Coupled with the charms of Glengarriff’s bay is its sister attraction—no less winsome—of the monarch mountain of these parts, Sliabhna-goil (i. e., “the Mountain of the Wild People”), more commonly called “Sugar Loaf.” Why it is so named is, of course, obvious to all who see it; but it is a rank departure from its original appellation.
This mountain’s taller brother Dhade (now Hungry Hill) rears itself in grim severity a little to the westward. Both are conspicuously coast-line elevations of the first rank.
Time will allow but a glance at the many beauties of this region; but the leaves of memory will press the fragments of romance, in an all-enduring fashion, to all who come immediately beneath their spell.
One legend, repeated here from a source well known, must suffice. It refers to the mountain pass of Keim-an-eigh, “the path of the deer,” through which, according to M’Carthy’s “Bridal of the Year,” and in reality, too:
“Streams go bounding in their gladness
With a Bacchanalian madness.”
M’Carthy has put the legend into elegant verse, known of all lovers of Irish song as “Alice and Una.”
Briefly the tale runs thus: A young huntsman, Maurice by name, had all day pursued a fawn, which at evening fled for refuge—
“To a little grassy lawn—
It is safe, for gentle Alice to her saving breast hath drawn
Her almost sister fawn.”
A romantic affection then sprang up between the two humans, the hunter and the maid; and this magnet drew the youth often hither, in spite of the fact that Una, a fairy queen, was passionately enamoured of the gallant deer-chaser. One evening, as he was wending his way to see his lady fair, the moon grew dark, a great storm arose, and the lovelorn Maurice lost himself in the wood. All this was of course due to the jealous fairy in true legendary fashion. At length he falls in with a noble jet-black steed, which he mounts. This grim shape proves to be a certain dreaded Phooka (the same symbol is renowned throughout Ireland, and has been traced even to the legends of the Northmen), a genii of Una’s, who immediately rushes off with the youth through glen and valley, stream and forest, up and down the mountain sides: