The Danes
“The reason of the wisps and the fires on Saint John’s Eve is that one time long ago the Danes came and took the country and conquered it, and they put a soldier to mind every house through the whole country. And at last the people made up their mind that on one night they would kill its soldiers. So they did as they said, and there wasn’t one left, and that is why they light the wisps ever since. It was Brian Boroihme was the first to light them. There was not much of an army left to the Danes that time, for he made a great scatter of them. A great man he was, and his own son was as good, that is Murrough. It was the wife brought him to his end, Gormleith. She was for war, and he was all for peace. And he got to be very pious, too pious, and old and she got tired of that.”