“To him Noble Gaels would prostrate themselves, From the worship of him, with many manslaughters, The plain is called “Mag Slecht”. * * * * * * * * * * “They did evil, They beat their palms, they pounded their bodies, Wailing to the demon who enslaved them, They shed falling showers of tears. * * * * * * * * * * “Around Cromm Cruaich There the hosts would prostrate themselves; Though he put them under deadly disgrace, Their name clings to the noble plain. “In their ranks (stood) Four times three stone idols; To bitterly beguile the hosts, The figure of the Cromm was made of gold. “Since the rule Of Herimon[45], the noble man of grace, There was worshipping of stones Until the coming of good Patrick of Macha. “A sledge-hammer to the Cromm He applied from crown to sole, He destroyed without lack of valour The feeble idol which was there.” Such, we gather from a tradition which we may deem authentic, was human sacrifice in early Ireland. According to the quoted verse, one third of the healthy children were slaughtered, presumably every year, to wrest from the powers of nature the grain and grass upon which the tribes and their cattle subsisted. In a prose _dinnsenchus_ preserved in the Rennes MS.,[46] there is a slight variant. “’Tis there”, (at Mag Slecht), it runs, “was the king idol of Erin, namely the Crom Croich, and around him were twelve idols made of stones, but he was of gold. Until Patrick’s advent he was the god of every folk that colonized Ireland. To him they used to offer the firstlings of every issue and the chief scions of every clan.” The same authority also tells us that these sacrifices were made at “Hallowe’en”, which took the place, in the Christian calendar, of the heathen _Samhain_—“Summer’s End”—when the sun’s power waned, and the strength of the gods of darkness, winter, and the underworld grew great.