Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/250

188 story, pronounced the word as Gulyeesh, anent which my friend Mr. Thomas Flannery furnished me at the time with the following interesting note:— i.e., "It is not likely that the name Goillis is Giolla-iosa; the one could not be changed into the other. I think that Goillis is the same as Goill-ghéis, or Gaill-ghéis (i.e., foreign swan). Géis means swan. I remember a name Muirgheis (sea swan) in the Annals; and there is many a man's name that comes from the names of birds as well as from the names of animals, such as Bran (raven), Fiach (scald crow), Lon and Loinin (blackbird), Seabhac (falcon), etc. Moreover, he is Goillis of the black feet. Do you not know that the black-foot is a name for the swan in many parts of Ireland. There are other things in this story which make me believe that it is of those tales which treat of swans or géises. Is it not a strange thing that the princess should take a liking to a dirty-footed, black-footed, lazy boy like him? Is it not curious also that the nickname of black-foot is not given to him, after a few words at the beginning, from that out to the end? The nickname is forgotten, and the cause for which he got it."

This is certainly curious, as Mr. Flannery observes, and is probably due to the story being imperfectly remembered by the shanachie. In order to motivate the black feet at all, Guleesh should be made to say that he would never wash his feet till he made a princess fall in love with him, or something of that nature. This was probably the case originally, but these stories must be all greatly impaired during the last half century, since people ceased to take an interest in things Irish.

There are two stories in Lady Wilde's book that somewhat resemble this.

"The Midnight Ride," a short story of four pages, in which the hero frightens the Pope by pretending to set his palace on fire; but the story ends thus, as do many of Crofton Croker's—"And from that hour to this his wife believed that he dreamt the whole story as he lay under the hayrick on his way home from a carouse with the boys." I take this, however, to be the sarcastic