would be interesting to know the locality where so curious a Pagan custom is still practised, for I confess that though I have spoken Irish in every county where it is still spoken, I have never been, nor do I expect to be, so saluted. Lady Wilde's volumes, are, nevertheless, a wonderful and copious record of folk-lore and folk customs, which must lay Irishmen under one more debt of gratitude to the gifted compiler. It is unfortunate, however, that these volumes are hardly as valuable as they are interesting, and for the usual reason—that we do not know what is Lady Wilde's and what is not.
Almost contemporaneously with Lady Wilde's last book there appeared this year yet another important work, a collection of Irish folk-tales taken from the Gaelic speakers of the south and north-west, by an American gentleman, Mr. Jeremiah Curtin. He has collected some twenty tales, which are told very well, and with much less cooking and flavouring than his
This would have made her point just as well. Unfortunately, Lady Wilde is always equally extraordinary or unhappy in her informants where Irish is concerned. Thus, she informs us that bo-banna (meant for bo-bainne, a milch cow) is a "white cow"; that tobar-na-bo (the cow's well) is "the well of the white cow"; that Banshee comes from van "the woman"—(bean means "a woman"); that Leith Brogan—i.e., leprechaun—is "the artificer of the brogue," while it really means the half or one-shoe, or, according to Stokes, is merely a corruption of locharpan; that tobar-na-dara (probably the "oak-well") is the "well of tears," etc. Unfortunately, in Ireland it is no disgrace, but really seems rather a recommendation, to be ignorant of Irish, even when writing on Ireland.
