THE BLACK OR SHIP RAT 581 



in insula Aran in occidentali Connactice solo posita) notabile : quia cum 

 per totam Hiberniam copiose nimis mures- abundent, haec tamen insula 

 mure caret. Mus enim nee nascitur nee vivit invectus. (There is another 

 thing remarkable in this island — although mures swarm in vast numbers 

 in other parts of Ireland, here not a single one is found. No mus is 

 bred here, nor does it live if it be introduced.) The island, however, 

 was probably not Aran, as suggested above, but Inishglora, or Caher, 

 both in Co. Mayo, the sanctity of each of which was so great that no 

 rat or mouse could live for even a few minutes on their shores ; the 

 earth of these islands drove rats and mice from any house on which it 

 was sprinkled — see Browne, Pwc. Roy. Irish Acad., v., 'T)&c^m\>e.x 1898, 

 64; Westropp, Proc. cit., xxxi., 2, 191 1, 53. 



The words mus and mures in the above passage are usually trans- 

 lated " mouse " and " mice," as in Bohn's edition of the Topographia, 

 64; but there is no evidence that Ireland, which has no "voles," ever 

 suffered from superabundance of mice, and the word mures, to which 

 Higden, writing his Polychronichon in the following (fourteenth) century 

 (he died in 1363), added the word nocentissimos = " most harmful," was 

 almost certainly applied to the Black Rat, Epimys rattus, which was 

 at that time, as stated above, already quite well known in England 

 and considered a nuisance. It probably made its way to Ireland quite 

 as early as to England, since the Irish are known to have traded freely 

 with England and Europe from at least the thirteenth century. 

 Unfortunately, O'Flaherty {Chorographical Description of West or 

 H-Iar Connaugkt, 1684) misinterpreted Giraldus, writing that "it 

 {i.e. West Connaught) admits no rats to live anywhere except the isles 

 of Aran, and the district of the west liberties of Galway," which is a 

 reversed translation of Giraldus, but is important, as it accepts the 

 meaning of mures as " rats." 



About 1377, "rats or mice" are mentioned as doing damage in the 

 Register of Archbishop Sweteman of Armagh (Lawlor, Proc. Roy. 

 Dublin Soc, xxiv., c. 8, 264, 191 1). 



In subsequent years rats were generally well known in Ireland, the 

 common belief at the end of the sixteenth century being represented 

 by four lines quoted by Fynes-Moryson (1559-1603; op. cit. supra, 

 p. 326) :— 



" Quatuor hybernos vexant animalia, turpes 

 Corpora vermiculi, sorices per tecta rapaces. 

 Carnivori vastantque lupi crudeliter agros 

 Haec tria nequitia superas Romane sacerdos." 



For four vile beasts Ireland hath no fence : 

 Their bodies lice, their houses rats possess ; 



Most wicked priests govern their conscience, 

 And ravening wolves do waste their fields no less. 



