Note 2 — PREFACE.

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.