Clare Island Survey — Place-Names and Family Names. 3 7 



fishing, and also in the seashore work of kelp-burning and gathering seaweed 

 for manure. All the houses are far from the sea. The sites are, no doubt, 

 dictated by a sound traditional instinct, in which several needs are expressed. 

 In these exposed western islands every site is not suitable for a house. In 

 fact, only the more sheltered sites are suitable. A spring of good water must 

 be sufficiently near at hand. The house must be so placed that those who 

 are at home can look after the cattle and sheep-grazing in the open. In 

 mountain districts on the mainland this last consideration appears often to 

 govern the choice of site, the houses being placed at or near the edge of the 

 rough grazing, in apparent disregard of convenience in other respects. 



At present the houses in Clare Island are dotted here and there singly or 

 in pairs. Older maps show them grouped in small villages, and village sites 

 are still easily traced. My guide, Padraic Mhac Thuathail, born in 1841, 

 remembers many inhabited homesteads forming hamlets which are now 

 deserted. 



Among some of those who had visited Clare Island before me on the work 

 of this Survey I found the impression that the Irish language was almost 

 unknown to the islanders. Bearing in mind my experience of other places 

 of which a similar repute prevailed among visitors, when I met any of the 

 islanders about whose knowledge of Irish there might be a doubt, I spoke to 

 tiiem in Irish only, and I found that the middle-aged and elderly folk in every 

 part of the island could converse in Irish. The younger adults and the children 

 have at most a small stock of Irish words and phrases. English is now 

 consequently the common language of intercourse, and many who can speak 

 Irish well rarely do so. 



The local dialect of Irish is not to be distinguished in any general respect 

 from the dialect of Partry and Joyce's Country, the nearest districts in which 

 I had previously made a stay. Its phonetic system is the best preserved of 

 all the extant Irish dialects known to me, that is to say, is the most fully in 

 conformity with the orthography of early modern Irish. The main departure, 

 common to all the dialects of Connacht and Munster, is the weakening of a 

 and ea in an initial syllable followed by a long syllable, e.g., broddn for 

 brdddn ("salmon "), criogdn for creagdn (" a piece of rocky pasture "), The 

 diphthongation or lengthening of short vowels in certain positions, which 

 characterizes the dialects of Munster, the Aran Islands, and Connemara 

 (though with varying outcome in the various dialects), is not found in the 

 dialect of southern Mayo, except in the one instance, common to all the 

 modern dialects, of d lengthened before long r, as in barr, ard. Both in Partry 

 and in Clare Island I noted occasional phonetic tendencies suggestive of 

 northern influence. The very characteristic rounded 5, normal in Connacht 



