Townlands and the Oral Tradition with Úna Walsh

In this episode, Úna Walsh tells us about the importance of using our local townland names, and how they hold stories of the people, landscape and mythology within them.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

GD Focus Cultural People and Place, a podcast series which celebrates the hidden history and linguistic diversity of our local place names here. Throughout this series, which will follow an English-Irish format, the nightplace name experts will explore the hidden history of our local place names here and celebrating this unique aspect of our shared heritage. Today we speak to Inna Walsh about the connection between Tynelands and the Oral Tradition. Inna has done extensive work in bringing the use of local Thailand names back into the oral tradition in South Armad, and she believes that the preservation of Thailand names is central to recording local history. In today's episode, she'll tell us about how our place names carry stories of mythology, environment, history, and our sense of place.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

So my name is Una Murphy, Una Walsh, who was Una Murphy, from the townland of Tony Donald. And my passion is the oral tradition of the area that I grew up in. And the oral tradition is very strongly linked to our townlands, to our place. I think there was a concern for us from 1972 with the introduction of the rural road names to do some work around the townland boundaries. And very much within both a local history place and within a family tradition place, the person who gives information is the grandparent. And if the grandparent doesn't have that information or it isn't accessible to them, it becomes lost to that entire family. And you had passed 30 years of not using the town lands. And that just that tradition of, and even to now, you meet a child, you ask their name, and the second question you ask is, and where are you from? So when I was growing up, there was nowhere to be from, only Tully Donald. And every child that walked in that area gave the same answer. So it was important that that tradition remained. And to do that, then we began to get involved in looking at place names, identifying town land boundaries, and it has been such a happy piece of work. It has just been absolutely wonderful. It relates mostly to the South Armagh area. Townlands, I suppose, just for the absolute pride of it, townlands are unique to the island of Ireland. So there are 62,205 townlands across the island, and there are roughly 200 of them here in this South Armagh, in this part of South Armagh that we're in. So most of our work is concerned with the area, this area of these 200 townlands. The most important thing, I think, for me is the boundaries and that we we realise where we're moving from one townland to the other. And to do that, we have put in townland boundary marker stones. So they are marked front and back. They're bilingual because these place names, these town land names are over 800 years of age. So they came from the Irish language. So we're using both Irish and English on them. And as you travel down the road, the name of the town land you're going into is visible, and the same if you're coming back up the road. So that visibility, I think, is probably the most important thing that has created a momentum. Because as more of them became visible, uh other people in an area became interested and said, well, you know, if they're if they're going up in the Cullihan area, are we getting them in our area? And we would hope uh by the end of this year to have all of the 200 town lands uh marked with boundary marker stones. So I think for me that visibility, um the fact that they are in a small granite marker stone, uh, they're going to be there for a long time. Um and that that was probably the one that to begin the story, that was the one you needed to do. Um, and then as I said, that took its own life uh in that it began conversations among the older people about where the boundaries were. It began conversations around people who were no longer alive, that would have lived in some of the older houses that probably people hadn't talked about for quite a long time. So, in that older generation, it it brought back memories of their growing up and certainly strengthened that oral tradition of the older stories. Uh, for the younger people, it then was a whole new learning experience through the oral tradition, because a lot of work now in schools is written work and written material and reading from books, which is all very important. Um, but one of the most important ways of communicating is the old tradition, is the spoken word. Um, and not only not only for the words that you say, but for the sounds of the words that you say, for the speech pattern that you use, which is unique to every area as well, um, and and for the sounds of those town land names, because even if you took um the 800 years of history out of it, the the music that's in the sounds of some of those words, um I'm right beside the town land here of Caracaldreen, the rock of the Blackthornwood, but just the sound of Caracaldreen and the way, I mean, you think of you think of uh Hewitt's poems, you know, the name of the land shows the heart of the race, it moves on the tongue like the Lytt of a Sam, you know, and and he captured it so well. It is the Lytt that's in that, that's in that sounds and in that words. And the oral tradition, uh, because every one of those town lands had their own stories, um, and part of people coming together were the swapping of those stories. So if you bring the name back, um then you start to bring back uh all of the richness that went with that name, um, which you couldn't possibly get uh when you divide it up. And as