This Parish is situated near the north
eastern extremity of the Co. of Clare, and is bounded on the west and
north by the Parish of Feakle, on the east by the Parish of Moyno and
Ogonnello, on the south by part of the latter and Kilno, and on the west
by the Parish of Feakle.
The name of this Parish is written
in all the ancient Irish authorities Tuaim Gréine, and explained
in the Leabhar Buidhe, Lecan and Lismor MS., as signifying the Tumulus
of Grian, the daughter of ? who was drowned in Loch Gréiné.
The same legend is vividly remembered in the country but horribly deformed.
The Lady Grian who was also called Gile Greine (Candor Solis) i.e., the
Brightness of the Sun, was a far famed beauty who flourished here at a
period unknown to chronology; but like Venus, she was of unnatural origin,
begotten by a human being on a sunbeam (Borb na Binne is é m’athair
is í mo mháthair an Gath Gréine) and when told of
this she became sad and cheerless and at once determined on self destruction.
She cast herself into a lake in Sliabh Echtghe in which she was immediately
drowned. When her fair body floated it was carried by the stream flowing
from this lake in a south-east direction, and cast upon the land on the
margin of a wood called by posterity from that circumstance Doire Greine,
i.e., Roboretum Gryneae, where it was found by her friends, who interred
it at a place not far distant and raised over it a tumulus to which they
and posterity gave, and continue to give, the name of Tuaim Greine, i.e.,
the Tumulus of Grian. This is the local explanation of the word and it
is as true as any other legend etymology and conjecture could invent to
account for it.
The only other explanation which could be offered is to suppose that
Tuaim Greine signifies the Mound of the Sun, and that it received that
appellation from a
colony of Heliolators or Grianolators formerly established in this wild district,
unless we suppose that it simply means Sun-Mount i.e., Sunny Hill, a natural
name unconnected with religion or human sepulture, and this latter is as likely
to be true as any other, as we have millions of nice little names derived from:- “Clear
Spring, or Shady Grove or Sunny Hill.”
So that if we reject the explanation of the name Tuaim Greine preserved
by written and oral tradition, we must only invent a little etymological
fable (!!) to account
for it in a new and learned (lárned) manner. |
