ar_. Now _cair_ in Gaelic means to
dig, to raise; and from it a substantive might be derived, meaning digger
or miner. In Ireland, _Kiran_ seems to have been simply a proper name,
like Smith or Baker, for there is nothing in the legends of St. Kiran that
points to mining or smelting. In Cornwall, on the contrary, St. Piran,
before he was engrafted on St. Kiran, was probably nothing but a
personification or apotheosis of the Miner, as much as Dorus was the
personification of the Dorians, and Brutus the first King of Britain.

The rule, "noscitur a sociis," may be applied to St. Piran. His friend and
associate, St. Chiwidden, or St. Whitehouse, is a personification of the
white-house, _i.e._ the smelting-house, without which St. Piran, the
miner, would have been a very useless saint. If Chywidden, _i.e._ the
smelting-house, became the St. Chywidden, why should we look in the
Cornish St. Piran for anything beyond Piran, _i.e._ the miner?

However, what is of importance to us for our present object is not St.
Piran, but St. Chywidden, the white-house or smelting-house. We are
looking all this time for the original meaning of the Jews' houses, and
the question is, how can we, starting from Chywidden, arrive at
Jews'-house? I am afraid we can not do so without a jump or two; all we
can do is to show that they are jumps which language herself is fond of
taking, and which therefore we must not shirk, if we wish to ride straight
after her.

Well, then, the first jump which language frequently takes is this, that
instead of using a noun with a qualifying adjective, such as white-house,
the noun by itself is used without any such qualification. This can, of
course, be done with very prominent words only, words which are used so
often, and which express ideas so constantly present to the mind of the
speaker, that no mistake is likely to arise. In English, "the House" is
used for the House of Commons; in later Latin "domus" was used for the
House of God. Among fisherman in Scotland "fish" means salmon. In Greek
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, stone, in the feminine, is used for the magnet, originally {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMA