Gàidhlig / English
Caoirean

Caoirean

Posted by Shelagh on Thursday 9 June 2016

The noun caoirean or caoirnean was used by informants from Scalpay, Harris to describe a small shoal of herring playing and breaking the surface of the water. Caoirean is derived from caoir, meaning ‘blaze’ or ‘phosphorescent sea foam’ and refers to the glittering shimmer that would be created by the scales of the leaping fish. Indeed, the word was defined by other speakers as ‘a fiery shimmer’ and ‘a flash of sparks in the dark’.

Similarly, a caoirneanach was defined as a patch of the sea which would be foaming and sparkling due to frolicking shoals of herring. One informant described how the caoirean would appear to lift the sea up, using the expression bha druim air a’ mhuir leis, ‘there was a ridge on the sea with them’. Another gave the term na cnapan dearga, ‘the red hillocks’ to describe the fish when they were gathered together, just before they broke into playful activity. A cnap, a ‘lump’ or ‘hillock’ was a more general term used to describe a shoal of herring.

Phosphorescence on the sea, a luminous appearance often caused by the glitter of fish scales in the dark, is given several different names in the Fieldwork Archive, including variations of caoir-bianag (literally ‘flame of skin’), losgadh (‘burning’) and sionnachan (from the adjective sionn, ‘phosphorescent’). This ‘burning’ could be used to indicate the presence of herring at night: a speaker from Aultbea described how the fish would leave dense trails through the sionnachan. The term sgadan an losgaidh, ‘herring of the burning’ referred to a single herring or small shoal of herring which could be seen among the losgadh.

 A catch of herring would leave a covering of glistening scales on the sides and deck of the boat. An informant from Kintyre compared this glittery layer to frost, which is reothadh in Gaelic, using the phrase ‘They got herring – there’s reothadh on [the boat]’.

Have you ever seen a caoirneanach or sionnachan? If so, you can let us know in the comment section below.
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