Episode 53: Dobhar-chú

Glenade does not announce itself. It lies in a long green trough in north County Leitrim, pinched between the Arroo mountains and the Dartry range, with Benbulben’s bare forehead watching from the Sligo side. The lough is small by tourist maps. A mile of dark water. Half a mile across. Pike and perch and eel in the weed. White-clawed crayfish in the stones. Cars take the Bundoran road and never look down. The people of the glen always looked down

In the National Folklore Collection, the school copybooks of the 1930s, when children still wrote what the old people would actually say, the teacher at Ahanlish set down a sentence that still feels like a nail in a door: The one legend that is known to all the children as well as the older people of the glen, and firmly believed, is that of the Dobhar Cú.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobhar-ch%C3%BA

https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4602723/4598437/4626430

https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4602749/4600955/4634687

https://www.sligoheritage.com/archdabharchu.htm

https://www.leitrimobserver.ie/news/features/334274/the-tale-of-leitrim-s-own-loch-ness-monster-the-dobhar-chu.html

https://hollywoodentertainmentnews.com/paranormal-news/the-dobhar-chao-trailing-irelands-mysterious-master-otter-part-1-glenade-lake-and-a-gravestone-shukernature/

https://folklorethursday.com/folktales/this-irish-cryptid-casts-otters-in-a-whole-new-light/

https://www.historicmysteries.com/myths-legends/dobhar-chu/38817/

https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/irish-mythical-monster-dobhar-chu

https://www.tonyoneill.org/2017/04/12/glenade-lake-and-the-legend-of-the-dobhar-chu/

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dobharch%C3%BA

Patrick Tohall’s 1948 paper, “The Dobhar-Chú Tombstones of Glenade, Co. Leitrim,” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, is the core description of the Congbháil slab.