Note 129.1 — Chapter XX · THE MEDUSA-WITCH IN SAGA AND SUPERSTITION.

and close at hand they beheld an old woman driving a white cow down to the lake. She drove the cow right into the water, and struck her with a stick, whereupon the cow was metamorphosed into a rock. One of the fishermen got so angry at the sight that he struck the woman; and both he and she were turned into stones. The rock and stones are still to be seen. “The cow used to rise up out of the lake and walk about the island when any great event was about to happen; but it is now more than thirty years since she was last seen.” From this cow the island takes its name (Inis-bo-finne, the Island of the White Cow).129.1 In the south-west of Ireland is a cliff called Fail Mahisht, once the daughter of the king of the White Nation and wife of Finn MacCumhail, whom she won by playing at chess with him for a wager. The condition was that he was to be her husband until he had seven shovelfuls of earth put on his head. After various adventures Diarmaid fulfilled the condition, and with a blow of his fist sent the lady spinning through the air until she fell at the water’s edge, where she now stands, and from that day to this gives food to the people of Erin from the limpets and periwinkles that cluster upon her beyond any other cliff in Ireland.130.1 The heroic cycle of Ireland as now found in the mouths of the people is full of tales of petrifaction from a blow;130.2 but how far they are now believed as records of fact must be regarded as more than doubtful, whatever might have been the case at the time the legend of the Enchanted Cave, already mentioned, was written. No such uncertainty seems to rest on the Sardinian tale concerning a stone on the side of the Montesanto of Mores. It is called Saint Elisha’s Stone, and was once a man whom the saint threw from the top of the mountain and, when he saw him fast below, called out: “Dost thou stand well?” “Yes, sir,” replied the stone; and there it remains immovable.130.3