4 2 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



peasant as they are by the peasant in all countries. His names are often 

 generic rather than specific; and whole groups of plants and auimals with which 

 he has no immediate concern, the groups of the inconspicuous, the innoxious, 

 and the useless, are passed over by him unnoticed and unnamed. Thus the 

 plant and animal nomenclature of folk-speech must always fall short of the 

 copiousness of the finely — often only too finely — discriminative nomenclature 

 of science. 



In dealing with Gaelic popular names of plants and animals perhaps the 

 most formidable difficulties to be overcome are orthographical and etymological, 

 difficulties of the closet rather than of the field. Having first of all made 

 sure of the particular plant or animal to which a given name is applied by 

 the common consent of " knowledgeable " persons born and reared in the 

 district, and having satisfied yourself that you fully apprehend the often obscure 

 sounds which make up the spoken name, you must then proceed to represent 

 these sounds in writing according to the recognized rules of Irish Gaelic 

 orthography. At once you are confronted with etymological problems, since 

 your efforts to arrive at a correct spelling of the name are well-nigh in- 

 separable from attempts to fix its precise meaning, and with many, perhaps 

 with a majority of Gaelic plant and animal names, this meaning is past finding 

 out. Herein lies a subtle temptation which one must constantly guard 

 against, the temptation to set up a hypothetical meaning and to strain the pro- 

 nunciation so as to make it square with the hypothesis, and so justify a 

 spelling conveying both sound and sense. Some intrepid attempts which have 

 been made by grave writers at a solution of the etymological problems 

 presented by Gaelic plant names remind one of nothing so much as Swift's 

 famous derivation of 'ostler' from ' oat-stealer.' And this temptation to vitiate 

 the linguistic record works quite as powerfully in folk-speech as in literature. 

 The unlettered peasant is in all ages just as impatient of meaningless names 

 as is the student, and just as prone to force a meaning where the true 

 meaning has become obscured. 



In preparing the following lists a severe curb has been placed on this 

 tendency to an unscientific use of the imagination, and as a result it will be 

 seen that no attempt is made even to so much as suggest a meaning for a large 

 number of the names given. In Gaebc folk-speech, as in folk-speech all the 

 world over, the origin and meaning of such names have become hopelessly 

 obscured by long ages of phonetic corruption. We must, in fact, accept them 

 as labels or marks of identification rather than descriptive or allusive terms. 



Many popular names of plants and animals in Gaelic as in English folk- 

 speech are of very local application. In some cases, indeed, their extension 

 may be little more than parochial. The following lists do not furnish any 