well as that, when you as well as the oral tradition, I think, um the fact that all of your historical data is stored in in town land names. If somebody comes to do genealogy to look at where their family were from, all you need is your townland name. That one of Caracaldreen, um, because Carigaldreen is uh almost, I suppose, centre of South Army, just outside Mulaban. But my grandda used to talk about um when he was telling stories, uh, he talked about the generations before him, uh, where we were a completely wooded area, um, and that was very important to him, that whole native trees. But he used to talk about a squirrel um could travel from the townland of Cooldherry, which is out near Cross McGlen, uh to the townland of Caracaldreen without ever hitting the ground. There were so many trees, it just jumped from three to three, the whole way from Could Derry to Caracaldreen. So before I ever came to live where I now live, I knew the word Caracaldreen because it was part of a story that he used to tell, uh, which is lovely. Um, I'll now be cited. So Coolderry to Caracaldreen. Couldai is the back oak wood, and Caracaldreen is the rock of the black thornwood. And he said a squirrel could travel that entire distance without ever coming to the ground. Uh the townland of Dorsey, now Dorsey, where my mum was from, um, is the doors or the gateways. Uh, and Dorsey is one of the earliest townlands on uh just on a purely linear map. Um, it's dated from 1224 because it was the routeway to Ironwaha, to Navan's Fort, to the whole Celtic story of Makkah and the twins of Makka. And it was on the routeway uh from the Hill of Oshna, the most sacred place in the Celtic tradition, uh, right down to Armaa. So that would be a really important one. Um Clanchagora, uh, which is over the other side of Slave Gullion. Uh, Clanchagora is the meadow of the goats. Uh, and there's a lovely story of the goatmen of that area who travelled the whole way. And our goats on Slave Gullion have been DNA tested. I kid you not, um, and they are the 100% genuine old Irish goat. Uh and the goatmen from this South Arma area, particularly that area of uh Clunchagora, Drummond T, they travelled, they walked to Mayo and they took the old Irish goats back here. They took them on tramp through Scotland and England, they milked them on the way and they sold the goats before they left England to come back home. They were Pavi men. Um, but the professor came a couple of years ago and he had a whole thesis of work uh on how the goat men of South Armagh had reintroduced the goat to Victorian Britain. Imagine, and Clantagora is the meadow of the goat. Uh Carlus, Carlis is just above uh La Ros. Carlis is the odd or conspicuous fort. Um, and every anywhere you have Lis or Wrath in your place name, uh it's the proven that there was uh a Celtic fort area there, and I know forts now have been written up as early Christian, but the forts were used long before Christianity came to Ireland. They were used by the pagan Celtic people. Uh, and as you stand uh on the top of Corusford, and it's a it's a two-ring fort, uh two-hedge, and beautiful, a beautiful, beautiful area, uh, and beech trees on it, and you're looking down on La Ros, and it's part of the story uh of the O'Neill, the chieftains of the O'Neills here in South Darmah, the 1641 rebellion, uh the taking of the O'Neill land. I mean, all of it just joins up together so seamlessly. Um, and then I suppose Slave Gullyon, the mountain of the holly, uh, but the but the whole mystical mountain uh that is Slave Gullion and the town land around it. Um, and Michael J. Murphy uh would have been uh the last of the great folklore correctors, uh, and Michael J. had written his own poem on Slave Gullion, um, and the last lines of it are Mountain of Mystery, of Finn the Brave, of Saint Scholar Gale, of Legend and Tale, I am your slave. So they're just they're just five, maybe, of of the local ones, just picking them. But you know, you could pick any townland. Uh Bally Keel, the narrow townland, Bally Keel was the home um of um uh Art Bennett, the last of the Gaelic poets and scribes. And uh his he had written uh to McAdam, who was his benefactor in Belfast, um, and he'd written to McAdam that kick any stone uh in his townland, in the townland of Bally Keel, and you'd raise more history than the entire land of Belfast. Now that's arrogance to your benefactor, but that was you know, that's there's your sense of place. Kregen is um in the rich cultural landscape that is South Armagh, um, Kregen is the Jew. Uh, because Cragen uh is the Church of Ireland, worshiping Church of Ireland uh centre, uh, but it began its life in 1480 uh when the O'Neills, one of the great chieftains of Trome, um, came uh to South Armagh. The O'Neills did as was common with practice with Gaelic chieftains, they give their lands around their own castle uh to their eldest son, and other sons went out uh to colonize. So in 1480, one of the O'Neills came to South Armagh, set themselves up as chieftain of the Fews, and uh the Fuse is a barony, so our old division of land, our baronies, baronies into parishes, parishes into town lands, uh, set himself up as barony in the fews, built his castle at Glastrummond, and built his church, which obviously of their faith was Roman Catholic in at Kregen, and Kregen meaning rocky place. Um it's a lovely precipice running down onto uh the side of a river of the Kregan River. And from 1480 uh to the present day, uh Kregen has buried from every tradition of that fused area of South Armagh, uh, from the Gaelic chieftains, the O'Neills, who buried in a vault uh in Cragan graveyard, uh, to down through the Cromwellian landlords, uh, down through the raperees, down through the United Irishmen, down through the yeomanry that were part of