THE COMMON SHREW 85 



may be traced " ranny," a word used by Sir Thomas Browne and still 

 surviving in country districts, through an old French form araigne = a 

 spider, as the old French ending -gne corresponds regularly to the 

 English -nfiy. In Somner's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1659), screawa is 

 explained as " a shrew-mouse, which by biting cattle so envenoms them 

 that they die." This was a belief of ancient date (see below, p. 100), 



The Old Norse form of shrew is represented by skrew (or screw), 

 and skrow, as in Scotland, Devon, Cornwall, and Ireland {Dial. Diet.). 



Local names (non-Celtic) : — Blind mouse of Cumberland and North 

 Lincoln. Harvest-mouse, harvest-shrew, harvest^sJirow, with their count- 

 less corruptions, producing arti-shrew, harti-shrew, hardy-shrew, hardi- 

 straw, harvest-troWy harvest-row , hardy-mouse, and others, are very 

 widely spread (see Dial. Diet?). Of these, some are old forms, as 

 shown by the passage "In Italy the hardy shrews are venomous in 

 their biting," found in Holland's translation of Pliny (b. viii., c. 58, 1601). 

 This ancient superstition has helped the form harvest-trow, since " trow " 

 or " troll " is a malicious elf or goblin ; and the name may easily be 

 transferred to true mice, as when Jefferies wrote : — " The nests of the 

 harvest-trow — a still smaller mouse, seldom seen except in summer" 

 {Wild Life in a Southern County, 1879, 186). The extreme corruptions 

 are hardly recognisable, and have received other interpretations ; thus, 

 aj'd-shrew, through erd-sJirew, has been connected with earth-shrew, 

 while noss?'o (n-ossro. Dial. Diet.) has been translated as nose-shrew, and 

 has many variants, as mirserow and nostril. Over-runner of Wiltshire 

 (Harting, Vermin of the Farm, 22). Pig-mouse of Surrey (Dalgliesh, 

 Zoologist, 1906, 274) and Northampton (Adams, MS.)- Ranny, 

 explained above, of Scotland and many parts of England (see Dial. 

 Diet.). Shear- or sheer-mouse, sheery- or sherry-mouse, shirrow, shrove- 

 mouse (as in Bellamy), shrow-crop, straw-mouse, and many others of 

 various localities, of which the first four may mean "biting" or 

 "cutting," but are probably mere corruptions or mutilations of shrew; 

 the last but one explains the term " shrow-croped," applied in Devon 

 to an animal supposed to have been paralysed by a shrew creeping 

 over its back. 



(Celtic): — Irish — luch feir ( = grass-mouse). Scottish Gaelic — 

 Beathachan {Beothachan)-feoir = "grass-beast"; dallag (•^t'z>) = " blind 

 one " ; feornachan ; fionnag-feoir ; labhallan (Janihalan) ; luch fJieoir ; luch 

 shith ; truth. Manx — thollag-ai7-hey (Kelly). Welsh — chwistl ; llygoden 

 goch ( = red mouse); llygoden y maes ( = field-mouse). 



The local names, including the Celtic, must be taken without 

 reference to any particular species, except where, as in Ireland and the 

 Isle of Man, the Pygmy Shrew alone occurs. The names peculiar to 

 the Water Shrew will, however, be given under that species. 



