CoLGAN. — Folk-lore of Irish Plants and Animals, 6i 
Lough Geal, or the Bright or White or Shining Lake, hes 
at 360 feet under the spurs of Brandon on one's left as one 
descends Connor Hill to Cloghane. You catch sight of it 
just as you pass on the right of the road the httle Cum 
Cx\o(i, or Bhnd Glen, where lies the lonely tarn known as 
to6 ^ pe-ot^t^e, or the Pedlar's Lake, which takes its name 
from a pedlar who was murdered there many years ago. 
Lough Geal is connected with a higher lough. Lough Duff, 
and discharges by a stream which gathers all the waters from 
the grand central cirque of Brandon, including those of 
Lough Avoonane in Glanshanacuirp, before reaching the 
sea at Cloghane. By Glanshanacuirp, the Glen of the Old 
Dead Body, there hangs no doubt some tragic tale like the 
story of the Pedlar's Lake ; but its memory had passed 
away from the Cloghane folk, and the origin of the name 
still remains for me a mystery. 
To sum up, the Carrabuncle would seem to be a highly 
developed form of the puAf c, or great serpent or dragon, 
which inhabits, or at all events did inhabit in less sceptical 
times than ours, many of our Irish lakes, as their names 
suggest. There are at least two stations for the pi^r^ in 
Kerry, Loughnapiast, in the Kenmare peninsula, and 
Cumeennapiast, high up in the Reeks. But if the aquatic 
animal denoted by the name Carrabuncle be indigenous in 
Ireland, at least as a subjective animal, its name (which is 
apparently unknown to Gaeldom outside of the Kingdom 
of Kerry) is obviously exotic. Wlience, then, came this 
name ? The question seemed to me absolutely insoluble 
until a year or so after my visit to Brandon, when reading 
Wallace's Travels on the River Amazon I came across a 
curious reference to a South American " Carrabuncle," 
which, as the French would say, gave me furiously to 
think. The reference occurs in the chapter on the aborigines 
of the Amazon, where, discussing the legend of the female 
warriors or amazons said to inhabit the upper reaches of 
the great river, he says : — " I fear the story of the Amazons 
must be placed with those of the Curipura, or Demon of the 
Woods, and Carbunculo of the Upper Amazon and Peru." 
Here we have the Spanish and Portuguese word Car- 
A3 
