That Place We Call Home E-Book

John Creedon

• Herausgeber: Gill Books
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

John Creedon has always been fascinated by place names, from growing up in Cork City as a young boy to travelling around Ireland making his popular television show. In this brilliant new book, he peels back the layers of meaning of familiar place names to reveal stories about the land of Erin and the people who walked it before us. Travel the highways, byways and boreens of Ireland with John and become absorbed in the place names, such as 'The Cave of the Cats', 'Artichoke Road', 'The Eagle's Nest' and 'Crazy Corner'. All hold clues that help to uncover our past and make sense of That Place We Call Home, feeding both mind and soul along the way.

Leseprobe

Gill Books

Gill BooksHume AvenuePark WestDublin 12www.gillbooks.ie

Gill Books is an imprint of M.H. Gill and Co.

© John Creedon 2020Permission to use lines from ‘Ulster Names’ byJohn Hewitt granted by The John Hewitt Society.

978 07171 89854 (hardback)

978 07171 89861 (ebook)

Designed by Sarah McCoyIllustrated by Ross OrrEdited by Tara KingCopyedited by Neil BurkeyProofread by Emma Dunne

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without written permission of the publishers.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

IMPRINT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

1. BACK TO BREAC

2. IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD … AND IT WAS SPOKEN!

3. WHAT DID THE GREEKS AND ROMANS EVER DO FOR US?

4. CHRISTIANITY, MONASTICISM AND IRELAND’S PLACE NAMES

5. THE VIKINGS

6. THE NORMANS

7. CONQUEST AND CARRAIG AN AIFRINN

8. FROM DOWN TO O’DONOVAN

9. SAME BUT DIFFERENT

10. THE FINAL WORD

GLOSSARY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT GILL BOOKS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This modest offering is not the definitive book of Irish place names. It is, however, born out of a love of place that was fostered by others.

I’d like to acknowledge the encouragement of my English teacher, Humphrey Twomey, and the other kind teachers I’ve had along the way. I’m indebted to the staff at UCC, in particular all at the Department of Folklore and Ethnology, for providing me with not just the key but an entire bunch of keys to help me unlock the stories within our beautiful logainmneacha.

Thanks to RTÉ, which has been my university campus for over thirty years, for its commitment to Ireland and not just the marketplace. Too many to name, I remember here colleagues who supported and encouraged me when I doubted myself. I toast the long days and the craic I shared with the remarkably talented team at RTÉ Cork. Here’s to many more adventures. A huge debt of gratitude is due to our countless contributors, storytellers, listeners and viewers, without whom the work would stop.

I’d like to thank the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, especially Dr. Pádraig Ó Cearbhaill, Chief Placenames Officer in the Placenames Branch. Similarly, I am grateful to Dr Frances Kane at the Northern Ireland Place Name Project; all at the National Archives for their invaluable work; Ordnance Survey Ireland for explaining the mechanics of map-making to me; mo chairde ag TG4; Cork City Library; the Heritage Council; and the National Museum of Ireland.

Thanks to Deirdre Nolan, Tara King, Aoibheann Molumby, Avril Cannon and Teresa Daly at Gill Books. I really appreciated the attention to detail and the kindness of the people at Gill.

Thanks to my parents Connie and Siobhán, and to all the old people who have gone before me. I am forever indebted for your legacy: a love of place that fills my heart. To my family and friends, thanks for the laughs and the love. To those who follow on behind, particularly my four daughters: Kate, Martha, Nanci and Meg; and to my grandchildren in Ireland, Australia and Scotland (Lucie, Mollie, Rosie, Ella, Bonnie, Cody and those not yet with us). I wish you love, happiness and a sense of home.

And to my soulmate, Mairéad, I’m forever grateful to you for your love and support. Here’s to the open road and the bowl of Frosties!

