G, GORT, ivy in the Ogham alphabet. The bird ... - Rodney Mackay

GAINNE-SITH, GAINSIG, an elf-arrow or dart. “It was
claimed that the sigh carried "quivers of "adder-slough"
(snake casting) and bows made of the ribs of a man buried
where three laird's lands meet; their arrows are made of
bog reed, tipped with white flints and dipped in the dew of
hemlock (which was poisonous)...With their arrows they
shoot the cattle of those who offend them; the wound is
invisible to common eyes, but there are gifted personages
who can discern and cure it." (Gnomes Fairies Elves and
Other Little People, pp. 351-352). These elf-arrows
actually exist as triangular bits of flint, supposedly the
heads of arrows used by the Neolithic men of Britain.
Though more plentiful in Scotland, they are also found in
England and Ireland, and in those places are associated with
the "fairies." The wounds they make are said invisible to
the ordinary physician but dangerous in the extreme. In the
early Anglo-Saxon epics, they are referred to alternately as
the "arrows of the elfs” or "arrows of the gods," suggesting
that earlier men made few distinctions between these two
species of creature from the Unseen World.
GAIRM-OLC, gairm, call; Bry. garm, a shout; olc, bad, one
bringing on the wrath of a vengeful spirit. It was a tenet of
Gaelic wisdom that the name of an individual was
intimately associated with his spirit, thus a god could be
called at the mere mention of his name. Similarly, it was
tabooed to mention the names of certain things that
happened to be associated with questionable spirits. It was
also bad form to give one's own name to a stranger, or
mention the names of certain animals after dark for fear
that the spirit of that person or animal might fall under the
sway of some dark lord. When a Hebridean drover noticed
that the local priest was pasturing sheep on a field known
to be "bad for cattle" he had to approach the subject
obliquely, thus: "It's telling this matter to the stones I am
and not to you, father..." It was supposed that the evil spirit
of this patch of land would not be indifferent to any
mention of his doings. The speaker did not wish to
inadvertently injure the priest or his flock of animals, thus
this address, which was intended to mislead this "devil of