6o 
The Irish Naturalist. 
March 
The next reference to the " carrabuncle " is found nearly 
130 years later in Mr. Henry Hart's paper on the " Plants 
of some of the Mountain Ranges of Ireland," published in 
the R. I. Academy's Proceedings for 1884. He there tells 
us how a countryman who accompanied him on Brandon 
Mountain in 1883 told him that in Lough Veagh, one of the 
lakes under Brandon, the people get pearl shells. These 
come off an enormous animal called the "Carrabuncle" 
which is seen glittering like silver in the water at night. The 
animal has gold and jewels and precious stones and shells 
hanging on to it, and has never been caught. Hart hopes 
that sometime a specimen will reach our National Museum. 
(I am informed that it is still a desideratum in that fine 
collection of Irish animals.) 
On a visit paid to Brandon five years later, in 1888, I 
had the good fortune to meet Hart's informant on the 
mountain side, and lost no time in " sounding " him on the 
subject of the Carrabuncle. He told me it was a kind of 
snake that lived in Lough Geal, not L. Veagh, and made 
the lake shine, and threw off shells with precious stones in 
them. He never saw the Carrabuncle, but if you could only 
catch it you would get some things of great value that 
follow after it. On returning that night to Cloghane, where 
we stayed in Connor's small publichouse and lived on eggs, 
griddle bread, and stewed cockles, Connor gave us further 
information about the Carrabuncle. He had never seen 
it himself, but had often heard tell of it. It was only seen 
once in seven years and was " like a cashk rowlin' about 
in the wather." Mrs. Connor always thought the carra- 
buncle was a fish, and she remembered men coming some 
years before and getting pearls in the lakes and rivers, 
" out of them shells called hYcallacansP The t)pex^llx\6Ati 
is evidently JJnio maygaritifer. Dinneen gives the word in 
his Dictionary, and explains it as " a sort of oval shell -fish " 
without attempting to identify it. The next day the local 
postman confirmed the existence of the Carrabuncle. It 
lit up the whole lake, he said, and the pearls found in the 
river that flowed out from Lough Geal came off the Carra- 
buncle. 