1

BACK TO BREAC

The names of a land show the heart of the race, They move on the tongue like the lilt of a song. You say the name and I see the place

Drumbo, Dungannon, Annalong.

‘Ulster Names’, John Hewitt

Thirty thousand feet over the Sahara on my way to Tanzania, I turn the page of my in-flight magazine and I’m startled as it reveals a full-page ad from Fáilte Ireland, with a green map of Ireland right at the centre. I’m ambushed by a somersault of the heart, as if it were a photograph of my own mother that had appeared without warning. That map, that place I call home, stares back at me like a familiar face in an unfamiliar crowd. That surge of recognition and connection fuels an ache to be reunited soon.

I’m not the first Irish person abroad, I suspect, to have had a lump in the throat, a knot in the gut or some other physiological reaction to an unexpected sighting of the map of Ireland, the green jersey or even the word Ireland. The very name itself is a thing of great beauty, and I look forward to sharing its evolution with you later in this book.

‘The savage loves his native shore’ is a universal principle, but when you add the Irish story of mass emigration, you’ll better understand why that longing for home has deepened our love of place more than most. One Victorian visitor is said to have quipped that the Irish get homesick even when they are at home. Indeed, it’s this love of place and language that sees Irish emigrant gatherings the world over belt out ballads that are often little more than lists of place names. Like a mantra, the repetition of these names keeps them alive in the heart of the emigrant and the generations of foreign-born Irish who have inherited this gene.

The place names of Ireland form more than a mere ballad; they create a symphony of names. Peel back the veneer of melody and the meanings of the place names are revealed. Within them lie the clues to understanding the nature of the land of Éireann and the people who walked this stage before us. ‘The Land of Robins’, ‘Patrick’s Bed’, ‘The Eagle’s Nest’, ‘The Valley of the Mad’ are surely a call to investigate. From boyhood, Ireland’s place and field names, and the stories they reveal, have provided nutrition for both mind and soul, as I tramped across the fields to gather home my uncle’s cows with only a collie for company. These days my area of discovery has widened. As I travel the highways, byways and boreens of Ireland, the old Irish phrase ar bóithrín na smaointe returns to me, capturing the mood perfectly. It means ‘daydreaming’, or literally, ‘on the little bye-roads of thought’.

The subject itself is truly a magnificent one, and certainly one in which you won’t regret becoming absorbed. The one thing I would advise when it comes to place names is not to be put off by the Irish language element. It’s all about cracking the code, and that code is actually quite simple once you understand a handful of the most commonly used terms, like ‘Cnoc/Knock/Mountain’ and ‘Lios/Lis/ Fort’. Some of the words you probably already know but don’t realise it. So give yourself credit. You’re a Gaelic scholar in a cocoon! I trust you will learn more from this book, but if all you know at this point is ‘Baile/Bally/Town’ and ‘Mór/More/Big’, then you’re already off to a great start. Welcome to Big Town!

BOHERBOY, COUNTY CORK

Boherboy – An Bóthar Buí

Bóthar – Road

Buí – Yellow

Boherboy therefore means ‘the yellow road’.

I’ve had a sort of on-again/off-again/on-again relationship with my native language. As a boy, I went through the primary school years speaking Irish at An Mhainistir Thuaidh (the North Monastery), a huge Christian Brothers campus with primary, secondary and technical schools on site. It catered for over two thousand boys on the predominantly working-class slopes of Cork City’s northside.

I was the youngest of 51 boys in my class, so little surprise that I struggled in most subjects, except amhránaíocht (‘singing class’). I entered the North Monastery as a six-year-old, just as the country prepared to mark the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising of 1916. Boyish patriotism surged through my veins as we marched around the schoolyard in perfect time, belting out battle cries like ‘Óró sé do bheatha ’bhaile’ and planning how I could die for Ireland without my mother knowing.

