evoking the white mare’, pp ###, in this volume. 74 W. Stokes
(ed.), ‘Immacallam in dá Thuarad’ (1905), 10, §5. 75 D. Flanagan, ‘Craebh Telcha’ (1970), 29–32. See also
P. Macdonald, ‘The inaugural landscape of Crew Hill’ (forthcoming). Given the importance of the tree, the
etymology of Lough Crew as loch Craoibhe is more likely: see Ó Cathasaigh, ‘Eponym of Cnogba’, 29, n.
33. 76 MacNeill, Festival of lughnasa, pp 320–1, 339, 341–3, 348. Macha, whose name means something
like ‘cultivable land’, is also the eponym of Emain Macha (Navan Fort or Ring): see Muhr, ‘Early place-
names of County Armagh’, 3–5. 77 Carey, ‘Tara and the supernatural’, p. 48. 78 Chart, A preliminary
survey, p. 56. 79 Shaw Mason, Parochial survey of Ireland, ii, p. 241.
Revd Cupples also recorded from local people that, forty years before, a man
named Skelton, land agent to the earl of Hertford, had opened the main tomb and
found in it ‘human bones of a gigantic size’.80 Something of the meaning of the
name Pitmave seems to have been remembered in 1814. In the section ‘Names of
Townlands’, it is translated ‘townland of the pit of shame’, apparently by
association with the Irish word meabhal.81
Ó Crualaoich comments how the earth goddess can be ‘represented as even
constituting, corporeally, the very fabric of landscape in the identification of
physical features with aspects of her body [such as] the Paps of Anu, Dá Chich
Anann (a mountain range in Kerry)’,82 although also suggesting that the earlier
and later stories of the women at sacred sites represent ‘two separate yet related
levels of tradition – the sovereignty queen and the female nature and wilderness
spirit’.83 However, the origin of the name Ballypitmave can be linked with another
incident in Táin Bó Cuailnge, where Medb’s menstrual flow created channels in the
landscape near Athlone.84 Also in the early literature, Mugain, wife of Conchobar,
king of Ulster, is one queen given the strange earthy epithet aitencathrach, ‘with
body hair like furze’.85
Mac Cana has collected and described the early stories on the theme of the
king’s marriage to a woman who turns out to be the goddess of the land, by which
his rule was legitimized and fertility ensured. Sometimes, the woman appears
young and beautiful throughout, but often she appears blighted by disease or old
age, or withdrawal to the wild, regaining her beauty and returning to society via
the king’s embrace.86 In the tale of the wooing of Mis by Dubh Ruis, Mis, driven
mad by the death of her chieftain father, lived as a wild and naked huntress at
Slemish in Kerry, killing animals to eat with her claws.87 The early poem in which
the aged Cailleach Bhéara laments the kings who loved her in her youth fits into
this tradition, as does the story that Niall of the Nine Hostages obtained
sovereignty from a sexual encounter with a hag at Buí’s megalithic tomb, the
‘round hill of Knowth’.88
Other Irish megaliths also have fertility associations.89 In early Irish literature,
a group of them at Tara featured in a test for the rightful king, who had to drive
his chariot among them:90
80 Ibid. 81 Ibid., p. 273. 82 Ó Crualaoich, Book of the Cailleach, p. 89. 83 Ibid., p. 88. 84 TBC II,
p. 133, l. 4831. 85 Or ‘gorse’. G. Henderson (ed.), Fled Bricrend (1899), pp 34–5, §28. 86 P. Mac Cana,
‘King and goddess’ (1955–6), 85–93, especially p. 88; (1958–9), 60–4. 87 B. Ó Cuív (ed.), ‘The romance
of Mis and Dubh Ruis’ (1954). 88 Ó Cathasaigh, ‘Eponym of Cnogba’, 33. 89 See chapter entitled
‘Stones of love and fertility’ in C. Zucchelli, Stones of adoration (2007), pp 119–37. 90 L. Gwynn (ed.),
‘De Shíl Chonairi Móir’ (1912), 134, 139.
250 Kay Muhr
And there were two flag-stones at Tara: Blocc and Bluigne; when they
accepted a man they would open before him until the chariot went through.
And Fál was there, the ‘stone penis’ at the head of the chariot course (?);
when a man should have the kingship of Tara it screeched against his
chariot-axle so that all might hear.
The phallic shape of the stone at Tara referred to nowadays as lia Fáil has often
been noticed, and in the nineteenth century it was known locally as Bod
Fheargusa, ‘Fergus’ Penis’, a reference to the Ulster warrior who was Medb’s lover
in Táin Bó Cuailnge.91 However, the two flag-stones (more accurately, ‘pillar-stones’
– the word is also lia) that let the chariot through also suggest a sexual image, as
has been noted most clearly by Newman: ‘the prospective king mates,
symbolically, with Medb, goddess of Tara, by riding his chariot between the
magical stones Blocc and Bluigne’.92 Similar genital imagery is also attached to
natural features. In Scottish place-names, these are often body parts of the Devil
(An Deamhan), such as those on Timothy Pont’s map of Glencoe (c.1600), which
shows the peak Bidean nam Bian as Boddindeaun and next to it Pittindeaun,93
while a ‘high pillar of natural rock’ called ‘the Boadh’ was recorded on the north-
east coast of Ireland in 1838.94
(3) Sawel mountain, Cos Derry and Tyrone

