CoLGAN. — Folk-lore of Irish Plants and Animals 59 
account of the metamorphosis is given by Giraldus Cam- 
brensis in his famous 12th century " Topography of Ireland," 
where he tells us he has seen with his own eyes more than 
1,000 embryos of birds of this species on the sea shore. He 
does not approve of bishops and men of religion eating these 
geese on fast days on the plea that their fishy origin takes 
them out of the category of flesh. Giraldus does not object 
on the ground that he holds the origin of these geese to be 
"fishy" in the modern slang sense of that term. He 
accepts the marine origin of the geese as fully proved, but 
maintains, nevertheless, that the geese are flesh. 
On this same coast, beyond Roonah, where Inishturk, 
Caher and Clare Island open out so grandly across the great 
smooth rollers on a fine day, I found the boys had distinctive 
names for the Cormorant and the Shag, C^ille^c 'Out) for 
the first and C^vef^n for the second, while the Common 
Limpet or Patella known here, as it is all round the Irish 
coasts, by the name "D^ifneAC, was firmly beheved to 
develop out of the Acorn-shell or Balanus which studs the 
rocks. The same opinion is held at Loughshinny, on the 
Dublin coast. 
I have already claimed the attention of my hearers so 
long that I refrain from further reference to the folk-lore 
of Irish animals known to science, so that I may have a few 
minutes left to devote to some of our animals which still 
await scientific description and nomination. There is 
reason to believe that these enjoy no more than a subjective 
existence. The first of these subjective animals, as we ma^^ 
call them, is the Carrabuncle. It is an aquatic animal, 
and the first reference I can find to it is a rather vague one 
in Smith's History of Kerry, published in 1756. Speaking of 
the Killarney Lakes, Smith says: — " The common people here- 
about have a strange, romantic notion of their seeing in fair 
weather what they call a carbuncle at the bottom of the 
lake in a particular part of it which they say is more than 
60 fathoms deep." Smith, erroneously as I believe, assumes 
this Carbuncle of the common people to be the precious 
stone so named, and in a footnote expresses doubt as to 
whether any such stone exists. 