However, whatever about the past tyranny of the British, the daily school-room injustices slowly eroded my love for this nationalist dream, and with it went my desire to die for Ireland. Instead, I found myself longing to live; to live like George Best, to kiss girls and to drink champagne in nightclubs and do all the other things that were only allowed in the English language!

The late teenage years were spent with my back defiantly turned to conservatism, the Catholic Church, the GAA, the Irish language and to all who claimed copyright over Irishness. I rejected De Valera’s ‘comely maidens’ for ‘foreign wans’, Spanish students and tourists who might bring a little spice into a very bland life. Once I completed my Leaving Cert Irish paper, I put the pen down and it was a full stop. The Irish speaker inside of me was silenced for two decades. Instead, I enrolled in UCC to study English and Philosophy. Granted, I did more talking about them than studying them, but I suppose you can get away with that when English and Philosophy are your subjects of choice.

As Thatcher’s Britain thrashed the poor of the country, I witnessed nightly the English and Welsh miners cudgelled by their own police. I began to question the notion that any outside culture was automatically better than the Irish misery I had inherited. With the passing of the years and, more significantly, the passing of my beloved mother, I began to recall again the caress of ‘the old people’. Like when Mrs Buckley would welcome me: ‘Wisha, tar isteach out of the rain, a leanna! You’re getting as big as a buachallán buí.’ Yes, being compared to a giant ragwort was a term of endearment for a growing boy.

Having put years of distance between myself and the shackles of those who wished to ‘beat a bit of Irish art and culture’ into me, I now found myself being drawn to those who simply lived it, people who were still connected, unknowingly, to the old ways. Trips from my new life in Dublin back to the Muskerry Gaeltacht sparked a curiosity and a deep sense of a journey home within me. My father, in the passenger seat, would point out some sloping field where he once played a match against Dromtarriff in 1931, saying, ‘By God, they were tough buachaillí from Drom Tairbh … and sure why wouldn’t they, and they from the hill of the bull! They could run as fast uphill as they could downhill. I s’pose being chased by a bull could do that to you alright,’ he’d laugh. ‘And that’s Annahalla Bridge over there! Abhainn na hEala, the river of swans. Cáit a’ Phéist used to live away over that way. The old people used to say she could cure any ailment with some oul’ worm she had.’ (I’ve since been told that Cáit’s nickname referred to the leech she used for bloodletting.)

I was drunk on the nectar of his words. I couldn’t get enough. Trips to West Kerry and to Inis Oírr and Connemara followed, where I marvelled at how unusual the Irish language sounded when spoken in the different dialects, each unique to its own region. Even within a region, areas would have an identifiable canúint, or accent. Now there’s another great Irish word, canúint, taken from the Irish word canadh, meaning ‘singing’. Yes, that’s it exactly! Your canúint is the melody in your accent.

Twenty years after I left UCC, I went back to my alma mater, and this time I was serious. I took a two-year diploma course in Regional Studies. This godsend drew on the remarkable riches of the Folklore, History and Archaeology departments at the university. For the first time in my life, I was the first student into class and the last one out, every time, and my homework was done without fail!

Our lecturers took us on field trips beneath the footpaths of my beloved Cork City, to where St Finbarr first knelt to pray, to the alleyways of the old city where Vikings added Old Norse to the local vocabulary, and where French and Breton was later spoken. Is this when the citizens of Cork first began to develop their singsong canúint? Or did that come later, with the arrival of the Welsh Fusiliers? My God, these people were real. They lived and loved and lost and longed for the same things as me. The Cork merchant princes with their pointy-toed buckled shoes strode around these very same streets. Streets they named after themselves. It never fails to amaze me.