Whereas the interpretation of the name Ballypitmave as Baile Phíte Méabha is
based on anglicized spellings, the same cannot be said for Sawel Mountain, which
is also connected with Medb. At 682m, it is the highest of a range of mountains
and hills on the border between Cos Derry and Tyrone, and the name was
recorded from 1613 to 1620 as Mullanesawla, apparently for Mullach na Samhla,
‘Hilltop of the Likeness’. It is marked Sawell pit a Mew, on the southern boundary
of Co. Colrane (now Derry), on John Speed’s map of 1610 (pl. 14), and the late
seventeenth-century Topographical Fragments give this form of the name in Irish:
Samhail Phite Meadbea.95 In 1834, John O’Donovan, who had not seen the
Fragments, said the name Samhail Phite Meidhbhe was ‘still known in the country’
and he explained it in classical-scholar fashion as ‘similitudo vulvae (or cunni)
Mevae’. Sawel, with a wide view west, north and east, has the remains of a summit
cairn, and a local informant also quoted in the Ordnance Survey name books
suggested that the name was Samhail, ‘dedicated to the great Sun, having a crom
91 Gwynn, ‘De Shíl Chonairi Móir’, 142, n. 25. See also Byrne, Irish kings, p. 51; see D. Mac Giolla
Easpaig, ‘Noun + noun compounds’ (1981), 163: lugmad. 92 C. Newman, Tara (1997), p. 86. 93 I.C.
Cunningham (ed.), Timothy Pont’s maps of Scotland (2001), pp 95–6, map 12, illus. 87. Bod an Deamhain
and Pít an Deamhain (pace I. Mitchell, ‘Timothy Pont and Scotland’s mountains’ (2001)). 94 OS memoirs,
xxiv, p. 120. 95 C. Mooney (ed.), ‘Topographical fragments’ (1950), 71, §66; S. Ó Ceallaigh, ‘Notes on
altar beneath’. However, it appears that the place-name here was not derived from
a passage grave but from a natural landmark: in O’Donovan’s words, ‘a feature is
pointed out on the side of the mountain from which the name is derived’.96 The
most likely feature seems to be a stream that rises high up between the summits of
Sawel and Dart Mountain to the west, and flows south across a wide grassy shelf
at the top of the townland of Oughtmame, which possibly represents ucht
Meidhbhe, ‘Medb/Maeve’s Front’.97
Nor, in the area of the parish named ‘Bovevagh’ (Both Mheidhbhe, ‘Medb’s
Hut’), had Medb the goddess been forgotten. The memoirs recorded folklore
about a female supernatural called Ma[e]ve in Co. Derry, ‘a woman of depraved
character’, ‘a dexterous magician, a great thief and remarkable for vocal melody’,
including other place-names that commemorated her in the landscape.98 The
townlands of Toneduff and Legachory in Dungiven were supposed to have got
their names from Maeve dropping her pot and kettle there when chased by Fionn
and his men. John O’Donovan added his own comments on taboo words:99
Toneduff means black a-se and Legachory the hollow of the cauldron. It is
curious to observe that tóin, though certainly the word for anus or breach,
is frequently used without the slightest idea of the teterrimum connected
with it, as Tóin na Móna, the bottom or lower part of the bog (the name of
a streamlet in the townland in which I was born) … Tóin is used in the
same sense as the English word bottom and has nothing of the inexpressible
sense of a-se … In the present artificial state of society, it is curious to
observe that one word is filthy, while another that expresses the same idea is
in honore, as a-se, backside, bottom etc. I have read Aristotle’s chapter on
obscene and honourable words, and Father Anglade’s learned and
philosophical remarks on the same.
However, O’Donovan himself registered no surprise and did not comment on the
local attitude to the place-name Sawel, merely remarking: ‘What a pit-y the Irish
were so fond of calling places after such pits as the pit of the Queen Meve’.1
(4) e Cave of Cruachain, Rathcroghan, Co. Roscommon

