Note 27 — Chapter IX

There is one other instance of human sacrifice mentioned in the Book of Ballymote, but this is recorded in connection with funeral games, and appears to have been an isolated piece of barbarity performed "that it might be a reproach to the Momonians for ever, and that it might be a trophy over them." Fiachra, a brother of Niall of the Nine Hostages, in the fourth century, carried off fifty hostages from Munster, and dying of his wounds, the hostages were buried alive with him, round his grave: "ro hadnaicead na geill tucadh a neass ocus siad beo im fheart Fiachra comba hail for Mumain do gres, ocus comba comrama forra." For another allusion to "human sacrifice" see O'Curry's "Manners and Customs," vol. i. p. dcxli and cccxxxiii. The "Dinnseanchas," quoted from above, is a topographical work explaining the origin of Irish place-names, and attributed to Amergin mac Amhalgaidh, poet to King Diarmuid mac Cearbaill, who lived in the sixth century. "There seems no reason," says Dr. Atkinson, in his preface to the facsimile Book of Leinster, "for disputing his claims to be regarded as the original compiler of a work of a similar character—the original nucleus is not now determinable." The oldest copy is the Book of Leinster and treats of nearly two hundred places and contains eighty-eight poems. The copy in the Book of Ballymote contains one hundred and thirty-nine, and that in the Book of Lecan even more. The total number of all the poems contained in the different copies is close on one hundred and seventy. The copy in the Bodleian Library was published by Whitley Stokes in "Folk-lore," December, 1892, and that in the Advocates Library, in Edinburgh, in "Folk-lore," December, 1893. The prose tales, from a copy at Rennes, he published in the "Revue Celtique," vols. xv. and xvi. An edition of the oldest copy in the Book of Leinster is still a desideratum. The whole work is full of interesting pagan allusions, but the different copies, in the case of many names, vary greatly and even contradict each other.