3 2 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



thereof ; but at present the townland so named happens to include the whole 

 ridge of Cnoc Mor, which is the highest part of the island. 



The Irish place-names, as the)' appear on the Ordnance maps, are often so 

 distorted that the semblance of the originals is wholly obscured. The effort 

 to represent the sounds of the names to an eye accustomed to English 

 spelling comes often very wide of its mark. The majority of the names on 

 the Clare Island maps are a record chiefly of the failure of an impossible 

 task. Many of them can convey no even proximate notion of the sound to a 

 reader of English, and are more likely to misguide than to guide a reader of 

 Irish. It was doubtless the difficulty of dealing with such material that 

 caused the Ordnance Survey officer to get confused occasionally, not only as 

 to the forms of names, but also as to the places to which the names belonged. 

 I note that in atlases for general educational use, place-names in Scotland, 

 which are commonly spoken with their Gaelic pronunciation, are printed in 

 their Gaelic spelling ; and if this method fails to indicate the pronunciation 

 to everybody, it yet secures historical accuracy. The other method, used in 

 our Ordnance maps, fails in both respects. 1 



The scantiness of prehistoric and early historic structures in Clare Island 

 has been noted ia Mr. Westropp's paper (Part 2). The place-names bring 

 under notice two sites, each named Sidhean, of which one, in the townland of 

 Glen, is probably an artificial tumulus, and the other, near the lighthouse, 

 seems rather to be a natural hillock. In both cases certainty could only 

 follow exploration. The economic history of the island gathers a few facts 

 from topography, and even a few facts are of more scientific value than any 

 number of fancies. The general history and ethnography of the island cannot 

 afford to ignore the rather remarkable evidence contained in the list of 

 surnames. 



Professor Wilson, in his paper on " Agriculture and its History," Clare 

 Island Survey, Part 5, has stated the problem, "How far were the older 

 Clare islanders true Celts, and how far were they modified in blood and in 

 economy and custom by the Norsemen ? " A large proportion of the family 

 names bring with them a sufficient historical record to solve this problem — 

 at least to the extent of enabling us to state it afresh on a structural basis of 

 ascertained facts. Of true Celts, as a distinct race, ancient history and 

 modern ethnology are alike ignorant. There is no Celtic racial type; and 

 the only precise meaning that can be attached or ever has been attached 

 to the name Celts is that it denotes a people whose language is or was 

 Celtic. We have evidence that Clare Island once contained a population 



1 The more accurate preservation of the place-names of Wales, besides enabling some dull folk to 

 think themselves humorous, has greatly facilitated the study of Welsh history and archaeology. 