There are other places named after Medb, including the great hill-top cairn on
Knocknarea, west of Sligo town, while the place most closely associated with her
place-names’ (1950), 131. 96 OSnB, 93 D3 iii; OS memoirs, xxx, p. 109 (both parish of Banagher). The
map O’Donovan saw must have been ulster by John Speed, not Jobson. 97 Feature shown exaggerated
on OSNI 1:50,000 map, sheet 13. Joyce, Irish names of places, iii, p. 528, derives the name from ucht Mama,
‘breast of the maum or high pass’. 98 OS memoirs, xxvii, pp 77–8 (parish of Errigal). 99 G. Mawhinny
(ed.), John O’Donovan’s letters from County londonderry (1992), pp 57–9. 1 OS memoirs, xxx, p. 109.
252 Kay Muhr
12.4 View of the entrance to uam Chrúachan (Oweynagat), Rathcroghan, Co. Roscommon
(from J. Waddell et al., Rathcroghan (2009), fig. 3.31).
in early Irish literature was the Connacht royal site of Rathcroghan or Cruachain,
which was also a famous pagan burial ground.2 Cruachain also had another
otherworld entrance that was not part of a mound or tomb, the cave or
otherworld dwelling called uam Chrúachan or Síd Crúachan. The entrance to the
cave (fig. 12.4), now called ‘Oweynagat’, is still identifiable. It is narrow and
unassuming, but it may have been the most celebrated of any of the otherworld
sites in early Irish literature. It was probably from this fame that it was also known
as ‘Ireland’s entrance to Hell’, dorus iffernd na hÉireann.3 In the tale Echtrae nera
(‘The Otherworld Adventure of Nera’), Nera, outdoors at midnight on Samhain
or Hallowe’en, met a living corpse, and then followed a war-band into the cave
and found himself in the Otherworld.4 The cave itself is a natural limestone
fissure, ‘to which a drystone masonry porch in the style of a souterrain has been
added’.5 An ogam stone incorporated as a lintel in the entrance bears the
2 See J. Waddell, J. Fenwick & K. Barton, Rathcroghan (2009) and J. Waddell, ‘Continuity, cult and
contest’, in this volume. 3 M. O’Daly (ed.), Cath Maige Mucrama (1975), p. 448, §34. 4 K. Meyer (ed.)
‘The adventures of Nera’ (1889), 216–17, §6. 5 R.A.S. Macalister (ed.), Corpus inscriptionum (1945), i,
pp 16–17.
downward-facing inscription VRAICCI MAQI MEDVVI, apparently meaning

‘of Fraech son of Medb’. R.A.S. Macalister commented of the inscription:
I abstain from speculation as to whether the similarity of the second name