I grew up around the corner from St Patrick’s Bridge in Cork. Think for a moment of the historical giants that crossed that very bridge. In 1963 we had President John F. Kennedy, in 1849, Queen Victoria of England, and in 1858, Charles Dickens. I can see Christy Ring at the front of a lorry raising the Liam MacCarthy Cup to the thousands lining the route to see our heroes cross the Lee as All Ireland champions. Michael Collins would have swaggered along its footpath, and of course jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald probably sashayed across the bridge as she was accompanied from the Cork Opera House to her hotel on MacCurtain Street at the 1980 Jazz Festival. Any time I walk over it, that’s the realisation that hits me: the history that’s imprinted in the ground beneath my feet, and all the dramas that must have been played out half an inch below the spot I now occupy. When you stop and think about it, when you take it all in, it’s enough to put the worries of your own life into perspective, and that’s what I absolutely love about these investigations.

As a boy, I would wonder what might be in the mud beneath St Patrick’s Bridge. Was a sword or two thrown in there following a street battle? Have engagement rings or even wedding rings been hurled in there during heated rows of a Saturday night? You can picture someone shouting, ‘You can take your @*!&@ engagement ring and shove it, ya langer!’

Are there murder weapons or skeletons lying in the many layers of the riverbed? Whatever the case, you can bet your life there’s a few interesting finds down there. Consider for a moment the feet that have crossed Dublin’s O’Connell Bridge and what lies beneath it, or indeed beneath the footpaths and fields of your locality.

What really draws me in, however, are the clues left by our ancestors – signposts that point us towards who our predecessors were, how they lived and how they made sense of this very same world that we now inhabit. The wonderful thing is that many of these signposts are just that, actual signposts! I have criss-crossed Ireland a thousand times, and every time I do, I feel our ancestors are speaking to us through the place names written on the signposts of Ireland. It’s like they are trying to tell us something.

My lifelong grá for place names, and languages too for that matter, without doubt came from my father, Connie Creedon. A good-humoured man, he split his time between being a bus driver, a newsagent and a father to 12 children. My dad spoke beautiful Irish, as well as classical Greek, Latin and, of course, English. He adored words. You couldn’t engage him in conversation without him throwing in a few lines of Homer’s Odyssey, a quote from Shakespeare, an epic love poem by Máire Bhuí Ní Laoghaire or even a line or two from comic-book hero Desperate Dan in The Dandy, whom he loved. A simple request for the admission price to the pictures might elicit a quote from Gone with the Wind, before he handed over the few coins with a wink.

I remember when I was around seven or eight years of age, I was bragging about a goal I had somehow managed to score in a school hurling match. Humouring me, my father sat back and listened. As soon as I was done recollecting my on-pitch heroics, he teasingly remarked, ‘Well, John Joseph. Methinks you’re suffering from elephantitis of the cranium.’

I looked at him.

‘Do you know what that means?’ he asked.

‘I don’t, Dad. What does it mean?’

‘Ah, you’ll have to think about it,’ came the response.

I thought about it for a bit and sure enough the penny eventually dropped. Hadn’t he just informed me that my malady was little more than a swelled head.

The roots of my father’s love for the Irish language could be found in his homeplace of Inchigeelagh in the parish of Uibh Laoghaire, meaning Land of the O’Learys. He always referred to the village of Inchigeelagh as a breac Gaeltacht, a term inspired by that brilliant Irish word breac, meaning ‘speckled’. It features in the phrase breacadh an lae, which means ‘the speckling of day, i.e. daybreak, and of course in the term for the Halloween classic bairín breac, which means ‘speckled cake’. Breac also means ‘trout’, on account of that fish’s speckled skin. Anyway, Inchigeelagh, which sits beautifully on the eastern shore of Lough Allua, was referred to as a breac Gaeltacht because it was essentially speckled with Irish-speaking households, while English was spoken in others. Both languages, however, were in daily use at the counter of my grandmother’s post office in the village. I expect it was while sitting on a raised chair behind the counter and beside his loving mother that Connie Creedon the little boy absorbed so much in two languages.

