Mahaffy — The Introduction of the Ass into Ireland. 537 



all these there is no monograph on the ass even attempting completeness. I 

 have only found the short book of Tegetmeier, which concerns itself almost 

 exclusively with the foreign European varieties, the ass fit for breeding mules- 

 England, he says, has produced no such varieties. 



Here are, however, some interesting scraps. I have learned from Professor 

 Pope, one of our best Orientalists, that there are in Arabic two distinct words 

 for two distinct varieties : one, hamar, the large saddle ass, always highly 

 valued in the East, and still in southern Europe and northern Africa ; the 

 other, the smaller or baggage ass, called ghash, which seems to be the parent 

 of our words for it in Latin, French, English, and German. This smaller sort 

 was mainly used as a beast of burden, and was consequently esteemed as 

 such. This suggests a new explanation of a passage in Scripture (Zech. 

 ix. 9) which in the Hebrew has no sensible meaning. But both in the LXX 

 and in the Greek of St. Matthew, who quotes it, the matter is made clear : 

 " Behold, thy King cometh .... lowly, and riding on a beast of burden 

 (vTTo^vyiov), even an ass's colt [or small ass]." The Greek authors knew the 

 distinction between the saddle ass, always a dignified conveyance in the 

 East, and the mere baggage or pack animal. It was a distinct variety, now 

 represented by the asses of northern Europe. 



The writer of the monograph I suggest must not only be a zoologist but 

 a historian, and also even a psychologist. For he must set himself to explain 

 how this animal, so dignified in early Oriental history, should have been for 

 centuries the emblem of stupidity and the object of ridicule. Any of us who 

 have studied animals even superficially knows that the ass is not less 

 intelligent than the horse, or even than other animals of higher pretensions. 

 All I can tell our problematical writer of the monograph is that these jokes are 

 at least as old as classical Greek,' and this human idiosyncrasy has lasted to 

 the present day. When permission was asked ten days ago by our Secretary 

 that I should read this paper, the proposal was received cordially, but with a 

 burst of hilarity — a curious bit of evidence how easy it is, with a topic worn 

 threadbare through many centuries of repetition, to amuse even the higher 

 varieties of the human species. 



Note added in Press. — Since this paper was written, various friends 

 and correspondents have added the following facts to my knowledge of the 

 subject. Mr. Burtchaell tells me that in a heraldic book about Irish families, 

 it is stated the ass was the crest of the Monie family, one of whom was 



^ From Homer and old proverbs through the Greek comedy. Cf. Homer, Iliad, xi, 55S, 

 where the ass is cited as a type of obstinacy, but of intelligent obstinacy. 



K.I. A. PKOC, VOL. XXXIII., SECT. C. [76] 



