In Ulster Folklore, published in 1913, Elizabeth Andrews describes a story she found almost everywhere in Ulster. Near Ballycairn Fort she was told that the last of the Danes held the secret of brewing heather beer. In the telling, the father said that if his son was given the first lilt of the rope he would reveal the secret. When the son was dead the father cried that he should be killed too, for no one would ever know how the heather beer was brewed.
Andrews says the tale appeared to be almost universal in Ulster. She was visiting Navan Fort, the ancient Emania, near Armagh, when she was told that the Danes had made heather beer on that fort. She asked whether any heather grew in the neighbourhood, and the answer was that there was none now.
In Ulster country belief at that time, forts and souterrains were commonly credited to the Danes, a red-haired race remembered as large or small depending on the teller, and the same forts were also said to be fairy dwellings. The Navan note is brief, but it shows the great Armagh monument absorbed into the same folk pattern as the small raths around it.
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