Énchennach: a study in the terminology of shape-changing

Abstract

This article proposes a new interpretation of the medieval Irish word énchennach, a term associated with transformation between bird-form and human form. It is argued that the word has almost always been misrepresented in the scholarship and the dictionaries. A sketch of early Irish shape-changing imagery is first offered, using a range of materials from the Old Irish to the Early Modern period, before examining the attestations of énchennach in light of the hypothesis that the second element of the compound is not the familiar cenn ‘head’ but the rarer cenn or ceinn meaning ‘skin, surface’. Comparative evidence from Norse and Old English con- tributes to the argument, and a possible survival is proposed in the first element of the Modern Irish word ceannchochall.