{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat02_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat02_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat02_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/celt/flat/flat02.htm","summary":"This is an Irish folk tale in the oral tradition, prefaced by a brief ethnographic note explaining that Knockfierna mountain in County Limerick is believed to be the dwelling of Donn, a fairy lord whose gathering of mist serves as a weather omen. The story follows Carroll O'Daly, a swaggering young man from Connacht known as \"Devil Daly\" for his contemptuous disregard of the fairy world, who encounters a farmer heading up the mountain at night to visit the \"good people\" and rashly decides to follow. Reaching the summit, O'Daly finds the mouth of the Poul-duve, a legendary pit said to be the entrance to a fairy castle inside the mountain, and heaves a large stone into it to mock whatever might dwell there \u2014 whereupon the stone flies straight back out and breaks his nose, rolls him down the mountainside, and leaves him bruised, bloodied, and black-eyed. The tale's central argument is precisely calibrated: neither cringing terror nor contemptuous disbelief is the right stance toward the fairies \u2014 what is owed is simple civil acknowledgment, and the cost of withholding it is physical humiliation. Distinctive to this telling is its comic-cautionary tone, treating the supernatural punishment not as tragedy but as a well-deserved corrective to male bravado, with O'Daly's transformation from swaggering sceptic to permanently chastened traveller framed as reasonable rather than pitiable.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Fairy Legends and Traditions: The Legend of Knockfierna","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","translated_text":null,"word_count":1241}