My mother, Siobhán, however, was quietly spoken and thoughtful. One of 10 girls, she grew up in an English-speaking home in Adrigole, overlooking Bantry Bay, out on the beautiful Beara Peninsula. Although a small farmer, her father, William Blake, shared his name with the English poet, underlining my mother’s paternal roots as English Protestant, or perhaps Norman (from the De Blaca family who came over with Strongbow). Either way, despite their humble circumstances, my mother developed beautiful handwriting and a leaning towards the arts.

As a little boy, I was incredibly lucky to have had the best of two worlds. We lived in the heart of the city, which pulsed to the clippity-clop rhythm of the giant Shire draught horses of Murphy’s brewery beside us. The melody was provided by the singalong accent of the citizens and the cacophony of Creedons that buzzed day and night beneath our roof. In complete contrast, long summer days back west seemed to stretch out in spacious meadows filled with the sweet smell of hay and honeysuckle. Less time for talk and more for daydreaming.

Due to the fact that my parents worked such long days raising 12 children and maintaining a shop with 6am to 1.30am opening hours, family trips back west were last-minute, and involved loading the car with as many of us as the car could take. It’s often assumed that scenery is wasted on the young, but we genuinely ‘got it’; we saw the beauty of these places. We could feel my mother’s excitement spread through the car as the road narrowed and the fine flat farms on the western side of Cork City gave way to bog and bulrush, sceach, sliabh and storytelling.

‘Will we go through Inchigeelagh or head straight for “the Bantry Line”, Siobhán?’

‘Yerra, we’ll go through Inchigeelagh so, Connie, but we won’t delay while we still have the bit of daylight.’

As we arrive in the village, my father points out Johnny Timmy Johnny’s hardware and grocery shop. It’s made entirely of corrugated iron from walls to barrel-top roof, and it straddles the river with just a gable end perched on either bank.

‘I remember Johnny’s father, Timmy Johnny. And by God, was he precise! Back during “the emergency”, when things were scarce, I saw him, with my own two eyes, cut a raisin in half to make up the exact weight. What do ye make of that? He was an honest man. He would never “do” you, but by Christ he wouldn’t go over either. He was a brilliant man.’

Our 14 first cousins ran the mill, post office and family hotel in Inchigeelagh, and a cluster of them would be out in a flash for frantic conversations through the car window. Uncle John was behind, larger than life and reaching in the window to hug and kiss his baby brother Con.

‘Who’s that in the back? Is it yourself, Geraldine? By God, there’s my namesake – John Joseph – and all the other lovely girls and boys. Will ye come in for one quick cup of tea?’

‘Oh Lord no, John, we have to belt for Adrigole. Kit will have the table laid.’

And with that we are gone.

With my little nose pressed against the rear passenger window, I peer out as the car gains momentum. Hedgerows laden with fuchsia, montbretia, wild roses and honeysuckle blur into an impressionist splash of reds, greens, lemon and vivid orange. The breathtaking scenery around mo áit dhúchais, meaning ‘the place of my heritage’, is celebrated in the beauty of its place names. We would first pass through Ballingeary/Béal Átha an Ghaorthaidh, meaning ‘ford of the river that flows through woods’, then head on for the Pass of Keimaneigh/Céim an Fhia, meaning ‘leap of the deer’, and on to Kealkill/An Chaol Choill, meaning ‘the narrow wood’, before emerging at Bantry/Beanntraí, meaning ‘kingdom of the chieftain Beannt’. After leaving Bantry, it was a climb and descent into Glengarriff/An Gleann Garbh, meaning ‘the rough glen’, with its almost subtropical microclimate, after which we would then drive by the Victorian grandeur of the Eccles Hotel, with its wrought-iron veranda and palm trees.

