READ NEXT:\u00a0There are just two Movilles in the world, but do you know where the ‘other one’ is?<\/a><\/p>\nWithout going into the complex history of the peninsula, I would like to outline some basic facts about the place-names of Inishowen. Before 1600, not a single English name existed here. Inishowen was totally Irish-speaking. The population would have had no use for an English name or an Anglicized name. All that changed when Sir Arthur Chichester took over from our last Gaelic chieftain Cathaoir Rua \u00d3 Dochartaigh in 1609. As the land was being divided up and leased to English and Scottish settlers, maps were drawn up on which all the Gaelic townlands were written in a form that would help the newcomers identify places. Thus for example, Ballie Ichaneightra on the 1609 map is evidently Baile Fhioch\u00e1in \u00cdochtarach (Balleelaghan Lower, in Culdaff Parish). This means Fioch\u00e1n\u2019s Homestead. The native Irish would have understood its meaning immediately but it was just mumbo-jumbo to the settlers, unless they were from the G\u00e0idhlig-speaking parts of Western Scotland.<\/p>\n
The situation in the early 1600s would have been similar to that of the pioneers of America when they first encountered Native American place-names like Minnesota and Milwaukee \u2013 places that had very specific meanings to the natives but were totally lost on the new-comers. By exploring their origins we are rescuing Inishowen place-names from a similar loss of true identity.<\/p>\n
Tipsy friar with talent for verse<\/p>\n
A poem\/song in Irish composed about 1750 by a rakish friar from the Isle of Doagh, has been a popular recitation piece all over Inishowen. It was first collected in Urris in the 1920s and later in 1938, young M\u00e1ire N\u00ed Dhochartaigh from Cloch Fionn wrote it down from her father, Seosamh.<\/p>\n
A longer version then appeared in Charles McGlinchey\u2019s The Last of the Name. Charles, who was born in 1861, had memorised it from childhood. It contains 33 references to Gaelic place-names from all over the peninsula. Parental Advisory: The friar isn\u2019t exactly a good role model for the present youth of Inishowen! But the first two verses begin harmlessly enough:<\/p>\n
Mullach os cionn Ardaigh<\/p>\n
\u2018gus aoibhinn c\u00f3rach Barr na mBeann<\/p>\n
T\u00edfe\u00e1 Iorras uait is M\u00e1lainn<\/p>\n
Cnoc na Darach gach uile ann.<\/p>\n
Cnoc na Manach, Log is Caonach,<\/p>\n
Glac na Br\u00e1ide, sin is Drong,<\/p>\n
Log an Churraigh, Coill is Cl\u00e1rach,<\/p>\n
Agus ar Eanach a d\u2019\u00f3l m\u00e9 dream<\/p>\n
The Town of Mullagh above Ardagh,<\/p>\n
Fair and pleasant are the lofty Bens,<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll see Urris and the meadows of Malin,<\/p>\n
Cruckakillydara and the hills beyond.<\/p>\n
Knockamany, Lagg and Keenagh<\/p>\n
Glacknabrade and from there to Drung<\/p>\n
Legacurry, Kill and Clara,<\/p>\n
And back to Anagh where I drank a dram.<\/p>\n
And who exactly was this tipsy \u201cFriar Tuck\u201d with a talent for verse-making? Well, he was one of four sons of Ruair\u00ed \u00d3g \u00d3 Dochartaigh, three of whom became clergymen. One was hanged in the Diamond of Derry in 1740 and another went to Louvain to study. The poet himself remained on in the Isle of Doagh although he ministered for a time in the parish of Cloncha. He is only known as Br\u00e1thair na Dumhcha \u2013 The Friar from Doagh \u2013 and died in 1784. He is buried somewhere in Lagg cemetery.<\/p>\n
It seems he wrote the poem one day as he sat at Carrickabraghy looking all around him on the hills of Inishowen. He names each place in turn and then recalls all the shenanigans he got up to – presumably in his wayward youth. Has he now repented? Impossible to say. Here\u2019s my own prose translation of the rest of the poem:<\/p>\n
Carraig a\u2019 Bhracha\u00ed was my favourite drinking ground, down by the sandhills or by An Caisle\u00e1n, singing sweetly to Oile\u00e1n Glas-\u00c9adaigh. I went fishing at Tr\u00e1igh Br\u00e9ige, made music at R\u00e1th Sionnaigh and swam the sea to An Br\u00e9id\u00edn. Thousands thought that I had drowned!<\/p>\n
I got drunk on Cnoc na Gaoithe and stayed up there all the night. From there I went to Gleann na M\u00ednteach where treachery was done on me. I asked for a tankard and they filled it up but the landlord told me I\u2019d better pay. When the moon arose I was ready to go but hadn\u2019t a penny in my purse. I found my coat and my cloak all torn, lying in bits on the tavern floor. A woman followed me, stole my boots and disappeared into the yellow bog. The town rose up and tried to catch me but I steamed ahead like a boat on the wind.<\/p>\n
I went to R\u00fasca\u00ed to visit Gr\u00e1inne but she wouldn\u2019t give me a beer on strap. All I had was a mouldy wig, an empty pocket and an ugly hat. I put them down and hit the counter but she sent me off with a scolding shout. But I drank a bottle when I got to An tSr\u00e1id and more than my fill at Machaire M\u00f3r. <\/p>\n
