APRIL 85 



sents the nominative ceann tir, 'land's end,' while 

 Kintyre is the locative cinn Ur, ' at the land's end.' 



Stress has been laid on the principle that place-names 

 are primarily utilitarian even among the Celts, who are 

 much more poetical than the Germanic race, and that 

 imaginative or sentimental explanations ought to be 

 viewed with extreme suspicion. But exception must be 

 made in regard both to superstition and religion, by one 

 of which always, by both often, human intelligence is 

 largely swayed. So it comes that fairies, devils, witches, 

 and ghosts figure pretty frequently in the topography, 

 especially of lands occupied by the Celt. Shakespeare's 

 Puck — 'merry wanderer of the night' — was feared in 

 primitive Ireland as Piica, and is commemorated in many 

 names such as PoUaphuca, Boheraphuca, and Carriga- 

 phuca — Puck's pool, road, and crag. Those who have 

 followed the chase in that paradise of fox-hunters, county 

 Meath, may remember a line of moderate uplands to the 

 south of Trim called the Shee Hills, 'shee' being the 

 correct pronunciation of the Gaelic sidh, a fairy, a word 

 which appears in countless place-names, among others 

 the well-known Glenshee in Perthshire. Herein the 

 terminal syllable is the same as in banshee — bean sidhe — 

 the female sprite that foretells death in a family by 

 wailing under the window. 



Religion may be traced by its imprint upon the 

 whole circuit of the globe. The Spaniards used their 

 once tremendous sea-power not only in sweeping up 

 treasure and annexing continents but in driving the 

 heathen, on pain of death and worse than death, into 

 the fold of Holy Church; and they filled their charts 

 with the names of saints and articles of belief. On 



