i66 



The Irish Naturalist. 



September, 



ON IRISH ANIMAL NAMES. 



BY NATHANIEL COLGAN, M.R.I.A. 



In the first of a series of interesting and suggestive papers 

 on Irish native animal names contributed by Dr. Scharff 

 to the Irish Naturalist for March last {supra p. 45) the 

 writer asks for criticism " from others interested in obtain- 

 ing the correct names." As these papers are bound to 

 stimulate research in a branch of inquiry to which the 

 scientific mind, the mind of the natural history student as 

 distinguished from the mind of the popular folk-lorist, has 

 but seldom been directed, I feel tempted to offer a few 

 remarks here, not so much by way of criticism of Dr. Scharff 

 as of exposition of the peculiar difficulties which beset the 

 subject. 



At the very outset it is necessary to make our minds 

 clear as to the precise meaning to be given to the words 

 '* correct name" in this connection ; for plain though the 

 expression may seem to be it is by no means devoid of 

 misleading implications. If it be maintained that the 

 correct native name of an Irish animal is the name fixed 

 by long -established literary usage, then we must forego 

 all hope of ever arriving at the truth as regards perhaps a 

 majority of Irish animal names. Many of them are quite 

 unknown in literature. Many others which have appeared 

 in literature either occasionally or frequently in one or other 

 of the dialects of the language have never attained to 

 literary predominance in any. Others, again, having at one 

 time won a more or less secure position in literature are 

 now become mere linguistic fossils. 



If, on the other hand, the correct name of an animal be 

 some name unknown in literature yet current in the still 

 surviving vernacular folk -speech of Ireland, then the ques- 

 tion immediately presents itself, which of the many names 

 for one and the same species contemporaneously in use in 

 the Irish dialects is to be preferred above the others ? 

 For the fact must never be lost sight of that folk names in 

 Irish, as in all languages, have often but a limited geogra- 

 phical extension. A mountain range, a river or an arm of 