I learned Latin and Greek so long ago, but time is moving on, my friend! I donned a cravat and a fine silk shirt at Toigh She\u00e1rlais in Ard a\u2019 Chrainn. I was in Ardach playing cards and I drank a health to Owen Roe O\u2019Neill. On my way to Machaire Ard, I spent some time at the races with M\u00e1ire Nic a\u2019 Bhaird.<\/p>\n
From Baile Chall\u00e1in to Cnoc Each-Dhroma I was famous for making poit.<\/p>\n
I never stopped and never got tired making music all night in Inis Eoghain. Big towns, small towns from Doire upwards, but two of the places I never set foot: Ceathr\u00fa Trasna and \u00cdochtar Fanaid – so now I\u2019ve told you all my rant!<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a Point but it\u2019s not Quigley\u2019s<\/p>\n
A district in Inishowen, known many years ago as The Meedians, will no doubt be recognisable by some of our senior citizens around Muff or in parts of Upper Moville. However, the youth of today would look at you blankly if you said you were heading up to see somebody in The Meedians. \u201cWhere in God\u2019s name is that?\u201d I\u2019ll tell you now and take you out of your misery. The Meedians are in the rather exotic-sounding Three Trees townland in the parish of Muff.<\/p>\n
According to Dinneen\u2019s Irish Dictonary m\u00edod\u00fan is not just any old meadow but one \u201cespecially ready for cutting\u201d. And Inishowen has a few others thus described: one near Malin Head called Meedan More (M\u00edod\u00fan M\u00f3r); and in the south east we have one in Tullyally called Meedanbeg (M\u00edod\u00fan Beag) and another in Tromaty called Meedanboy (M\u00edod\u00fan Bu\u00ed). Ah, the sunny long ago! Do you see what you are missing now, young people of Inishowen?<\/p>\n
The autumn days are here again and the night winds chilly blow,<\/p>\n
The woodlands turn to golden hue and the harvest moon\u2019s a-glow,<\/p>\n
To hear again of days long past to come no more, I know,<\/p>\n
When I mowed Pat Murphy\u2019s meadow in the sunny long ago!<\/p>\n
Three Trees has a rather bizarre etymology. The \u201cofficial\u201d Irish version is Ard an Chrainn, translating as The Height of the Tree. Ancient sources refer to it as Ard an Chr\u00f3 (The Height of the Shelter or Hut) but the Three Trees name itself has baffled many.<\/p>\n
It seems probable though that the transcriber – whoever he was – thought he was hearing something like three trees in the name as spoken by some local resident but in actuality this was Na Tr\u00ed dTrian, The Three Thirds. It refers to land divisions, not trees.<\/p>\n
Ard an Chrainn \/ Ard an Chr\u00f3 appear to be older names for the principal mountain in Three Trees now called Cruckglass (Cnoc Glas, Green Hill). The plot thickens. As Oscar Wilde said \u201cThe truth is rarely plain and never simple\u201d. How right he was.<\/p>\n
Staying in that region, we come to another vexed problem which I call the \u201cQuigley Factor\u201d of place-names. There might be hundreds of Quigley residents in the south east but Carrickmacquigley has nothing to do with that surname. It is a mistranslation of Carraig Mhic Uidhil\u00edn, meaning McQuillan\u2019s Rock. (It can be pronounced Carrickmakilleen). Futhermore, there is no Quigley\u2019s Point! There is a point there alright \u2013 a headland – but 17th century documents suggest that the original name should have been Carrowkeel Point.<\/p>\n
There are two fleeting references to it in the Plantation Papers after which it disappears completely from the records. It had been anglicised to Rinecaroughkilly and Rynecarronikilly which means The Point of Carrowkeel, and evidently this was known in Gaelic Ireland as Rinn Cheathr\u00fan Caoile. The end word \u201cCaoile\u201d [pronounced keel-ya] was wrongly interpreted as \u201cQuigley\u201d in more recent times by virtue of the fact that there was a family of that surname living in the immediate area! I hope I don\u2019t get lynched by an angry mob of Quigleys for stealing their thunder.<\/p>\n
Henry Vaughan and the rebuilding of Buncrana<\/p>\n
I always thought it very strange that a town called The Mouth of the Crana River was a relatively long way away from that river. The Crana flows into the Swilly in the north-western suburbs of the present town. The town centre itself \u2013 somewhere near the old Market House \u2013 is not the hub of an old 15th-century village, but actually the heart of a new town built in the 18th century by Henry Vaughan. The original old town \u2013 Bun Chranncha \u2013 was situated on the other side of the river, to the north of the O\u2019Doherty Keep and directly behind Vaughan\u2019s 1718 stately home, known locally as \u201cThe Castle\u201d.<\/p>\n
