Knockainy is a fairy hill in the Co. Limerick associated with the pagan goddess and sometime fairy Aine: Knockainy is literally the Hill of Aine. Her name probably meant ‘bright one’. The hill was associated as late as the nineteenth century with strange rituals. Here is Evans-Wentz describing some of these.
There are two hills near Lough Gur upon whose summits sacrifices and sacred rites used to be celebrated according to living tradition. One, about three miles south-west of the lake, is called Knock Aine, Aine or Ane being the name of an ancient Irish goddess, derived from an, ‘bright.’ The other, the highest hill on the lake-shores, is called Knock Fennel or Hill of the Goddess Fennel, from Finnen or Finnine or Fininne, a form of fin, ‘white.’ The peasantry of the region call Aine one of the Good People; and they say that Fennel (apparently her sister goddess or a variant of herself) lived on the top of Knock Fennel’ (termed Finnen in a State Paper dated 1200).Some say that Aine’s true dwelling-place is in her hill; upon which on every St. John’s Night the peasantry used to gather from all the immediate neighbourhood to view the moon (for Aine seems to have been a moon goddess, like Diana), and then with torches (cliars) made of bunches of straw and hay tied on poles used to march in procession from the hill and afterwards run through cultivated fields and amongst the cattle. The underlying purpose of this latter ceremony probably was — as is the case in the Isle of Man and in Brittany (see pp. 1 24 n., 273), where corresponding fire-ceremonies surviving from an ancient agricultural cult are still celebrated — to exorcise the land from all evil spirits and witches in order that there may be good harvests and rich increase of flocks. Sometimes on such occasions the goddess herself has been seen leading the sacred procession. […] One night some girls staying on the hill late were made to look through a magic ring by Aine, and lo the hill was crowded with the folk of the fairy goddess who before had been invisible. The peasants always said that Aine is ‘the best-hearted woman that ever lived’. Wentz-Evans 80
