Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/237



Page I. In another variant of this tale, which I got from one Martin Brennan—more usually pronounced Brannan; in Irish, O'Braonáin—in Roscommon, the thing which the tailor kills is a swallow, which flew past him. He flung his needle at the bird, and it went through its eye and killed it. This success excites the tailor to further deeds of prowess. In this variant occurred also the widely-spread incident of the tailor's tricking the giant by pretending to squeeze water out of a stone.

Page 2. Garraun, is a common Anglicised Irish word in many parts of Ireland. It means properly a gelding or hack-horse; but in Donegal, strangely enough, it means a horse, and coppul, the ordinary word for a horse elsewhere, means there a mare. The old English seem to have borrowed this word capal from the Irish, cf. Percy's version of "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne," where the latter is thus represented—

"A sword and a dagger he wore by his side, Of manye a man the bane; And he was clad in his capull hyde, Topp and tayle and mayne."

Page 7, line 4. The modder-alla (, wild dog), is properly a