Congreve's First Play: Addendum

Iermoy" and that (Fiant 973) in Offaly to "William O'Carroll or O'Kerroll [sic]." Instances could easily be multiplied. Long after Spenser's day, however. the e pronunciation persisted: Oliver Goldsmith wrote the name of the half-legendary Cathal De(a)rg as "Kaul Dereg [not Dareg],"20 and O'Donovan regularly Englished Dubhessa as "Duvesa [not Duvasa]."21 To conclude, then: in Spenser's southern Ireland the Irish language-sounds appear to have resisted change much longer than they did in the North.22 Thus Duessa represents a normal English spelling (far more "normal" than many of the Elizabethan spellings in the Fiants) of an Irish name, of the sort to be expected in 1590. ROLAND M. SMITH