62 Proceedings of the Roi/al Irish Academy. 



Much learning has been expended in efforts to discover the mysterious 

 Crom by subjecting his compound name to philological dissection. The 

 interpretations of the word Crovi that are most in favour oscillate between 

 {a) "a maggot" or " serpent " and (b) " a crooked or bent thing " ; while, as 

 regards Cruaich, opinion is equally divided between the significations (cj 

 "bloody" and {d) "mound." Every combination which these meanings 

 yield has been put forward by scholars of eminence as the solution of Crom's 

 identity.' Some would, indeed, suggest that the name was of no particular" 

 import; that, in all probability,. it denoted nothing more than a neglected 

 heap of stones at Magh Sleacht.- 



A hypothesis evolved, in the first instance, from linguistic speculation, if 

 it is to be carried beyond the conjectural stage, must be compared with such 

 evidential tokens as are discovei'able among the traditions of Crom that 

 survive in records and in living legends. "With a view to bringing the trial 

 processes to a speedy end, I shall range together the theories just noticed, 

 and confront them with a single folk-tale, which was taken down verbally, 

 not many years since, in the native speech, from an old resident of Tirawley, 

 and was subsequently published by ilr. J. H. Lloyd under the title " Sgeala 

 ar Naomh Padhraic's ar Chrom Dnbh."^ But before doing so let me admit 

 from the glossaries just another verbal meaning which has hitherto, unjustly, 

 been almost overlooked or ignored. Criiim is an archaic word, but we know, 

 on ample authority, that it existed in old Irish, and signified thunder.^ 



The story I propose to introduce reads as if it had been composed, of set 

 purpose, by George Meredith or Eudyard Kipling, or some other master of 

 the allegoric art, to euhemerize Black Crom and the vagarious perversity of 

 his works and pomps. The scene of the drama is the headland between the 

 bays of Killala and Bunatrahir, in the County Mayo. The same ground was 

 anciently occupied by the wood of Foehlad, the wood whence St. Patrick in a 

 dream heard the "voice of the Irish" calling him back to walk amongst 



I Thus O'Curry ("MS. Mat.," p. 632) adopts the combination (a) (c). 

 Borlase (" Dohiiens of Ireland," ii, 472) ,, ,, (a) (d)• 



De Jubainville(''Ir. Myth. Cyc.,"pp. 60-61) ,, ,, (fe) (c). 



Rhys (" Orig. and Gr. of Celt. Rel.," p. 201) ,, „ (6) (d). 



Professor Henderson propounds the novel view that Crom may be "cognate with 



the Teutonic hrum," which means " soot" (" Survivals of Belief," p. 204). 



- Wood-Martin (" Traces of the Elder Faiths," ii, 208) ; MacBain (" Celt. Myth, and 



Rel.," p. 201). Dr. W. Stokes took Crom to be a mere earth-god (" Rev. Celt.," xvi, 35). 

 2" Lub na Cailli<,'he," published by Connradh na Gaedhilge (1910), pp. 33-40. See 



also "Gadelica," vol. i, pp. 172, 173. 



* See " Archiv fiir Celtische Lexicographie," Band III, Heft I, p. 535, where Kuno 



Meyer quotes from O'Clery'sFocloir " Cruimi. toirneach." The lexicographers O'Brien 



and Reilly also give cruim = thunder. 



