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34 Gaelic Society of Inverness.
footed elk, kc; for who could possi})ly apply the word,
" spagach " to the straight, slender, genteel feet of the blackbird 1
whereas nothing could be so descriptive of the great clumsy clubfeet
of the elk, whose hoofs are so much and so loosely divided
that when it puts its weight on them, they spread out so wide
that when it lifts its foot, the two divisions of the hoof fall together
with a loud clattering noise, which would he, sure to draw
the attention of our remote ancestors to them, and what would be
more likely than that they would in derision liken the hated
Roman soldiers, with their great broad sandals on their feet, to
the clumsy lumbering elk; certainly they would be more likely to
do so than to liken them to the s])rightly blackbird. If che saying
does refer to the elk, which was extinct in Britain ages before all
written history, it is another proof added to the many, of how the
ancient lore of the Celts, though unwritten, was handed down
through so many generations of the children of the Gael.
Latin
—
— — —
RING OUZEL.
Tanlvs torqvatcs. Gaelic— Dvhhchraige, Druid-mhonaiJh
Druid-dimhh. Welsh Mwyalchen y graiy.
Group IV.— Sylviadce.
HEDGE SPARROW.
Latin —Accentor moJidaris. Gaelic Geallmonii-nam-jjreas,
iSporag, Dnvnag. Welsh Llvyd y gwrych.
I have no doubt the common English country name of this
bird—Dunnock (Rev. J. C. Atkinson)— is simply a corruption of
the Gaelic name, Donnag—Brownie, or little brown bird.
ROBIN.
Latin Erythaca rnbecida. Gaelic Bru-dhearg, Bru-dheargaii,
Broinn-dhearg, Broinn-dliecn gan, Broinileag, Nigidh, Ruadhag,
Rohaii-roid. Welsh— Yr Jiobi goch^ Bron-goch.
Here also one of the English country names given by the
Rev. J. Atkinson seems to come from the Gaelic— Ruddock,
Ruadhag, little red bird— and as the English borrow from the
Gaelic, it is only fair that we should do the same from their language
(in modern times, of course, as everybody knows most of
our Gaelic names of birds were in use many centuiies Ijefore the
Engli.'^h language had an existence). 80, very curiously, one of
our greatest l)ards, Alexander Macdonald, has done in this case,
for though in his Gaelic Vocabulary he gives the Gaelic name of
the robin as Broinn-dheargan, yet in his poems he always calls