1915- Coi.GAN. — On Ifish Afiimal Names, 167 



the sea may serve as a linguistic no less than a biological 

 barrier. Where an animal has been long and generally 

 domesticated or is wide -spread and distinguished by some 

 conspicuous character we may find, no doubt, one name, 

 with more or less of phonetic modification, applied to it 

 throughout our Irish -speaking districts. But the number 

 of such species is small ; and for the majority of animals, 

 as for the majority of plants, it remains true that the name 

 changes, and often quite rapidly, with change of locality. 

 To take at random an instance from the folk nomenclature 

 of plants current in the English shires, no less than 35 

 distinct names are given for the Common Arum in Britten 

 and Holland's " Dictionary of English Plant Names." As 

 Professor Earle well expresses it, " the sphere of these 

 homely native names is very narrowly limited ; the number 

 of names that can be used wdth a certainty of being under- 

 stood is astonishingly few." ' 



The more consideration one gives to this subject the more 

 inevitably is one forced to the conclusion that all names in 

 use by common consent over a fairly large area, say, as a 

 minimum, over a parish, should be regarded as correct, and 

 that it is the rule rather than the exception that one and 

 the same animal or plant should have several names, all 

 equally correct though differing widely in extension. In 

 the present state of the Irish language and literature the 

 subject of animal and plant names is, in fact, a branch of 

 folk-lore, a thing to be studied in the field rather than in 

 the closet ; and the task which lies immediately before the 

 worker in this department is the making of local lists. It 

 is only by the multiplication of such lists that we can deter- 

 mine whether an animal name is general or local or obsolete 

 or current, whether a given animal has one name or several, 

 or whether the same name is in different districts applied 

 to' different animals. The production of a trustworthy local 

 list makes large demands on the caution no less than on the 

 patience and skill of the collector. The difficulties are the 

 same in kind though not in degree as those encountered by 



1 English Plant Names from the Tenth to the Fifteenth Century. Claren- 

 don Press, Oxford, 1880. 