that story, the High Sheriff of County Armagh, who was the story of the raparees, uh, the Catholic clergy, the Church of Ireland clergy, the Presbyterian clergy, and thousands of ordinary people are all buried together in one graveyard at Craig. It is the most wonderful piece of the storybook of the history of Ireland in one small place. It's absolutely unique. Every child that walked the road with me in the morning to primary school, um, and I'm talking about the late 50s, every child that walked that road came from the same place. And it didn't matter um what your social standing was, it didn't matter what your historical standing was, what your cultural standing was. Everyone came from that one place that they identified with. And I think that's the importance of the local for every person, irrespective of what their background is. That was the connection, that was the bit that joined the dots, uh, was where you were from. Um and and it's such an easy way, I think, um, for people to have a connection with no political barriers around it. Um it's just your town land. And I and we would use it quite a lot even in talking about that. Um, it's nobody's culture, it is the piece of ground upon which you stand. Um, and for everyone, um I think that has a resonance. Um, I think if you if you look at a loyalist tradition, uh people, people's um marching band will have their town land name on it. If you look in the GEA tradition, a football club will have its town land name on it. Um and and and when you think about that, um, and I know it's a lovely quote from Hewitt, but there's a lovely quote from Ryan McFadden, who was a Belfast poet, um, and it is I greet you now, town land stood beneath the hill, stored, starred with pieces of me. So those pieces of you are all part of that townland uh that you've come from, or the town land that you're now in. Um, but but it is it is that connection for me. The oral tradition is the master of all of this, um, and the strength of South Armaa that it has been a land of telling stories, of poetry, of song, but but that constant contact uh with the spoken word. Um and we've never lost that. And at and at times uh when the language hasn't been the first, the Irish language wouldn't have been the medium um of communication. Everything else that was important was still there. Uh, and as the language now has started to have a very good revival, um especially with the children through school, um, all of the race is there then to pick up again. So it all it's just it all joins up, it's all it's all these dots. Um, and if if you if you're joining your history um in dots like that, um then it makes sense because you read it all as a story. Just as your town land names are not just the name of of a plea piece of land, they are the mythology, they're the history, they're the geography, they're in their environmental. Um they carry with them all of those, you know, Derry Moore, Derry Big, the Big Wood, the Little Wood, uh, and those names you find replicated in different places in Ireland because we were a wooded country. You know, they're not, they're just not a name chosen at chosen at Random. Bally Keel, um, Bally Keel is means the narrow town land. And if you look at it in a map, you can see exactly why it's called Bally Keel and Bally Kyl. Karamanan, um, if you're coming up uh from from the Balik area into Fork Hill, uh, the town land of Karamanan, and the old people here would have said uh that it was the highest arable land in Ireland. Well, before men with diggers could make mountain make land out of mountain, um, but they would have said it was the highest arable land, and Kara is Cathar is quarter, and Manon was the god of the sea, the Celtic god of the sea, and you can see the Irish Sea, you can see, you know, and you're just thinking, you know, 800 years of those names and that that place name, and then you know, for in 1972, for somebody to decide that they're no longer useful and they don't need to be written on your on your letter heading, that you don't need to acknowledge them. Now that that has that has started to change again, in that statutory bodies are starting to recognize uh the town lands again. Um but I still believe the way you bring them back is through the love of them, through children using them, that they just become part of your normal speech pattern of every day. That's where um that's where you start to begin it with the oral tradition is those two questions, because those two questions are what everybody asks a child is what is your name and where are you from? That's the opening conversation you have with everyone. And if that child uh replies with their town and name, um then you have brought it back into the oral tradition. Uh the most important thing uh and the core of a young person's being is where they're from, is that sense of who they are. Um and in a very global world which we which we now live in, um I think the local has become even more important than it ever was. Uh, because our young people will travel across the world, which of course they should do, uh, but the bit that's unique to them is the family that they belong to, is the community that reared them. And uh we now talk about it takes a village to rear a child, uh, but the town and they reared them, um that sense of the families that they knew and that were part of their growing up, um, that I think has been will become even more important to them as they as they grow older. Um and I think that that basis of going in to work with young people early, uh, where it's just part of what they see as their everyday life uh rapes benefit. But I do think uh the local is very and the local, I suppose, in many ways is universal. The local in every country in the world is what's important uh to its own