Browxb — Ethnogruphij of Carna and Miveenish, Connemara. 531 



not, however, save idm — tantsene ira? — "he never returned home till 

 {sic) he was cast away by shipwrack soon after." Another Gal way 

 man named Gill deliberately committed the same offence, "when, 

 sitting on the pup of the boat, the mast broke and struck him on the 

 pate dead." Mr. "Westropp remembers in 1878 a salute being given at 

 Macdara's Island, but he thinks it was with oars and not with the sail, 

 though his party was in a becalmed hooker. 



It is not a little cuiious, as noted in the Ordnance Survey Letters 

 of Gal way , that despite this deep reverence for St. Macdara, ' ' the 

 marines {sic) of this western coast" regard his personal name (Sianach, 

 the fox) as most unlucky. If they see a fox, hare, or rabbit, dead or 

 alive, or even hear the animal's name, they would not venture out to 

 fish that day. The author thinks they would " unsaint " MacDara if 

 they knew his name was Sinnach, and anyone bearing any of these 

 names is obliged to change them on settling in the neighbourhood. 



O'Flaherty's notes on the fishery, from trout to seals, are worth 

 the study of our naturalists, but can only be noticed in this paper. iSTo 

 doubt in 1684 the " waste islands " may have been " all covered over 

 ■^dth birds' eggs far more delicate than any laid by poultry. Here is 

 yearly a great slaughter made of seals about Michaelmas on wild rocks 

 and waste islands of the sea," but we hesitate when we read of black 

 " ambergrease " thrown up ia large quantities by the sea, or of 

 " ei^iQ&a. porcupines that were in pui'suit of the salmon fish." Perhaps 

 like his "crocodile" in Lough Mask these statements sprang fi'om 

 defective instruction in natiu-al science. At present the natives fear to 

 kill a seal lest it should be one of the Conneelys, a niunber of whom 

 are believed to have once suifered this metamorphosis. 



St. Macdara's oratory has been figiu-ed by Petrie in his great work, 

 and is described at some length by Mr. P. J. Bigger in a valuable and 

 well illustrated paper, published in the Journal of the Eoyal Society 

 of Antiquaries of Ireland.^ "We need therefore only briefly observe that 

 it is a small oblong building 14 feet 8 inches by 11 feet 3 inches, the 

 west door having inclined jambs, and the smaU east window having its 

 semicircular head scooped out of a single block. The window has a 

 flat top, and like the east is deeply splayed. A curious feature in the 

 building is that the slightly projecting antse are continued by a 

 projection following the line of the gable. 



The stone roof has for the most part f aUen ; it was formed by 17 

 rows of slabs, and an enclosure of two large slabs at the east end is 



^Vol. vi., ser. v., xxvi. consecutive, p. 



101. 



