Clare Island Survey — Gaelic Plant and Animal Names. 4 5 



Oak. The explanation is probably this. Some of the species, i.e., the Alder, 

 the Broom, and the Spindle-tree, are altogether wanting in the island flora ; 

 all the others are quite rare there, so much so that they enter but seldom, if at 

 all, into the thoughts of the island population as a whole. The Hazel, the 

 Birch, the Holly, and the Quicken-tree or Mountain Ash linger on in 

 sheltered hollows, as on the north-east of the island ; but there is reason to 

 suppose that knowledge of their existence there is confined to the residents of 

 the townland of Ballytoohy More, in which they grow, and is hidden from 

 the " untravelled " population of those remote regions of the island lying some 

 two to three miles distant around and beyond the abbey. What is seldom 

 thought of is seldom spoken of : what is seldom spoken of tends to drop 

 altogether out of speech. It may be that further inquiry would have shown 

 me that the ancient and widespread Gaelic names for the Holly, the Hazel, 

 the Birch, and the Quicken-tree are still in use among the Ballytoohy men, 

 and that the absence of this group of names is, in part at least, rather 

 apparent than real. However that may be, there can be small doubt but that 

 the Gaelic names of trees are not generally current in the island. 



In drawing up the lists, I have thought it advisable to touch briefly on 

 dialectic variations of the Gaelic names, especially the plant names, the variants 

 being drawn from desultory collections made in various parts of Ireland 

 within the last twenty years, and I have added short notes on the uses now made 

 of plants or animals in the Clew Bay area. I have also appended to each of the 

 two sections, on plants and on animals, a very short list of some English names 

 I found current in the area, enough perhaps to show that the study of such 

 names is full of interest from a distributional point of view. For instance, 

 the common use in Clare Island of the name Bore-tree for the Elder, of Whin 

 for Furze, and of autshot as an English equivalent for the Gaelic CAitte&c, the 

 bed alcove built out from the wall of the living room, would seem to point to 

 a northern English or Border element in the island population. And finally, 

 as a supplement to the whole, I have given as closely as possible in the words 

 of the narrator, some scraps of legend connected with the native fauna which I 

 chanced to meet with while collecting material for the lists. The collecting 

 and recording of such naive folk-stories may to some appear a work of extreme 

 frivolity. Yet others, aud I am convinced not a few, will prize these waifs and 

 strays of Clare Island tradition as survivals of surpassing interest, since they 

 carry us back to the primitive beliefs of a remote past, compared with which 

 the thirteenth-century abbey of the O'Malleys is but a thing of yesterday. 



As for the arrangement of the material embodied in the lists, three schemes 

 suggested themselves ; one purely scientific, where the botanical and zoological 

 bhiomial names are placed first and arranged in the sequence of some recognized 



