Chapter IV: Horned Women

_Source_.--Lady Wilde's _Ancient Legends_, the first story.

_Parallels_.--A similar version was given by Mr. D. Fitzgerald in the _Revue Celtique_, iv. 181, but without the significant and impressive horns. He refers to _Cornhill_ for February 1877, and to Campbell's "Sauntraigh" No. xxii. _Pop. Tales_, ii. 52 4, in which a "woman of peace" (a fairy) borrows a woman's kettle and returns it with flesh in it, but at last the woman refuses, and is persecuted by the fairy. I fail to see much analogy. A much closer one is in Campbell, ii. p. 63, where fairies are got rid of by shouting "Dunveilg is on fire." The familiar "lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home, your house is on fire and your children at home," will occur to English minds. Another version in Kennedy's _Legendary Fictions_, p. 164, "Black Stairs on Fire."

_Remarks_.--Slievenamon is a famous fairy palace in Tipperary according to Dr. Joyce, _l.c._ i. 178. It was the hill on which Finn stood when he gave himself as the prize to the Irish maiden who should run up it quickest. Grainne won him with dire consequences, as all the world knows or ought to know (Kennedy, _Legend Fict._, 222, "How Fion selected a Wife").