to that of Medb the queen of Connachta, whose traditions are so closely
linked with this site, is anything more than a coincidence, or even whether
the person denoted by this name was a man or a woman.6
The form of the name Medb in the inscription now visible is masculine, and there
is a priest and deacon called Medb in the early lives of St Patrick,7 but it is possible
that the stone once gave the name with a feminine ending, as MEDVVIAS. There
is a striking similarity to a place-name story that must have originally explained
the name of the local inauguration site of Carnfree, ‘Fraech’s Cairn’. In the
independent tale Táin Bó Fraích, ‘The Cattle-raid of Fraech’, Fraech, son of Ida of
Connacht and Bé Find, sister of Bóand (eponym of the River Boyne), was injured
when courting Medb’s daughter, and wailing women dressed in purple and green
took him to be healed in Síd Crúachan.8 Táin Bó Cuailnge gives a similar incident
to explain a place called Síd Fraích, ‘the Otherworld-dwelling of Fraech’, where
green-robed women received Fraech’s body when he was killed in combat with Cú
Chulainn on the cattle-raid.9
Situated on a cairn called leaba Chonáin, ‘the Bed/Grave of Conán’ (the
buffoon character of the Fenian Cycle), on Slieve Callan, Co. Clare, is an ogam
stone that seems to be an eighteenth-century forgery,10 but the ogam at
Oweynagat appears to be genuine. John Waddell has noted that its presumed
secondary use as a roof-stone in the approach to the natural cave is likely to have
occurred in the latter part of the first millennium.11 If the siting of the Medb
inscription is deliberate, as it appears to be, it implies that this was another
example of her ‘vulva’.
The modern name of the cave, Oweynagat (Úaimh na gCat, ‘Cave of the
Cats’), apparently derives from another Ulster Cycle tale, in which Cú Chulainn
tried to fight three supernatural invulnerable cats from uam Chrúachan.12 Other
wonderful animals also came out of it: three-headed creatures, flocks of red birds,
and pigs that could not be counted, one of which was almost caught by Medb.13
In the tale De Chophur in da Mucccado (‘Begetting of the Two Swineherds’),
6 Ibid. 7 Bieler, Patrician texts, pp 150–1, §33, 170–1, §5. 8 W. Meid (ed.), Táin Bó Fraích (1967), pp
1, §1, 10, §20; translations by J. Carney, Studies in Irish literature (1955), pp 1–14, 76. 9 TBC I, ll. 834–
57 (Aided Fraích, ‘The Death of Fraech’). 10 MacNeill, Festival of lughnasa, pp 195-7 and p. 673 (1982
ed.); Macalister, Corpus inscriptionum, i, p. 56. 11 J. Waddell, ‘A royal site in Connacht’ (1983), 33;
Waddell, this volume. 12 Henderson, Fled Bricrend, pp 72–3, §57. 13 O’Daly, Cath Maige Mucrama,
254 Kay Muhr
otherworld swineherds from Síd Crúachan and Síd ar Femin became the bulls
which caused the cattle-raid in Táin Bó Cuailnge, and in Echtrae nera the
otherworld cattle of Síd Crúachan produced a young bull which fought with the
Connacht bull.
Out of the otherworld dwelling of Cruachain also came Brión’s crown (barr) in
Connacht, ‘a diadem of gold worn on the head of the king’.14 The crown was
brought out in an attack on the síd, one of the disconcerting references in which
the numinous Otherworld is made to sound as ordinary and accessible as any
animal burrow in the ground.15 The treasures recall the gold cup from
underground at Slieve Gullion and the gold and silver in otherworld hills like
Knockmany, to which Mongán sent the student.
Most importantly, as proof of his disturbing journey into Síd Crúachan, on the
night of the dead at Samhain, Nera brought back what were clearly ‘the fruits of
summer’: crem ocus sobairche ocus buiderath, ‘wild garlic and primroses and
buttercups’. He then described the place where he had been: Roua a tirib cainib
… co setuib ocus muinib moraib, co nn-imboth bruitt ocus biid ocus set n-ingnad, ‘I
have been in fair lands, with treasures and great riches, with abundance of clothing
and food and strange treasures’.16 These images of fertility and wealth parallel the
sovereignty goddess with hair like ‘Bregon’s buttercups’ or the Cailleach Bhéara’s
envy of the yellow crop (barr) and green cloak on the plain of Femen.17
CON CLUSIO N
Ó Crualaoich comments how the earth can be visualized as both a womb and a
grave, the source of life and nourishment and the source of death and
dissolution.18 Similarly, in the case of the entrances to it, the image is as much
‘birth canal’ as vulva. The low hill at Ballyligpatrick may appear the odd one out
in these stories, with church and later battle associations. However, it lies between
the rock at Skerry and Slemish Mountain, named after the woman Mis, better
known as a Munster sovereignty goddess (and mountain), but also said to be the
sister of the legendary Ulster king Eochu, eponym of Lough Neagh.19 The legends
of St Patrick keep him apart from sovereignty goddesses but later oral tradition
says the devil tried to chase him from Slemish. Patrick leapt to Skerry, but the
devil fell short at Buckna (Bocshnamh, the ‘buck-swimming’, rather than ‘buck-
pp 48–9, §§34–7. 14 in barr Briuin la Connachto; mionn n-oir bis for cionn ind rig: Meyer, ‘The
adventures of Nera’, 218–21, §§8–9. 15 Meyer, ‘The adventures of Nera’, 227–8, §19; see also digging
at Slievenamon (ibid., n. 28) and Slieve Gullion (ibid, n. 40). 16 Ibid., 221–2, §10, 224–5, §15. See also
J.T. Koch & J. Carey, The Celtic heroic age (1995), pp 119, 121. 17 Ó Cathasaigh, ‘Eponym of Cnogba’,
32, 36. 18 Ó Crualaoich, Book of the Cailleach, p. 27. 19 P. McKay & K. Muhr, lough neagh places
leaping’ place).20 This story may once have also been linked to the Ballyligpatrick
footprint stone, while the leap motif is more often associated with the wild
mountain hags of folklore. Another Co. Antrim example is preserved by the place-
names Coskemnacally and Oghtbristacree in the parish of Culfeightrin, explained
by a local tale of an old woman in flight who stepped over this gap in the rock
(Coiscéim na Caillí, ‘Foot-step of the Hag’) and breathed her last on the high hill
(ucht Briste Croí, ‘Mountain-breast of the Heart-break’).21
Comparison of the surviving legends and examination of the place-names
attaching to archaeological and natural landmarks brings forward recurrent themes
which reveal the supernatural or sacral aspect of the landscape. No story uses all
the possibilities at once, and some themes may be more clearly recognizable, while
others are only hinted at. Nevertheless, the old hag may be a sovereignty goddess,
a hill or cairn a manifestation of the boundary with the Otherworld, a hole in the
ground a telluric womb. Aesthetic considerations as well as differences of time or
audience might affect the imagery made explicit, but the range from ethereal to
earthly was available to Irish storytelling, derived from mythology of unknown
age.
(2007), p. 9. 20 Local tradition from John McCosh, Ballyligpatrick, 2006. 21 . Mac Gabhann, Place-
names of northern Ireland, vol. 7 (1997), pp 181, 200.

