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320 to be, to say the least of it, very faintly drawn; and it is possible that we should rather recognize in Mac Samthainn the herdsman's dog; for the name seems to claim kinship with the Irish word samthach, 'a haft or hilt,' also 'an axe with a long handle;' so that one may probably translate it 'the Boy of the Haft,' and compare the name of the dog introduced to Erinn by Cairbre Musc's craft, which was Mug-éime, or 'the Slave of the Haft.' The story, as you will remember, explains how the dog came, in acquiring it, into Cairbre's possession (p. 247). The coincidence is so striking that I cannot help thinking that we have here traces of another version of the story of Cairbre Musc and the dog he imported into Erinn. The old one, somewhat perversely, makes the animal into a lapdog; while the modern story is probably more faithful to the original in that it suggests a dog useful to the herdsman.

From the foregoing stories and those mentioned in