[4] O'Curry translates this by "day." It is at present curiously used, I suppose by a kind of confusion with the English "moment," in the sense of a minute or other short measure of time. At least I have often heard it so used.
[5] Another species of incantation mentioned in the glossary.
[6] In Irish Magh Sleacht.
[7] In O'Donovan's fragmentary manuscript catalogue of the Irish MSS., in Trinity College, Dublin, he writes apropos of the life of St. Maedhog or Mogue, contained in H. 2, 6: "I searched the two Brefneys for the situation of Moy Sleacht on which stood the chief pagan Irish idol Crom Cruach, but have failed, being misled by Lanigan, who had been misled by Seward, who had been blinded by the impostor Beauford, who placed this plain in the county of Leitrim. It can, however, be proved from this life of St. Mogue that Magh Sleacht was that level part of the Barony of Tullaghan (in the county of Cavan) in which the island of Inis Breaghwee (now Mogue's Island), the church of Templeport, and the little village of Ballymagauran are situated." I have been told that O'Donovan afterwards found reason to doubt the correctness of this identification.
[8] M. de Jubainville connects the name with cru (Latin, cruor), "blood," translating Cenn Cruach by tête sanglante and Crom Cruach by Courbe sanglante, or Croissant ensanglanté; but Rhys connects it with Cruach, "a reek" or "mound," as in Croagh-Patrick, St. Patrick's Reek. Cenn Cruach is evidently the same name as the Roman station Penno-Crucium, in the present county of Stafford, the Irish "c" being as usual the equivalent of the British "p." This would make it appear that Cromm was no local idol. Rhys thinks it got its name Crom Cruach, "the stooped one of the mound," from its bent attitude in the days of its decadence.
[9] Observe the exquisite and complicated metre of this in the original, a proof, I think, that the lines are not very ancient. It has been edited from the Book of Leinster, Book of Ballymote, Book of Lecan, and Rennes MS., at vol. i. p. 301 of Mr. Nutt's "Voyage of Bran," by Dr. Kuno Meyer—
"Ba hé a nDia
In Cromm Crín co n-immud cia
In lucht ro Craith ós each Cúan
In flaithius Búan nochos Bia."
[10] I.e., Eremon or Erimon, Son of Milesius, see above, p. [59].
[11] The details of this idol, and, above all, the connection in which it stands to the mythic culture-king Tighearnmas, could not, as Mr. Nutt well remarks, have been invented by a Christian monk; but nothing is more likely, it appears to me, than that such a one, familiar with the idol rites of Judæa from the Old Testament, may have added the embellishing trait of the sacrifice of "the firstlings of every issue."
[12] Sir Samuel Ferguson's admirable poem upon the death of Cormac refers to the priests of the idol, but there is no recorded evidence of any such priesthood—