[Page 19.] The king of Ireland’s son. This title should properly be, “The son of a king in Ireland” (Mac riġ i n-Eirinn). As this name for the prince is rather cumbrous, I took advantage of having once heard him called the king of Ireland’s son (Mac riġ Eireann), and have so given it here. In another longer and more humorous version of this story, which I heard from Shamus O’Hart, but which I did not take down in writing, the short green man is the “Thin black man” (fear caol duḃ); the gunman is guinnéar, not gunnaire; the ear-man is cluas-le-h-éisteaċt; (ear for hearing), not cluasaire; and the blowman is not Séidire, but polláire-séidte (blowing nostril). This difference is the more curious, considering that the men lived only a couple of miles apart, and their families had lived in the same place for generations.
[Page 27.] This description of a house thatched with feathers is very common in Irish stories. On the present occasion the house is thatched with one single feather, so smooth that there was no projecting point or quill either above or below the feather-roof. For another instance, see the “Well of D’yerree in Dowan,” page 131. In a poem from “The Dialogue of the Sages,” the lady Credé’s house is described thus:—
“Of its sunny chamber the corner stones
Are all of silver and precious gold,
In faultless stripes its thatch is spread
Of wings of brown and crimson red.
Its portico is covered, too,
With wings of birds both yellow and blue.”
See O’Curry’s “Man. Materials,” p. 310.