The editor of the _Irish Nennius_ gives this name as Loch n-Echach (Lough Neagh). P. 195, note.
See the “Wonders of Ireland” (_Irish Nennius_, 195) where a similar account is given; but according to this “the part of it that sinks into the earth will be stone, the part that remains in the water will be iron.” Giraldus writes of a petrifying well (_fons_) in the north of Ulster, but gives no place name. _Opera_, V, 86. See also Wright-Halliwell, _Reliquiae Antiquae_, II, 103. (Latin poem on the wonders of Ireland.)
Again, there are two springs on a mountain called Blandina,[184] which is almost a desert mountain; these have a peculiar nature. One of them has this property that if you take either a white sheep, cow, or horse, or a man with white hair, and wash any one of these with the water, the white will immediately turn to coal black. And such is the nature of the other spring in that place that if a man washes himself in its water, his hair will turn to a snowy white as if he were an aged man, no matter what its color be before, whether red or white or black.[185]
Blandina (Bladina, Bladma) is the Slieve Bloom range in central Ireland.
Giraldus has heard of such springs, but he locates the one in Ulster and the other in Munster. _Opera_, V, 84. A spring that whitens hair is mentioned in Wright-Halliwell, _Reliquiae Antiquae_, II, 104, and in the _Irish Nennius_, 195.
There is also a lake in that country which the natives call Loycha. In that lake there is what appears to be a little floating island; for it floats about in the lake, here and there approaching the shore sometimes so near that one may step out upon it; and this occurs most frequently on Sundays. And such is the property of this islet that if one who is ill steps out upon it and partakes of the herbs that grow there, he is healed at once, no matter what his ailment may be. Another singular fact is this, that never more than one can come upon it at one time, though many may wish to do so; for as soon as one has landed, the island immediately floats away. It also has this peculiarity that it floats constantly about in the lake for seven winters; but as soon as the seventh winter is past, it floats to the shore somewhere and unites with the other land, as if it had always been joined to it. But when that moment has come, a crash like a peal of thunder is heard, and, when the din is past, another island can be seen in the lake of the same size and character as the earlier one. Thus it happens regularly every seventh year that, as soon as the one island has joined the mainland, another appears, though no one knows whence it comes.[186]