It went on well after leaving Limerick, for there was nothing to hinder it. For that reason it made the river wider in that place than in any other. But as soon as it got out into the sea a great whale met it and it had to fight a hard battle, and was nearly beaten, when a sea-maiden came and helped it and they killed the whale.
The sea-maiden and the Great Worm went on side by side until they came to a village on the coast, where there were about three score of men in boats fishing. The Great Worm was very hungry and began swallowing them down greedily, men and boats and all, until the sea-maiden spoke and said that it was a shame. That angered it and it attacked her, but she was too clever for it. She drew out a golden comb with venom in it, and thrust it into the Worm's eye and blinded it out and out. Then said the Worm to her, "I would sooner be dead than alive; put a hole in my stomach with your scissors." She did that and it died in a moment.
The water was ebbing, and when it had gone out the Great Worm was left dead on the sand. The people of the villages round about came; they opened the worm, and every mother's son that he had swallowed they found alive and in a heavy sleep at the bottom of their boats. The bones of the Great Worm remained on the shore of Bantry Bay until the fishermen made oars out of them. If my story is not true, there is no water in the sea and no river Shannon in Ireland.
THE POOR WIDOW AND GRANIA OÏ.
PREFACE.
This story I got from Pronisias O'Conor when he was in the workhouse in Athlone, and he had it from one Rose Grennan or in Irish, Róise nic Ghrianain, from a parish near Athlone.
This story is chiefly remarkable for the introduction of Grainne Oigh, which seems to mean Grania the virgin. But who was Grainne? My narrator could tell me nothing about her. She occurs in the story of "William of the Tree" in my "Beside the Fire," and Alfred Nutt has an interesting note on her at p. 194, but it throws no light upon the subject. There, as here, she appears as a beneficent being, very pious, powerful and mysterious, and able to work miracles. The town of Moate, in Co. Westmeath, is called in Irish the Moat of Grainne Óg, who is said to have been a Munster princess, very good and very wise, and there seems to have been some body of legend connected with her, alluded to by Caesar Otway in his "Tour in Connaught," p. 55. See also Joyce's "Names of Places," vol. I, p. 270. Whether Grainne Óg and Grainne Oigh are the same person seems doubtful, but I should think it very probable, and the appellation of "Oigh" may have tended to some confusion with Muire Oigh. Except in these two stories, one from O'Conor and the other from a man named Blake, near Ballinrobe, I have never met or heard or read of any allusion to this being. But the town of Athlone, being half in Westmeath, the county with which Grainne Óg is associated, and the very old woman who told this story being from the borders of that county, would suggest that there was some connection between the mysterious being and the princess from whom Moate is said to have got its name.