To build his new town, Vaughan dismantled old Bun Cranncha (Buncranah on the maps), stone by stone, and started work immediately on the expansion of a small cluster of houses just directly opposite his house \u2013 a place now called Castle Avenue, but which was known in the 1830s as William Street \u2013 presumably named after the British monarch, William IV who ruled from 1830-7.<\/p>\n
William Street, in the 1830s, began as Castle Avenue and veered right down the Main Street – but it was still called William Street – and ended at the Market House where it met Townsend Street \u2013 now called Lower Main Street. To the left was Market Street, now Maginn Avenue.<\/p>\n
Mabel Colhoun, the eminent archaeologist, and native of Inishowen, wrote in her invaluable book \u201cInishowen Heritage\u201d that Castle Avenue, in her childhood days, was known as Gubbock Lane, which I believe comes from the Irish word giobach meaning untidy. And yes, it was probably a higgledy-piggledy cluster of thatched cottages in 1718 that in no way resembled an English town. No doubt Mr. Vaughan\u2019s dream was to build a more orderly village, along the lines of an English village, and build he did. <\/p>\n
I have no idea what his town looked like in the 18th Century \u2013 I was unable to find a town plan from that period \u2013 but I did find the town layout on the 1834 Ordnance Survey Map and it was more or less the same shape then that it is today except that when you walked down any side-street you were immediately in green fields of corn, swaying in the summer breeze!<\/p>\n
I have some reason to believe that Gubbock Lane was the pathway through a little clachan called Colecorvrin. It is mentioned several times in 17th century documents linked to another clachan called Ardraman (Ardaravan) about one kilometre away at the end of the Causeway Road \u2013 or the Cassy Road, as local people call it.<\/p>\n
Now Ardaravan \u2013 as a townland \u2013 is a large area covering the whole of Buncrana and its immediate environs, but in the 1600s it was a very rural district scattered around with little farm clusters \u2013 Colecorvrin and Ardraman were but two of these clusters. Ardravan townland is named after the cluster of Ardravan.<\/p>\n
In 1609 Henry Vaughan (an ancestor of the Henry Vaughan who built the new town) was granted land for 51 years for the nominal fee of \u00a350 by Arthur Chichester \u2013 almost half of the parish of Fahan Lower, consisting of 11 quarterlands and 4 half quarters \u2013 the entire western side of the parish, including all the fisheries in that half. The river bordering the eastern edge of his lease was the Owenboy River. Vaughan\u2019s land was on its western bank and this river meets with the Crana River at Kinnego and flows out into the Swilly at Tullyarvin. The lease states that he was granted several fisheries including: Tullyarvill cum Duntarson Meaning: Fisheries from Tullyarvin to Shandrim, i.e., from the Swilly to the Owenboy River via the Crana River. (Duntarson is in Shandrim).<\/p>\n
However, he is also granted the fisheries from Ardaravan to \u201cColecomer\u201d, which I believe to be Colecorvrin as it was written in the latter form in two other unrelated documents of the time. The river in question has no name, that I am aware of, but it still flows to this day from its source in Aghilly, past Magheraban and Magherintoor; then by the north of Ardaravan, under a bridge on the Cassy Road and down under Jacob\u2019s Bridge, just around the corner from Castle Avenue. It swerves around the back of the houses in the avenue and comes out into the Swilly. Thus we have it on the 1609 lease: Arderaman cum Colecomer.<\/p>\n
Meaning: Ardaravan to Colecorvrin (i.e., fisheries on the river linking them.)<\/p>\n
Colecorvrin – if it really is the name of the old cluster of houses on Castle Avenue – could be interpreted as C\u00fail Choirbhr\u00edn, the Nook or Angle of Coirbhr\u00edn. And Coirbhr\u00edn might also be the name of that stream. <\/p>\n
Its source is shown in a 1609 map as the marshy area lying between aghiellie and ballimagan, i.e., somewhere near Clonglash.<\/p>\n
And what kind of fishing would have taken place in this little stream? Well, take a look sometime at a little side-street halfway down Castle Avenue on the right. It used to be called Eel Street! And the name Gubbock could also be piscine in origin since gob\u00f3g means dog-fish!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Has anyone ever wondered about the following unusual places we find tucked away in the corners of familiar-sounding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1485,61,5969,60,5970,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-215116","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-donegal","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-inishowen","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-moville","13":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}