“Forms in silence frown’d,
Shapeless and nameless; and to mine eye
Sometimes they rolled off cloudily,
Wedding themselves with gloom—or grew
Gigantic to my troubled view,
And seem’d to gather round me.”
Banim’s Celt’s Paradise.
THE LEGEND OF CAIRN THIERNA.
XXXVII.
From the town of Fermoy, famous for the excellence of its bottled ale, you may plainly see the mountain of Cairn Thierna. It is crowned with a great heap of stones, which, as the country people remark, never came there without “a crooked thought and a cross job.” Strange it is, that any work of the good old times should be considered one of labour; for round towers then sprung up like mushrooms in one night, and people played marbles with pieces of rock, that can now no more be moved than the hills themselves.
This great pile on the top of Cairn Thierna was caused by the words of an old woman, whose bed still remains—Labacally, the hag’s bed—not far from the village of Glanworth. She was certainly far wiser than any woman, either old or young, of my immediate acquaintance. Jove defend me, however, from making an envious comparison between ladies; but facts are stubborn things, and the legend will prove my assertion.
O’Keefe was lord of Fermoy before the Roches came into that part of the country; and he had an only son—never was there seen a finer child; his young face filled with innocent joy was enough to make any heart glad, yet his father looked on his smiles with sorrow, for an old hag had foretold that this boy should be drowned before he grew up to manhood.
Now, although the prophecies of Pastorini were a failure, it is no reason why prophecies should altogether be despised. The art in modern times may be lost, as well as that of making beer out of the mountain heath, which the Danes did to great perfection. But I take it, the malt of Tom Walker is no bad substitute for the one; and if evil prophecies were to come to pass, like the old woman’s, in my opinion we are far more comfortable without such knowledge.
“Infant heir of proud Fermoy,
Fear not fields of slaughter;
Storm and fire fear not, my boy,
But shun the fatal water.”