The roads back then were nothing like what they are today, so allowing for puncture repairs, cattle gridlock at milking time and sheep acting the goat, the 150km journey from the city centre out to Allihies/Na hAilichí, meaning ‘the cliff fields’, at the western edge of the Beara Peninsula, could take you around three hours. Needless to say, there was plenty of time for storytelling, and behind every place name lay a story. Take, for example, Céim an Fhia, which again means ‘leap of the deer’. I suspect it could also be translated as the ‘path of the deer’. Anyway, during one of our drives out west, my father told me the story behind its name. Apparently, one day a beautiful stag was being hunted by a wealthy British redcoat on horseback. When it reached the cliff edge, the stag backed up and made one huge leap across this ravine in an attempt to escape his hunter. The chasm is about 50 yards wide, so I don’t know just how much truth there is to this story; perhaps it wasn’t quite as wide before the paved road went in, or perhaps some details in the story have changed with the passage of time, but, to be honest, it doesn’t matter. That story has stuck with me all these years, and any time I drive through the Pass of Keimaneigh, the boy within is on the lookout for a huge stag on the clifftop, or a redcoat ambush on the road.

On the way to Céim an Fhia, you pass a townland called Tír na Spideoige. This has always been a favourite of mine. The word tír is Irish for ‘land’ or ‘countryside’, while spideog is the Irish for ‘robin redbreast’. So Tír na Spideoige simply translates as ‘the land of the robins’, which wouldn’t sound out of place in a Brothers Grimm fairy tale when you think about it. Beyond the beauty of the name, it underlines the nature of the people who walked this land. If the name ‘land of the robins’ denotes ownership, then clearly the people were acknowledging nature’s dominion over this land, and their own footprint therefore would be light.

There’s action and adventure in the place names around here too. Apart from the aforementioned stag hunt, the name Inchigeelagh (Inse Geimhleach, meaning ‘island or river strand of the hostages’) raises the question, ‘What hostages?’ There are many suggested answers, but given that the place name existed long before the persecution of the native Irish by Cromwell’s forces, it can’t be that. My own theory is that Viking raids up the River Lee may have caused locals to hide on the crannóg out on the lake. A crannóg is a man-made island with a hidden causeway just beneath the lake’s surface, so the path to safety was familiar only to locals. I can see my ancestors gathering up their prized possessions and running for the safety of the lake, to wait silently without as much as snapping a twig until they felt it safe to carefully emerge to survey the damage.

However, my research has since informed me that the crannóg near Inchigeelagh has had a variety of names, including ‘Mehigan’s Island’, and dates from long before early medieval times, when chieftains would have used it to hold hostages from neighbouring clans. Aha! My question has finally found its answer.

BALLINCOLLIG, COUNTY CORK

Ballincollig – Baile an Chollaigh

Baile – town/homeplace

An Chollaigh – Collach (from the surname Coll)

Ballincollig therefore means ‘the town of An Collach’.

One summer’s evening in Inchigeelagh, after a day spent diving into the River Lee at a stretch known locally as ‘the island’, I remember my cousin Willie John pointing out the road that led to Poulanargid, which in Irish is Poll an Airgid, meaning ‘the hole of the money’.

‘Is the money still there?’ I asked eagerly.

‘Doubt it. I’d say ’twas gold and chalices and stuff, hidden by the monks long ago.’

‘Will we get a couple of shovels and try anyway?’

‘Erra, no. ’Tis too far and sure they say it’s all gone anyway. I’d say the Black and Tans took it.’

Some claim that Poulanargid actually means ‘the silver hole’, a reference to the stream that flows there. Perhaps it does, but I’d still get the shovel ready if I were allowed.

Many of the logainmneacha (‘place names’) are prehistoric and were given in languages that are now obsolete, so their meanings are lost to us. Others have survived, like Lough Allua (Locha Lua), meaning ‘the lake of the Lee’, although it’s also been suggested that it’s named after Lugh/Lú, the old pre-Christian figure who also gave his name to County Louth/Contae Lú.

