Some of the incidents bear a decidedly infernal significance. On one island the voyagers beheld a horse-race, and heard the shouts of the crowd; both jockeys and spectators were demons. It has been suggested that this incident, for which no parallel exists, so far as I am aware, in earlier narratives, may be of Norse origin; possibly it may be one of those loans from classical literature before referred to, and ecclesiastical influences may have depicted in Stygian colouring the pagan Elysium in which departed heroes continue to ply their wonted sports.[132] At the same time, it is possible that the writer may have dealt in a like manner with the sports of Magh Mell, in Manannán’s Elysium, described in the _Imram Bráin_. Of course, the question of foreign importation turns upon the other question, whether horse-races, as well as chariot-races, were known in Ireland at the date when the _Voyage of Maelduin_ was written. On another island they saw a party of demon smiths forging a mass of glowing metal, which one of them threw after the curach, as Polyphemus threw the rock after Odysseus.[133] On another they came to a huge, hideous mill, and the miller, huge and hideous to match, told them that the grist which he cast into his mill was all things that had been begrudged on earth. This demon miller is rather a favourite symbol in Irish legend, and is not confined to professedly religious compositions. It occurs in the story of Mongán in a slightly different form; in the Voyage of the sons of Ua Corra, who saw all manner of precious things cast into the mill, and the miller told them, ‘I cast into the mouth of the mill all things for which grudging has been made, and ’tis the Miller of Hell I am’; and it survived in local tradition as the _Muilleann Luprachán_ (Pixies’ Mill) near Tuam.[134] There is something weirdly picturesque in this demon miller who casts into his Mill of Vanities, and grinds down there, all the objects of worldly covetise; the conception reminds us rather curiously of the mystical Wheat-sieve in the carnival hymn of the Florentine Piagnoni, _Il Trionfo del Vaglio_.