THE BLACK OR SHIP RAT 581 
in insula Aran in occidental Connactie solo posita) notabile: quia cum 
per totam Hiberniam copiose nimis mures abundent, haec tamen insula 
mure caret. Mus enim nec nascitur nec vivit tnvectus. (There is another 
thing remarkable in this island—although mares swarm in vast numbers 
in other parts of Ireland, here not a single one is found. No mas is 
bred here, nor does it live if it be introduced.) The island, however, 
was probably not Aran, as suggested above, but Inishglora, or Caher, 
both in Co. Mayo, the sanctity of each of which was so great that no 
rat or mouse could live for even a few minutes on their shores; the 
earth of these islands drove rats and mice from any house on which it 
was sprinkled—see Browne, Proc. Roy. Irish Acad., v.,tDecember 1808, 
64; Westropp, Proc. ctt., xxxi., 2, IQII, 53. 
The words mus and mures in the above passage are usually trans- 
lated “mouse” and “mice,” as in Bohn’s edition of the 7opographiza, 
64; but there is no evidence that Ireland, which has no “voles,” ever 
suffered from superabundance of mice, and the word sures, to which 
Higden, writing his Polychronichon in the following (fourteenth) century 
(he died in 1363), added the word xocentisstmos=“ most harmful,” was 
almost certainly applied to the Black Rat, Epzmys rattus, which was 
at that time, as stated above, already quite well known in England 
and considered a nuisance. It probably made its way to Ireland quite 
as early as to England, since the Irish are known to have traded freely 
with England and Europe from at least the thirteenth century. 
Unfortunately, O’Flaherty (Chorographical Description of West or 
H-lar Connaught, 1684) misinterpreted Giraldus, writing that “it 
(ze. West Connaught) admits no rats to live anywhere except the isles 
of Aran, and the district of the west liberties of Galway,” which is a 
reversed translation of Giraldus, but is important, as it accepts the 
meaning of sures as “rats.” 
About 1377, “rats or mice” are mentioned as doing damage in the 
Register of Archbishop Sweteman of Armagh (Lawlor, Proc. Roy. 
Dublin Soc., xxiv., c. 8, 264, 1911). 
In subsequent years rats were generally well known in Ireland, the 
common belief at the end of the sixteenth century being represented 
by four lines quoted by Fynes-Moryson (1559-1603; of. c7¢. supra, 
p. 326) :— 
“ Quatuor hybernos vexant animalia, turpes 
Corpora vermiculi, sorices per tecta rapaces. 
Carnivori vastantque lupi crudeliter agros 
Haec tria nequitia superas Romane sacerdos.” 
For four vile beasts Ireland hath no fence: 
Their bodies lice, their houses rats possess ; 
Most wicked priests govern their conscience, 
And ravening wolves do waste their fields no less. 
