• PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
39 
same signification, but never used in the same way ; while we know there are 
many insects to which children among our own English speaking people apply 
that familiar word. Every person here, I suppose, has heard of some species 
of spiders called “ Daddy Longlegs.” We may, therefore, I conclude, omit this 
name. The term Dearc is evidently but a modification of the simple word 
Earc—produced by the operation of a general law in Celtic accidence, well 
known to Celtic scholars, viz., that the article exercises a certain influence on 
nouns, the character of the influence differing according to the gender of the 
noun and the nature of its initial letter. In the case of masculine nouns begin¬ 
ning with a vowel the influence just alluded to would prefix a T to the nomin¬ 
ative and accusative. Earc would then become Tearc—easily corrupted into 
Dearc, as all philologists are aware how readily T and D, letters of the same 
organ, are interchanged. Art and Arg are obviously corruptions, or at least 
modifications, of Earc; and in this way we succeed without much difficulty in 
reducing the generic names to three—Earc, Easg, and Eascu. 
The word Earc is used in various senses, and it is by no means easy to ascer¬ 
tain in which of them it is employed when made the generic name of the reptile 
to which it would appear it is very generally applied; though, for my part, I 
confess I never heard the word so applied in Cork or Kerry, the two counties 
with whose dialects and Eauna I was most familiar in boyhood. O’Reilly, in his 
Irish Dictionary, among many other meanings of Earc, gives that of lizard; 
O’Brien does not give it in that acceptation; and the dictionary published under 
the auspices of the Highland Society of Scotland only follows O’Reilly in 
explaining the term. The only sense of the word that appears to be in any 
way expressive of anything peculiar to the class of reptiles we are considering is 
that of “ speckled" or “shining” and thus the term may have been employed. 
I have heard, however, of another meaning, which has not been given in any of 
the dictionaries I have hitherto had an opportunity of consulting—namely, 
“ anything diminutive,” such, for example, as the smallest of a litter of pigs, of 
a clutch of chickens, &c. A gentleman well acquainted with the County of 
Waterford has assured me that the word is understood there in this sense, and 
so commonly applied to the land lizard. It will then mean “ the diminutive 
thing among the rushes”—an interpretation by no means unreasonable. I con¬ 
fess, however, it does not appear to me quite satisfactory. I shall now briefly 
consider the remaining two names. 
In the western parts of Cork, where I passed my earlier years, the lizard— 
object of terror to such as incautiously went to sleep in the open air—was never 
called by any other name than Eas-luachra—I mean by the Irish speaking por¬ 
tion of the inhabitants. The latter part of the compound has been already 
explained; the former part is the name usually given to the common Irish 
weazel. Now, it is generally known that analogy is the law of all languages in 
the process of formation. The first appellatives are believed to have been proper 
names. Gradually, as new objects presented themselves, the proper name was 
extended, according as the new objects presented more or less resemblance to 
those already furnished with appropriate designations. This law, it seems to 
me, would account for the extension of the term Eas—from an animal that 
usually accompanies man in his migrations to the less known and more rarely 
occurring “ dweller among the rushes.” 
The only remaining Celtic name—Eascu—admits of a similar explanation. 
It is composed of two elements—Eas and Cu, the latter signifying a hound, and 
obviously akin to the Greek kvojv and the Latin canis. In the two classic 
languages it is the generic word apparently, while in the Irish branch of the 
Celtic it is restricted properly to the variety “ greyhoundbut sometimes 
employed to denote hounds in general. The first part of the compound, among 
other meanings, bears also that of “ water.” The two syllables will then signify 
the “ waterhound,” and the whole word forms the only name by which, in the 
South of Ireland, I have heard those ignorant of English call the common eel. 
The resemblance between the hound and the eel may appear fanciful; but still 
I think it does exist in a degree sufficient to warrant the extension of the same 
term to the slender and swift-moving inhabitant of the stream. I should be 