Lough Allua forms part of the Lee river system. It’s a fine big lake, about a mile wide and three miles long (six by road). It’s bounded by two villages: Ballingeary at its western end, where the River Lee enters the lake, as if to take a rest, before it emerges at Inchigeelagh, on its most easterly shore. Here, the lake narrows and reverts to river form, the Lee gathering pace yet again on its journey towards Cork City and out to sea.

The landscape around Uibh Laoghaire is a hunter’s paradise. As evidenced by the place names, it’s full of forest and fen, with lashings of fresh water. River, stream, lake and bracken provide the perfect cover for wildlife. Deer, rabbit, woodcock and all forms of game once drew in the Victorian visitors that sustained the family hotels in the nearby villages: Cronin’s Hotel at Gougán and the Eccles Hotel beyond in Glengarriff. Each hotel was a handy coach-ride away from the next. There were boats for hire on the lake that splashed to the sound of salmon, trout and pike. Lough Allua was the jewel in this crown.

My mother’s countryside, 40 miles further west, provides a beauty of massive contrast. Here, the rugged Caha Mountains sweep down to meet the mighty Atlantic Ocean; it is a far more dramatic scene than the soft landscape of fern and gentle waters of my dad’s áit dhúchais.

On the journey west, my father would tease my mother about which homeplace was the better of the two. It was hard to out-play a hand that boasted an ocean, a milder climate and the mighty Hungry Hill, so my dad would always hold his best card for last: Lough Allua, the king of lakes.

While Adrigole has some notable lakes itself, none could trump Allua, and Dad would play that card with perfect timing. The only lake visible from the road as you approach Adrigole is Loch Mór (‘big lake’). In truth, it’s the size of a small field, but all things are relative, and if it’s the biggest pond in the immediate vicinity then an ancient man without a bus pass is perfectly entitled to call it big. However, a bus driver with a few miles on the clock (like my dad) who swaggers into the parish could be forgiven for seeing the funny side of it.

Dad would wait until the spot emerged on the horizon. Then, like clockwork, he would say, ‘Right, boys and girls! Wait now till you see the size of this lake. Loch Mór, it’s called! Wait and you’ll see it any second now. Keep watching! Keep watching! QUICKLY, LOOK! THERE! That’s it, gone now!’

My mother would teasingly scold him, ‘Connie, would you stop!’

Of course, Dad wouldn’t pay any heed to this, preferring instead to milk the devilment for all he could.

‘We’ll have to go fishing there some day, lads,’ he’d smile. ‘I’d say there’s some right monsters in there altogether!’

The lesson to be learned here is context. Just because a feature might be called ‘the big hill’, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s some gargantuan landmark, but rather that it’s the biggest in that particular area.

CLONAKILTY, COUNTY CORK

Clonakilty – Cloich na Coillte

Cloich – Stone/Stone building

Na Coillte – Woods

Clonakilty therefore means ‘the stone in the woods’.

Context is one of the many filters I apply when deciphering a place name. Not only have our place names been altered through transliteration by the British, but words themselves are organic; their meanings change.

For example, my Aunt Eileen ran a small shop in Dungarvan called Cúil na Gabhair Dairy. Like most of us, I learned that the word cúl means ‘back’, as in an cúl chlós (‘the backyard’), cúl an tí (‘the back of the house’) or an cúl doras (‘the back door’). In which case, ‘Cúil na Gabhair’ could mean ‘the goat’s rear’, or even ‘the goat’s backside’. Excuse me! My aunt Eileen would never print such a term over her shop. When I enquired, her son Ben explained that the Irish term cúil doesn’t literally mean ‘the back’, but rather ‘the part we cannot see from here’. So Cúil na Gabhair points to the side of the hill (a nook or recess) where the goats hang out. This would also suggest that the popular house name Cool na Greine (Cúil na Gréine) means ‘sunny side’ or ‘suntrap’ and not ‘the back of the sun’.

