CUICRACH, COUEACII or CORACLE (Celt. corteg, eurach; Lat. euruea, earrocium, cara bus), the name given in the British islands to a canoe or boat, made of a slender frame of wood, covered with skins. Skiffs of this sort, as well as canoes hollowed out of the trunks of oaks, were iu use among the Britons in the earliest times of which we have record. Julius Caesar, who built some of them after the British model, tells us that the keel and gunwales were of light wood, and the sides of wicker, covered with hides. Similar descriptions of the C. are given by Pliny, Lucan, Solinus, Festus Avienus, Sidonius Apollinaris, and others. The first occurrence of the name seems to be in Gildas, who wrote in the 6th c.; he speaks of the C. as in use among the Scots and the Picts. A long voyage in the North sea, made in a C. during the same century, by one of the companions of St. Columba, is commemorated by Adamnan, who died in 704. In 878, three Irish missionaries sailed in a C. from Ireland to Cornwall; the voyage occupied seven days; and the size of the C. is indicated by the remark that it was one of two skins and a half. An old life of St. Patrick speaks of a C. " of one skin, with neither helm nor oar." The C. of a larger size had a mast and sail. The C. still continues to be used on the Severn, and on many parts of the Irish coast, especially on the shores of Clare and Donegal. The last C. known to have been used in Scotland is in the
museum at Elgin. It was employed on the Spey, towards the end of last century. Shaw, whose History of Moray was published in 1773, when the C. had become rare, thus describes it: " It is in shape oval, near three ft. broad, and four long; a small keel runs from the head to the stern; a few ribs are placed across the keel, and a ring of pliable wood around the lip of the machine. The whole is covered with the rough hide of an ox or a horse; the seat is in the middle; it carries but ona person, or, if a second goes into it to be wafted over a river, he stands behind the rower, leaning on his shoul ders. In floating timber, a rope is fixed to the float, and the rower holds it in one baud, and with the other manages the paddle. He keeps the float in deep water, and brings it to shore when he will. In returning home, he carries the machine on his shoulders, or on a horse." One who figures in the Duneiad—Aaron Hill the poet—by showing the Strathspey Highlanders how to make their timber into a navigable raft, hastened the disappearance of the C. from Scotland. A description of the C., as still used in Ireland, will be found iu the Ulster Journal of Arelurology, voi. i. p. 32. A boat of bison skin, essentially the same with the British coracle, is in use among some of the Indians of North America.