Stilts now come into the story of Doirin na gCos Fuar, the small wood of the cold feet. You may remember that Joss Lynam in a walkers' map and guide to the Western Way in Connemara, from the Robinsons' folding landscapes, maybe with tongue well in cheek, told us that the story related how a herdsman was killed there and eaten by a bull. All that was found of the man was his boots with the feet still in them. A postcard from a Galway doctor had this simple comment: Bull!
And Catherine Jennings suggested it was a place where tenants had to wait in order to pay a land agent. And many of the women would have only stockings on their feet, perhaps held on by thongs. And she said that na cosa fuaire has been used as meaning poor people in general and was twice so used in Colm O Gaora's autobiography Mise. She had, she said, made these points to Tim Robinson.
Someone else wants to get in on the fun, and brings stilts into it. Patrick Fennessy writes from Charleville, Co Cork, that in his native south Limerick, walking on stilts was quite common until the 1920s. "My uncle, now 85, remembers being shown how to use these man-made stilts, which the old people called cosai fuatha. I take cosai fuatha to mean `phantom feet'. The standard Irish for stilts is cosa fuara. So Doirin na gCos Fuar could be `The Little Wood of the Stilts'. " (De Bhaldraithe in his English-Irish dictionary gives stilt as Cos chroise; plural, cosa fuara.)? Our friend adds: "Do hazel thickets grow there? Our South Limerick cosai fuatha were usually of hazel." And he asks if there is any evidence of stilt-walking in the area of the Doirin.
Stilts, of course are not just for fun or for circus acts. A woman who has spent much time in France, says that stilts were used in the Landes area for supervising flocks of sheep a long time ago. Similarly, she believes, in parts of Eastern Europe.