There are many more examples where an Irish word does not quite match its English translation, fear gorm being an obvious example. It means ‘black man’ but translates literally as ‘blue man’. Methinks the Irish word gorm was a far more subtle shade than plain old blue. Or else it may have been a reference to the indigo headgear and sails of the North African visitors to our Western shores. Furthermore, the term fear dubh (literally, ‘black man’) was already taken – it meant the devil!

There’s a little manoeuvrability with most words, and the same is true with place names. A word or term we use today may have meant something slightly different a long time ago. Don’t be put off by this. On the contrary, in all my years of exploring the subject, I have found ambiguity the perfect opportunity for a thousand conversations with men in tractors and place-name debates in village pubs. It certainly beats just learning it off by heart from a book!

YOUGHAL, COUNTY CORK

Youghal – Eochaill

Eochaill – Yew Wood

This translation tells us that Youghal had a yew-wood forest at one point. Interestingly, in 2019, one of that year’s many raging storms resulted in high tides on Youghal’s Claycastle Beach exposing remnants of an ancient forest floor, subsequently nicknamed the ‘drowned forest’.

Ptolemy’s map of Ireland, the first of its kind, was created around 140 AD, but place names existed long before maps or signposts. Picture the scene a thousand years before Ptolemy’s map. Some ancient Celt wishes to purchase cattle from another farmer. Clearly, they will have to arrange a time and place for the transaction.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow at sunrise.’

‘Grand job. Where?’

‘Do you know that big black rock? The one down by the river?’

‘I do. Perfect. See you then.’

And so, a place called Blackrock (An Charraig Dhubh) is born.

Remember when you were a small child and there was always the danger that if you went rambling you might get lost? Or if a place was crowded and you lost sight of your parents, you might never ever find your way home? Well, for our ancestors, landmarks and place names formed the map of the mind. Without them, even an adult could get lost. These were verbally handed down through the generations. The Irish term for folklore is béaloideas, from the words béal, meaning ‘mouth’, and oideas, meaning ‘instruction’, so place names and family trees were passed from generation to generation by word of mouth. Furthermore, the study of ‘the lore of notable places’ was a subject in its own right, known as Dindsenchas. The modern Irish word for the study of topography is dinnseanchas. More about that ancient art later, however.

Most of Ireland’s place names were settled over two thousand years ago and, as illustrated above, they mainly concerned themselves with immoveable features on the landscape. Examples that spring to mind would include Knockmore/An Cnoc Mór, meaning ‘the big mountain’, or Kinsale/Cionn tSáile, meaning ‘the headland of the sea’. Interestingly, Cionn tSáile was transliterated as ‘Kinsealy’ in North County Dublin. As the once-nomadic Celts settled, man-made features began to appear on the land, and, for the first time, in the place names too. Hence, we saw names emerge like Carrigadrohid/Carraig an Droichid, meaning ‘the bridge by the rock’, or Donegal/Dún na nGall, meaning ‘the fort of the foreigners’, and so on.

Just as an archaeologist will trace the evolution of people from the lowest stratum to the surface, we will dig down and unearth the story of Ireland through its place names, from the first settlers who stood in awe at the beauty of their discovery to the time of St Patrick and the spread of Christianity. We will witness the development of our towns and cities from monastic settlements, and feel the imprint of the Viking raider and Norman invader on the land. We will hear the sound of our place names change as the plantation of Ireland by the English is reflected in the names given to vast estates and their adjoining villages. We will hear the cry of the poor captured in place names like Baile na mBocht, and view religious persecution remembered at Carraig an Aifrinn, the rock altar where mass was celebrated in the wind and rain on pain of death. We will also hear the trumpet reveille of the Gaelic Revival as it awakened a new interest in our noble past and a thirst for freedom. We will consider the ostentatious brag inherent in the names of many Celtic Tiger housing estates, and perhaps, in our lifetime, we will witness a new age of post-pandemic enquiry from those of us who stand on Ireland’s stage today. You can tell your grandchildren you were part of it.