This last point by O’Kelly, namely that a ‘cairn must originally have covered it’, was verified for me by Pádraig Meehan. He mentioned that the cairn was about to be stripped for use in building, but when the workers came to the tomb they halted their labour, as they did not wish to interfere with the tomb. Thanks to this respect for the dead by the local workforce, this unique tomb still exists and the seasonal alignment can still be observed.
Megalithic tombs are plentiful in Sligo, and one can even be seen in the town of Sligo [25]. This is now surrounded by a roundabout, the first to be built in Sligo. At one time it was proposed that the tomb be destroyed, and its fate was in the balance until an old woman coming up the river demanded that it be preserved, after which she went away. Some say that she was the Cailleach Bhéara who came up the Garvoge River (An Gharbh Óg, ‘Rough Ogress’), though others say it was a local woman with a passion equal to that of the cailleach. The megalithic tomb standing today is a testament to folklore and the power of women. This first roundabout, which is near the fire station, is known locally as Garbh Óg Villas and archaeologically as Abbey Quarter North. A testament to folklore in the area was a letter to the Sunday Times in late July 2017, in which Martin Ford from Sligo stated:
One night when my sister was four years old, she went looking for my mother who was out visiting. She stopped at a fairy fort to tie her laces, and the ‘little people’ appeared and were playing around her. She asked did they know where her mammy was, and they said, ‘we will take you to her.’ They led her to a neighbour’s house. When my Mum came out, my sister said, ‘Meet my new friends.’ But when she turned around, they had disappeared. That fairy fort is still there, at Garavogue Villas in Sligo town.
The Garvoge flows into Tobernalt Bay and close by is Tobar an Ailt (‘the well by the cliff’) which is both a Christian and a pre-Christian well and an example of the two traditions melding together. One problem with the continuing pre-Christian custom of placing votary offerings on trees, generally hawthorns, is that the old custom of not allowing pieces of cloth to be left for more than three days is not adhered to. I have seen this in Sligo, both at Creevykeel and at Tobar an Ailt, where the rotting offerings show an ignorance of the older custom and are aesthetically unappealing.
Four miles south-east of Ballymote [25] on the R295 is one of the most remarkable hills in Irish legend, namely Keshcorran (Céis Chorainn, ‘the harp of Corann’). The plain from which the hill rises was known as Magh Chorainn, or ‘the plain of Corann’. The Dindshenchas* describes Magh Chorainn and Céis Chorainn as follows:
Magh Corainn whence the name? Not hard to say. Corann, harper to Dian Cécht the Dagda’s son, called with his harp Caelcheis, one of Drebriu’s swine. And Caelcheis ran forward as fast as his legs would carry him; and the hounds of Connacht and their soldiery pursued him as far as Céis Chorainn; hence the names of Céis Chorainn and Magh Corainn.
Céis Chorainn may also mean ‘the young sow of Corann’. Also known as Céis Chorainn na bhfiann, or ‘Keshcorann of the Fianna’, it is a humpbacked limestone hill 1,200 feet in height. There is a cairn on top of the hill and, to keep it company, a triangulation pillar. Halfway up the hill, about 200 feet from the base, is a vertical limestone cliff-face with panoramic views over south Sligo, east Mayo and Roscommon. The caves here comprise sixteen chambers all aligned east–west with the entrances facing the west. They are identified by the letters A to P from north to south. Some were named after archaeologists who investigated them, as, for example, cave J or the Coffey Cave, named after George Coffey who was involved in the first excavations of Kesh in 1903. This cave is about eighteen feet deep and nearly seven feet wide at the entrance, narrowing to just under a foot at the rear. Artefacts unearthed over the years include a medieval armour-piercing projectile head, an Early Medieval bone comb fragment and two bone pin fragments. A human tooth was radiocarbon dated to the Iron Age.
In the nineteenth century, it was thought that caves could be the long-sought repository of ‘Early Man’ in Ireland, but this was unfounded; the human remains were more often Neolithic rather than Mesolithic or Paleolithic. In earliest times, caves were used for burial rites and offerings, and from Early Medieval times for occupation and shelter; archaeological evidence shows that the caves at Keshcorann were used for short-term occupation during the Early Medieval period. Though archaeology states that certain activities occurred at the ‘entrance to the caves’ at Keshcorann, we need to go to mythology to get some idea as to what these activities were.
