1914- CoLGAN. — Folk-lore of Irish Plants mid Aiiivials. 63 
animal given by Gaelic eye-witnesses are so minute and 
circumstantial that English sportsmen looking for some- 
thing to kill have gone in quest of it. Campbell himself 
was fortunate enough to get a full description from a High- 
land man who when out fowling one day caught sight of 
the animal in a lonely loch. He waded out into the water, 
hoping to get a shot at the monster, then seventy yards 
distant, but failed. The animal disappeared, yet not so 
quickly but that the Highland man had time to note that 
its neck was 2 feet 11 inches long. Campbell regrets that 
the Highland man had not taken his long bow with him on 
this occasion instead of his fowling piece. If he had he 
might have bagged the GaC Uifse. 
I have only once come on the track of the e^C Uifge in 
Ireland. It was in Connemara in 1897. I was out on Lough 
Inagh one evening near nightfall dragging for Isoetes echino- 
spora from a boat rowed by my landlord, Joyce of Cloona- 
cartan, and when returning (without the Isoetes echinospora 
but with an interesting variety, falcata, of the common 
species) Joyce pointed me out a grassy land -spit running 
into the lake where some years ago a friend of his had seen 
the water -horse emerge from the lake. Having pranced 
about and shaken his mane for a few seconds, the animal 
returned with a mighty splash to his accustomed habitat. 
MacDougall, in his Folk and Hero Tales of Argyle thus 
endeavours to rationalise the G-ac Uifge : — "The Water 
Horse, I believe, is nothing else than the personification of 
the sudden blast of wind or whirlwind which sweeps over 
the surface of the lakes of the winding glens of the highlands. 
The whirlwind strikes the water suddenly, leaves behind it 
a ripple like the wake of a living creature swimming beneath 
the surface, and then, halting for a moment, raises a few 
inches above the surface a dark crest of little waves which 
bear a remote resemblance to the back and mane of such a 
creature." This may very well have been the occasion of 
individual appearances of the Water Horse, but no doubt 
the existence in legend of the animal long ante-dated such 
particular appearances. The idea of the animal, in fact, 
must have been already in the mind of the observer when 
the whirlwind brought the animal itself to his startled 
