Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/84

60 people, as Müllenhoff explains the name. But the Irish peasant styles the fairies the "good people;" and the fairies of modern Ireland correspond to the Tuatha de Danann of Irish mythical tradition. The inference is obvious. The Baltic peoples, mentioned by Ptolemy, or traditions concerning them, passed westward across Europe into Ireland.

A still more striking instance of the author's rashness in comparison may be found in the statement (p. 105 1 n.) that the name Loegaire is "the Irish form of Lothair." The German name, which in ninth-century France became Lothaire, still retained its initial guttural aspirate in eighth-century France, as witness the form Clotaire, the same change having taken place as transformed the German Hlodwiet first into Clovis and then into Louis. But the Irish Loegaire, minus the initial guttural aspirate, is vouched for in mid-fifth-century Ireland, a fact in itself sufficient to prove that the two names have absolutely nothing in common.

These are perhaps extreme instances of the author's method, but this is marked all through by the same characteristics; similarity of sound is held to denote identity, and identity is treated as explicable by one cause only, namely, the transference of Continental legend to Ireland. The amazing thing is that Mr. Borlase himself cites, with perfect loyalty, facts which completely ruin his theory. Thus he notes that in the time of Augustus the German Langobardi dwelt on the left bank of the Elbis (Elbe) next to the Chauci, and east of the Catti and Menapii. He also notes "that this district bore the name Lainga or Lainca in the Middle Ages, derived as may be supposed from the River Lagina, now the Lein." But Ptolemy places a people called the Cauci on the west coast of Southern Ireland, and south of them the town of Menapia. Obviously the same names as in Central Germany, concludes Mr. Borlase. Further, the Irish Cauci were not far from the province of Laighin (modern Leinster), whilst the Germanic Chauci, as we saw, were not far from a district styled Lainga in the Middle Ages. Well, let us assume for one moment with the author that this parallel, such as it is, is not due to a simple coincidence, but that it proves Irish topographical nomenclature to have been modelled upon that of Central Europe; how does this particular instance support his general thesis? Ptolemy wrote in the middle of the second century, and the Irish names must be at least fifty if not