36 THE BEAVER AND SCOTTISH TRADITION 



language itself I have never seen any trace 

 of beaver.' Another well-informed correspon- 

 dent, the Rev. Charles M. Robertson, Craig- 

 house, Jura, refers to Shaw's Gaelic Dictionary, 

 1780, as giving Dobhran-leaslathan, a beaver, 

 and to Armstrong, 1825, who has Dobhran- 

 leaslan, an otter, otter being probably a slip of 

 the pen. He continues: ' Leas-leathann, a 

 beaver, is given on the authority of common 

 speech in the Highland Society's Gaelic Dic- 

 tionary as Gaelic for beaver. Leas-leathann is 

 given along with Dobhran-donn and Dobhar-chu 

 in the English-Gaelic part of the same work, 

 and with Dobhar-chu in MacLeod and Dewar's 

 Dictionary. Macfarlane's Vocabulary, 1815, 

 has Beaver Douran, Leasleathann. " Dobhar- 

 chu, a kind of otter supposed to be the king of 

 the species," is given by the Highland Society's 

 Dictionary on the authority of Llhuyd's Archae- 

 ologia Britannica. In Dinneen's Irish- English 

 Dictionary, 1904, the name is stated to be pro- 

 nounced Dobhrachu in County Donegal, and 

 used of a mythical animal like an otter. 



' There is nothing here to prove that the 

 beaver ever existed in Scotland or in Ireland. 

 All that is certain is that the Gael had a tra- 

 ditionary knowledge of the animal, but whether 

 the knowledge was derived from travellers' 



