178 LEPORID^— ORYCTOLAGUS 



the Conyng, ant make roste is loyne " (Political Songs in Camden 

 Soc. Public, 191), being a joke on the name of a Fleming called 

 " Conyng." The word has not been traced farther back, though the 

 animal was alluded to at earlier dates under the Latin name cuniculus ; 

 but there is no doubt that it originated in the old French connil or 

 counilia word cognate with the Provencal conil), of which the Norman 

 plural was coniz, later conis ; this gave an English plural, conys, conies, 

 from which came a singular, cony, conie. 



The forerunner of cony, the Greek kvvikKo^, whence the Latin 

 cuniculus, made its first appearance in literature in the "History" 

 of Polybius (§ 12, 3, 10), written about 204 B.C. If .^lian (JDe Natura 

 Animalium, xiii. 15), who lived in the third century of the Christian 

 era, be correct, the word was imported from the Celto-Iberians, 

 i.e., the Basques. Strong {^Zoologist, 1894, 401-6), would therefore 

 connect it with the modern Basque word for a rabbit, unchi, which he 

 suggests has probably undergone mutilation since Greeks and Romans 

 borrowed it over two thousand years ago. But if so, the Romans must 

 have soon forgotten the origin of the word, since Varro {De Re Rustica, 

 iii., 12), and Pliny {Historia Naturalis, viii., 55) connected it with 

 cune^s = a wedge, supposing it to have reference to the digging powers 

 of the animal. 



Many surnames and compound words are popularly connected with 

 cony, but often in error. No genuine English name could have thus 

 originated, because the first part would have to be a French word 

 dating from about the 13th cetitury. No name, therefore, derived from 

 the word can be older than that period. On the other hand, many 

 Irish names of places are genuinely thus derived, and must, therefore, 

 be more recent than the Norman Conquest. They are usually easy to 

 recognise, and may be found in Joyce's Irish Names of Places ; but a 

 few are difficult, such as Kylenagoneeny {Coill-na-gcoininidhe) = ^OQ^ 

 of rabbits, Co. Limerick; and Lisnagunnion = iort of rabbits, Co. 

 Monaghan. 



Cony-garth or coney-garth, a rabbit-warren, from late Middle English 

 conyngerthe, came undoubtedly, according to Skeat, by misdivision 

 from connynge-\-erthe, as if from cony -\- earth. Conyger or conigree ; 

 coney-grees or coney-greys (as in Cheshire, fide Coward and Oldham) ; 

 coneygreeves (also in Cheshire) ; and cunnigreene, with many other 

 forms, being corruptions of the same type, came from the Old 

 French conniniere or coninyere (adapted to connin), later also conilliere, 

 from Low Latin cunicularia, being properly the feminine of an 

 adjective cunicularius = 'perta.\xYmg to a rabbit {Cent. Did.). All of these 

 must be more recent than Domesday Book, which was finished about 

 1086, and in which warrens are not mentioned. "Cunicularia" first 

 appear in the anonymous Latin book on English law cited as " Fleta, 



