predecessors employed. Mr. Curtin tells us that he has taken his tales from the old Gaelic-speaking men; but he must have done so through the awkward medium of an interpreter, for his ignorance of the commonest Irish words is as startling as Lady Wilde's.[1] He follows Lady Wilde in this, too, that he keeps us in profound ignorance of his authorities. He mentions not one name, and except that he speaks in a general way of old Gaelic speakers in nooks where the language is still spoken, he leaves us in complete darkness as to where and from whom, and how he collected these stories. In this he does not do himself justice, for, from my own knowledge of Irish folk-lore, such as it is, I can easily recognize that Mr. Curtin has approached the fountain-head more nearly than any other. Unfortunately, like his predecessors, he has a literary style of his own, for
- ↑ Thus he over and over again speaks of a slumber-pin as bar an suan, evidently mistaking the an of bioran, "a pin," for an the definite article. So he has slat an draoiachta for slaitin, or statán draoigheachta. He says innis caol (narrow island) means "light island," and that gil an og means "water of youth!" &c.; but, strangest of all, he talks in one of his stories of killing and boiling a stork, though his social researches on Irish soil might have taught him that that bird was not a Hibernian fowl. He evidently mistakes the very common word sturc, a bullock, or large animal, or, possibly, torc, "a wild boar," for the bird stork. His interpreter probably led him astray in the best good faith, for sturck is just as common a word with English-speaking people as with Gaelic speakers, though it is not to be found in our wretched dictionaries.
