I900.] Coi^GAN AND Scui.i«Y. — Remarks 07i Cybele Hibemica. 59 



imperatively they demand the exercise of caution and of 

 patience, if error is to be avoided. The difficulty is two-fold ; 

 first, one must catch correctly the series of vocal sounds which 

 make up the spoken plant-name, some of the elements in the 

 series being obscure or indeed quite elusive ; in the second 

 place, one has to make sure that he applies the spoken name, 

 where not merely generic, to the proper botanical species, and 

 to arrive at certainty on this point it is often necessary to 

 consult several Irish -speaking namers of the plant and 

 compare their dicta. To these difficulties may be added a 

 third, that of rendering the name into the accepted system of 

 Irish orthography. Here a wide field for the imagination is 

 often opened up, and one must carefully check the tendency 

 to strain the rendering of the spoken sounds in such a way 

 as to give the written word a meaning. In many cases one 

 must be content to let the name remain purely symbolic. 



All this is set down here merely to show that the admitted 

 meagreness of the Cybele list of Irish plant-names is due to 

 conscientiousness and a full appreciation of the difficulties of 

 the subject. Mr. Hart, how^ever, does not seem to feel these 

 difficulties, for he tells us in his Remarks ; " I have myself 

 collected without difficulty, though at a considerable expense 

 of time and travel, a large number of Celtic plant- names in 

 Donegal which do not appear in the Cybele^ Many will be 

 found in an appendix to my Flora of Do7iegair On turning to 

 this appendix, which contains much interesting matter, we 

 find such entries as the following: '' Barrafi a dhu, Fibrous 

 roots of bent or some other sand plant. Futhe7'm (?) seaweed. 

 Meehal, a yellow thick- clustered seaweed. Pardban (?) some 

 herb, very good for making a plaster." Now Mr. Hart is quite 

 justified in saying that such names as these, mere 7iomma iiuda 

 referable to no definite species, may be collected *' without 

 difficulty "; but then unfortunately the collection when made 

 has no scientific value. 



Farther on in his Remarks, when discussing Euphorbia 

 hiber^ia (p. 37) and Pinus sylvestris (p. 41) he reverts to our 

 treatment of current Irish plant-names. He charges us with 

 both wrongly spelling and wrongly interpreting the native 

 name Baiyuie caoi7i which we give as that now current for the 

 Irish Spurge in Cork and Kerry, the head-quarters of the 



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