DASG Blog

cairt a' chaineil

The DASG Fieldwork Archive (Faclan bhon t-Sluagh) has a number of words and phrases for species from the genus of plants known as mint in English.  A handful of these can be found by searching for this English term in the archive.  Terms such as miunnd, recorded in South Uist for a purple leaf used for making soup, would probably be expected by Gaelic-speakers.  Miundain, a diminutive from the same root, was recorded in Torloisk in Mull.
 
Terms with an initial ‘p’ are much more numerous in Faclan bhon t-Sluagh than those with an initial 'm', though: pinnt agus pionnt in Scalpay; piund in Cluer and piunnt in Greòsabhagh in Harris; pionnd in Bruernish in Barra; piunnd in Glendale; pionn in Kyleakin; and piunnd and miunnd in South Boisdale in South Uist.  Piùnnd was recorded in Scalpay for ‘mint’ in 1975 but, interestingly, the same informant gave the phrase lus-na-Frainge, literally ‘(the) plant of France’, for “mint used to flavour tea”.
 
A completely different phrase was recorded from Jeannie Gibson in Knockan in the Ross of Mull, though, and the rest of this blog is dedicated to Jeannie's phrase.  Jeannie was among the Mull informants recorded by the Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland in 1957.  Her phrase, which is recorded within the context of medicinal plants, is cairt a’ chaineil.  This would be boiled to make what is referred to as “mint tea” and used to relieve headaches.

At a glance, many Gaelic-speakers might translate this phrase as 'cinnamon bark' and suggest that "mint tea" is a rather misleading gloss.  The term 'cairt' is certainly applied as '(tree-)bark' and 'caineal' is typically defined as ‘cinnamon’ in most modern Gaelic dictionaries, including the invaluable dictionaries of Mac Eachainn and Dwelly.

However, the term rùsg is recorded for 'bark' in Faclan bhon t-Sluagh in a record from the Ross of Mull in 1967-68 and an alternative interpretation might be proposed for cairt a' chaineil.  It may be that this phrase instead refers to a particular species of the mint genus.  Although a search for ‘mint’ in Faclan bhon t-Sluagh does not produce any other hits for ‘cairt’, the first word in Jeannie’s phrase, close comparison can be made to terms recorded by Dwelly from one of Mull’s closest neighbours: Dwelly records ‘cartal’ (‘mint’) and ‘cartal-uisge’ (‘water mint (mentha aquatica)’) from Colonsay.  Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair records both "an Cartil" and "mionnt" for 'mint' in his Galick and English vocabulary (1741).  Within this context, it is interesting to note that the term ‘cartlann’ is recorded in Old Gaelic (eDIL s.v. cartlann).  Its application is unclear but it is suggested to apply to water mint.  John Cameron discussed the etymology of Old Gaelic ‘cartlann’ in Gaelic Names of Plants, published in 1883, but cairt a’ chaineil does not feature in that discussion.
 
With this in mind, I wonder if the final term in Jeannie’s phrase, ‘caineal’, is in fact a reference to the place in which this plant grows.  I wonder if, within this context, ‘caineal’ is a Gaelicised form of the English term ‘channel’, i.e. watercourse.  Dwelly's dictionary quotes Robert Armstrong's dictionary of 1825 in recording the noun 'cainneal' ('a channel, a canal').  ‘Cainéal’ (‘channel') is recorded in the Modern Irish dictionary of Ó Dónaill.  The implication is that cairt a’ chaineil could apply specifically to a plant or plants which grow in channels or at least close to channels of water.
 
If you have any thoughts on cairt a’ chaineil or mint in general, please feel free to get in touch with the DASG team via the DASG website, Twitter or Facebook.