443 



may have since rescued it from its dishonoured position. It is no un- 

 common thing to see the stones of some venerable abbey or old feudal 

 castle, where no pious hand is stretched forth to stay the desecration, 

 employed by some boorish farmer to build a byre or a pigstye. 



I trust that the labours of the Academy may have the effect of 

 establishing a more creditable and satisfactory state of things for the 

 future. 



XLYIII. — On the Rivers of Ireland, with the Derivations of their 

 Names. By Owen Connellan, LL. D., Professor of Celtic Lan- 

 guages in Queen's College, Cork. 



[Read February 8, 1869.] 



The names of the oldest rivers in this country have been collected 

 from the Books of Lecan and Ballymote, from O'Clery's copy of the 

 Book of Conquests, and from the Annals of Ireland. 



There are only four rivers described in the Book of Dinnseanchus, 

 and the derivations of their names are legendary; but the writers of 

 that curious work have given a second derivation of two of them from 

 natural causes. These four rivers are the Barrow, Boyne, Shannon, and 

 the Raven River in the west of Kerry. The legend of the Shannon is 

 given in full, literally translated ; and it may be remarked, that there 

 are some words in the original Irish which are not to be found in our 

 printed Irish Dictionaries. The names of lakes, however, in the Dinn- 

 seanchus, are numerous. 



The writers of the Book of Conquests endeavour to determine the 

 different periods at which these old rivers were first discovered, or 

 began to flow over the land ; and they ascribe many of these circum- 

 stances to the times of the earliest colonies that came into Ireland. 

 The greater part of the Book of Conquests is considered by some to be 

 the oldest written composition in the Irish language. It is the History 

 of Ireland from the remotest times to the 12th century of the Christian 

 era, and there are several very old copies of it still extant. 



As in all other countries in this world, these names are all signi- 

 ficant. The most of them are very apparent and simple in their 

 meanings. We have the Gbairm m6p and Gbcnnn beag, or the great 

 and small rivers. There is also the glaipi, or small stream; and they 

 descend in the scale to the piorjdn — that is, a narrow, purling rivulet, 

 nearly covered over with the herbage growing on its brink, and the 

 name signifies the water-pipe. 



We also have the Black and White Rivers, the blue, the brown, 

 the yellow — in fact, all the hues in the rainbow are represented by 

 the colour of their waters. 



Several of them are named from their rapid currents, and their 

 distinctive noise, such as the roaring, loud-sounding, echoing, moaning, 

 murmuring, babbling, and harmonious- sounding rivers. 



