[Note 18.] —Conn the Hundred-fighter.
Conn Ced-cathach or Conn the Fighter of a Hundred (not Conn of the Hundred Battles, as the name is generally translated), was king of Ireland from a.d. 123 to 158.
[Note 19.] —Land of the Living: Land of Life, etc.
The ancient Irish had a sort of dim, vague belief that there was a land where people were always youthful, and free from care and trouble, suffered no disease, and lived for ever. This country they called by various names:—Tir-na-mbeo, the land of the [ever-]living; Tir-na-nóg, the land of the [ever-]youthful; Moy-Mell, the plain of pleasure, etc. It had its own inhabitants—fairies; but mortals were sometimes brought there; and while they lived in it, were gifted with the everlasting youth and beauty of the fairy people themselves, and partook of their pleasures. As to the exact place where Tirnanoge was situated, the references are shadowy and variable, but they often place it far out in the Atlantic Ocean, as far as the eye can reach from the high cliffs of the western coast. And here it is identical with O'Brasil, of which mention has been made in [note 13].
I have already remarked ([see note 1]) that the fairies were also supposed to live in palaces in the interior of pleasant green hills, and that they were hence called Aes-shee or Deena-shee, i.e. people of the shee or fairy hills; and hence also the word "banshee" i.e. a woman (bean) of the fairy hills. Tirnanoge was often regarded as identical with these bright, subterranean palaces. In my boyhood days, the peasantry believed that the great limestone cavern near Mitchelstown, in the county Cork, was one of the entrances to Tirnanoge.
[Note 20.] —St. Brendan of Birra.
I have already, in the preface ([page xiii.]), spoken of the celebrated voyage of St. Brendan of Birra (Birr, in King's County), undertaken in the sixth century. He set out from near Brandon Mountain, in Kerry, sailing westwards into the Atlantic Ocean, and, according to the belief of some, landed on the shore of America. He had many imitators, who ventured out on the great ocean in their curraghs as pilgrims; but none were so enterprising as himself, or met with such a variety of strange lands, if we except Maildun and the three sons of O'Corra, whose adventures are quite as surprising as those of Brendan.
[Note 21.] —Brendan's Satchel.