Sunday, 19 April 2020

Making places of spaces-part one

Last week I wrote about the roads and routeways of the past but afterwards I started to think about how people knew which routes to follow without the aid of a written language, maps or a compass. The earliest inhabitants of our small island were proficient navigators-they had to be to get here in the first place! As the monuments in Carrowmore, Carrowkeel and the Boyne Valley show, they were also skilled astronomers and mathematicians. There can be no doubt that they used their knowledge of the sun and the stars to navigate their way around the country and, like Brendan of Ardfert and Clonfert, even further afield. 

Prominent hills, woods, rivers and rocks, or man-made structures such as burial mounds, standing stones and ringforts were also used as way markers and indicators of territorial boundaries. Many of these ancient reference points still survive in the names of places today. Ballinasloe (Béal Átha na Slua) for example, is said to be named after béal meaning 'mouth' and áth meaning 'a ford'. Incidentally, one of the earlier names associated with the town was Bac or Back, from an bac meaning 'the bend' (in the river). The name still survives as a townland, which extends from Croffy's Yard to Joe Murray's in Bridge Street. Dunlo, another early name associated with Ballinasloe, derives from Dún Leodha or 'Leodha's (possibly Lowe's) fort' and first appears in documentary sources in the 12th century.  The Annals of the Four Masters record a bridge and castle there at that time. 

At least two townland names located close to the route of the Slí Mhór in Ballinasloe refer to man-made features of some considerable antiquity. Ardcarn, a long townland overlooking the Suck valley on the Creagh side of the town, is derived from cairn meaning 'mound of stones' and is generally indicative of a burial place.  Even more evocative of links to our ancient past, however, is the place once known as Tuaim Catraí, which is the Irish name for the townland of Kellysgrove. It is translated as 'the burial mound of the Catraí', a local tribe descended from the Fir Bolg. There are several references in early manuscripts to the Catraí or Cathraige, who are said to have inhabited land on both sides of the River Suck.
Roswayers at the Stony Man in the Slieve Blooms, June 2017
Although to my knowledge no standing stones survive in the immediate area, many are recorded from around the country and are often found on hills, or where the land changes. Some are associated with the fear bréige or 'false man', so-called because viewed from a distance they resemble the human form. There is a great story in the Folklore Commission Schools Collection  which tells of the fear bréige above Lough Muskry in the Galtees. At  midday the sun would sit directly over the stone and 'many a child weary from haymaking and longing for the dinner hour was told to look up and notice that the sun hadn't yet come overhead (the) fear bréige' 
(https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4922274/4866364/5052610). 

How Ireland has changed.

References
www.dúchas.ie 

You could do a lot worse than browse through the Schools Collection, which has been digitised and is freely available online. You might even know some of the children who wrote the stories.  Here's a link to schools in the Creagh and wider area:
 https://www.duchas.ie/en/src?q=Creagh&t=CbesTranscript&ct=RC
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