66 THE SHEEP AND ITS COUSINS 



colour, also existed at one time in Ireland,^ and 

 apparently belonged to the short-tailed loaghtan 

 type, possibly indeed to a breed closely allied to the 

 modern black St. Kilda strain. 



In this connection it may be mentioned that Dr. 

 Nelson Annandale, in a work on the Faroes,^ after 

 stating that most of the early colonists of the Faroes 

 came from Great Britain, and not, as is frequently 

 supposed, direct from Scandinavia, proceeds to ob- 

 serve that " the Suderoe folk often say that they are 

 of Irish, or rather ' Westman,' origin : and the ' men 

 of the West ' in old Norse history include both the 

 inhabitants of Ireland and those of the outer 

 Hebrides. They also gave a name to Westmann- 

 havn on the north-west coast of Stromoe . . . 

 a place which their ships are said to have fre- 

 quently visited. A certain amount of evidence 

 is given for this view by the fact that a breed of 

 sheep appears to have existed in the Faroes, and 

 especially on the little islands near Suderoe, before 

 the Norse settlement, and, indeed, to have given a 

 name to the group (yfer=sheep ; ^jv = island). It is 

 impossible that these sheep could have originated 

 in little islands separated by nearly two hundred 

 miles of sea from any other land ; it is unlikely that 

 they are so ancient as any former land-connection 



' See P. W. Joyce, Social History of Ancient Ireland, vol. ii. 

 p. 280, London, 1902. 



' The Faroes and Iceland, Oxford, 1905. 



