—In the Barnane Mountains, near Templemore, Ireland, there is a large dent or hollow, visible at the distance of twenty miles, and known by the name of the "Devil's Bit."
Can any of your readers assist me in discovering the origins of this singular name? There is a foolish tradition that the Devil was obliged, by one of the saints, to make a road for his Reverence across an extensive bog in the neighbourhood, and so taking a piece of the mountain in his mouth, he strode over the bog and deposited a road behind him!
SING.
Corpse passing makes a Right of Way.
—What is the origin of the supposed custom of land becoming public property, after a funeral has passed over it? An instance of this occurred (I am told) a short time since at Battersea.
R. W. E.
Nao, a Ship.
—Seeing it twice stated in Mr. G. F. Angas's Australia and New Zealand, that "in the Celtic dialect of the Welsh, Nao (is) a ship," I am desirous to learn in what author of that language, or in what dictionary or glossary thereof, any such word is to be met with. (See vol. ii., pp. 274. 278.) I doubt, or even disbelieve, the Britons having had any name for a ship, though they had a name for an osier floating basket, covered with raw hides. And when they became familiar with the navis longa of the Romans, they and their Gaelic neighbours adopted the adjective, and not the substantive. But the question of nao is one of fact; and having got the assertion, I want the authority.
A. N.