The earliest story relating to the caves was written about 800 AD and is found in the Book of Leinster under the heading of Turim Tigi Temrach or ‘The Enumeration of the House of Tara’, and as Cath Maige Mucrima or ‘The Battle in the Plain of the Counting of Pigs’. The book also refers to Keshcorran as the cave where Cormac mac Airt, High King of Ireland, spent his early childhood: Conamail … ruc. Cormac mac Airt a hÚaim Céise Coraind (‘houndlike Cormac mac Airt was brought up in the cave of Corann’); it also states: Cormac mac Airt ina ucht altram (‘Cormac mac Airt was suckled by a she-wolf’). Both these statements give body to the legend that Cormac was taken by a she-wolf shortly after his birth and was reared by her in one of the caves at Keshcorran. On a six-inch Ordnance Survey map of 1838, Cave P is named Owey Cormac mac Airt (‘the Cave of Cormac mac Airt’). A local legend recorded in 1836 told how the mother of Cormac mac Airt gave birth to him while collecting water at Tober Cormac to the north-west of the caves; this well is situated in the townland of Cross [25], a mile north of the village of Kesh. It is in the corner of a field on a north-facing slope. The area is overgrown and muddy, and some moss-covered stones mark the site of the well at a T-junction along an old road known as Bóthar an Corann or Bóthar na Slieve. This road was built by Richard de Burgh, the Red Earl of Ulster, and is situated between Keshcorann and the R295.
Similarities can be seen with the suckling of Romulus and Remus by a wolf, both going on to found Rome, as Cormac is credited with the founding of Tara. So often our early history is seen as mythology, and this is partly because our history is seen as beginning in 431 AD with the arrival of Christianity. In the case of Cormac mac Airt and his cave, his story fits into the motif of the European hero–king, but this is not to say that it is necessarily borrowed from the tale of Romulus and Remus and it may stand on its own.
Another later story relating to Keshcorran is included in the ‘Lays of Finn’ or the Duanaire Finn compiled in the seventeenth century. This is a story known as ‘The Lay of the Smithy’, in which Finn* and his Fianna* find themselves on Sliabh Luachra in Kerry, where they are approached by Lon mac Liomtha, the chief smith of Norway. He challenges the Fianna to race him, and he leads them all the way to the caves of Keshcorran. Lon makes swords and spears and presents them to Finn and his warriors. He names all the weaponry, Mac an Luin being the name given to Finn’s sword. At sunrise the next day the Fianna wake up to find themselves once again on Sliabh Luachra. Here is an unusual tale where no one dies nor is injured. It possibly has a derivation in an ancient warrior route from Sliabh Luachra to Ard Patrick in Limerick, and from there to Clare and Galway and finally to Keshcorran.
A more famous tale relating to the caves, Bruidhean Chéise Corainn, or ‘The Otherworld Hostel at Keshcorran’, tells of Finn and the Fianna* being trapped here by three cailleacha or hags, the daughters of Conaran mac Imidel of the Tuatha Dé Danann,* and then being rescued by Goll mac Morna, the same Goll who in time rescued Finn in hell from the ‘demons of the blue host’.
The caves were a meeting place for the goddesses or cailleacha, later demoted to hags but still retaining their power. In Mayo folklore, according to Máire Mac Neill, the caves were home to Áine, as were Knockainey in Co. Limerick and the Paps of Anu (the mother of the Irish gods) on the Cork–Kerry border. The Mórrígan (‘great queen’) had a tryst with the Dagda* on the River Unshin, three miles north of Corann Hill. In Old Irish, Uinnius means ‘ash tree’, one of the sacred and venerated trees both in these islands and in Norse mythology, as it was seen as the tree that connected the earth with the Otherworld. The Unshin was a living manifestation of the goddess, in this case the Mórrígan, with nine loosened tresses, who was washing herself, ‘one foot on the south bank the other on the north’. She and the Dagda conversed and