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10-13 Landscapes:Layout 1 27/01/2011 14:16 Page 232

Place-names and the understanding of monuments

Medieval and later Irish literature contains many references to archaeological

Dindshenchas – the ‘Irish lore of places’

Place-names and the understanding of monuments 233

T HRE E SITE S IN ULST E R

(1) e Bloody Hill, Ballyligpatrick, Co. Antrim

234 Kay Muhr

Adjoining the house of the Revd W. McClintock Wray, minister of Buckna

Place-names and the understanding of monuments 235

Also described were the cairn and its story:12

On the summit of a hill close to the Presbyterian minister’s house, and

236 Kay Muhr

Place-names and the understanding of monuments 237

238 Kay Muhr

(2) Slieve Gullion, Co. Armagh

A round cairn c.100ft diameter and originally c.16ft high … It contains a

Place-names and the understanding of monuments 239

12.2 The summit

240 Kay Muhr

Place-names and the understanding of monuments 241

Co n-accai ní intí Cú Chulaind: Bude mac Báin ó Shleib Chulind.

242 Kay Muhr

Place-names and the understanding of monuments 243

that the Cailleach Bhéara was ‘supposed to be Gullen’s daughter’. An Ordnance

244 Kay Muhr

(3) Knockmany, Clogher, Co. Tyrone

tar Dul na gCarbat risi nabar Magh leamna

Place-names and the understanding of monuments 245

246 Kay Muhr

folklore. The megalithic burial monuments at Slieve Gullion and Knockmany

SIT ES ASSOC IATE D W ITH QUE E N ME DB

Wherever in Iveagh Medb placed her horsewhip is named Medb’s Tree.

(1) Carmavy, Co. Antrim

Place-names and the understanding of monuments 247

(2) Ballypitmave, Glenavy, Co. Antrim

248 Kay Muhr

At Pitmave is to be seen an ancient cemetery called the Giant’s Grave, at the

Place-names and the understanding of monuments 249

250 Kay Muhr

(3) Sawel mountain, Cos Derry and Tyrone

Place-names and the understanding of monuments 251

(4) e Cave of Cruachain, Rathcroghan, Co. Roscommon

252 Kay Muhr

Place-names and the understanding of monuments 253

downward-facing inscription VRAICCI MAQI MEDVVI, apparently meaning

I abstain from speculation as to whether the similarity of the second name

254 Kay Muhr

Place-names and the understanding of monuments 255

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