The trouble with just looking a word up in a dictionary is that often the author incorrectly interpretes a word from one language into another.

For example, the Irish word bandraoi means a Druidess, not a witch. And the Irish word cailleach is most often used to mean an old woman, or a hag, not a spell-casting, broom-riding person. Cailleach can also mean a young, precocious girl; a midwife; something that's shrivelled; a stone used to weight down a rope; a stump; and can be used to refer to a man when you're calling his courage into question. The closest you can come to the English term of 'witch' would be cailleach na gcearc or cailleach phiseogach. Other uses of the word cailleach are cailleach feasa - a wise woman or fortuneteller, and comhrá cailleach - old wives' tale.

Too often, when folks want to borrow words from another language, they forget that there are concepts associated with words, and that they are sometimes very hard to translate from one tongue to another.

-- Áine