people. And I think I think in some ways um education uh has been responsible for, you know, I think in in previous generations and and certainly in generations before, and and I'm not saying anything wrong about schools, um, but you know, education has become very narrow. Um, it has become topics where history is on its own, geographies, on its own, literatures on its own, and that's not how people interacted, because all of those were part of the one story. Um so that now, unless somebody is studying every single subject, they lose out. Whereas the old tradition, you you lost nothing. The music, the song, the poetry, those spoken words, the town lands, it's all one, it's all one and the same thing. Um and and one just creates an interest in the other. That's I think how how important it is for me. That if you have the basis of one, then you look for more of them. Well, I think because I how you find out, I think about your place names, the first place I will go is onto the internet, to the place names, and the place name grouping uh that was working on the Queen's University, because they have a terrific resource of all of the place names which will give you the name of your place name, it will give you it in the Irish, and it will tell you when it first uh became uh Anglicised, it will give you a date, uh, and and those dates are dates when it's first became onto maps, uh, but it will give you a terrific background um onto that. And I think then um there is a grow a growing interest uh in the local. There's a growing interest in local history, uh, I think there's a growing interest in in uh where people find uh that core of themselves, as I talked about earlier on. Uh so I the place names is is a really, really good place to start. I think there is a lot of work um in council areas that you can access probably through some of their departments around the place names as well. I know for us here in South Armagh, uh there is a Ring of Gullion website where a lot of that information is stored. Um, and there has been landscape partnership groupings in different parts that would have that information on their website. So we're we're very lucky, I think, uh, in the time that we live now uh because of the internet and because of the amount of material that's now available. The 1901 census is available online, the 1911 census is available online, that's all in your townland name. So you can go in, uh you can bring up a 1901 census if you're lucky enough that the person belonging to your family uh could read and write when that was taken up. You can actually print off a document in the handwriting of somebody belonging to you from 1901 uh from over 120 years ago. So there is a remarkable amount of material available online. And then I would say, you know, you know, use your spoken word, go to the oldest person in your timeland, uh, because this is not news to them. Uh, they already know this, they are the repository of all of that local information, those older people. Um, and if this work can be done in intergenerational groups, then that is the best possible way to do it. Uh, because the old person has the information and the young person, the grandchild or the great grandchild has the computer skills that allow the two to be married up. The visibility is very important because um you will have people, a certain group of people who are naturally interested in history or they have come out of a house that is interested in history. Um, but the visibility then for somebody who hasn't got that background is really, really important because if they see the stone, um and for me, it's much more important uh that they're on boundaries because if they're just on directional signs, um you could be only going maybe a quarter of a mile down that road until you're in another town land. Uh so the boundary for me is really important that if you're marking all of your boundaries, that sense of leaving one town land and going into the next. Um there's a story that um I can't remember who used to tell it. Uh there was a story that uh if they asked the old man in the house, the grandfather in the house, uh, that he knew we'll say 40 town lands in the area that he lived in. Um and if you asked the next generation, they were maybe down to 10. And if you ask the third generation, you could be coming down to two or three. So the only way you redress that, I think, is visibility. If people are driving that road, they're seeing that stone uh every day. And I mean, you know, traveling traveling the road is is that's that's the means of getting to a group of people that you don't have to ask to do anything, they're already there, and so it's it's a very easy way of giving information if you just have a stone alongside that road. It doesn't have to be labelled cultural, or you know, it is it's it's back to as simple as the ground that you stand upon. And every person that lives with it within that townland is standing on that townland. So it, you know, you don't have to, and you have to not allow it to be become political or any of the words that go along with something that will cause uh any any type of annoyance or for people to so it is as simple as the ground that you stand on, and you how and everyone feels a connection to that place. You know, you you know, it doesn't matter, even to think of, I mean, you can't think um of Patrick Kavanagh, uh, but you think of any scheme. You think of Bally Rush and Gorchan from his poems, you can't think of Shimus Haney or you think of Anna Horish. You know, so it's it is as simple as that. That um you think of me and my name, I think of I'm from Tully Down. I think of my mother who was from the townland of Dorsey, my father was from the townland of Kirnally, my grandmother was from the townland of Tully Valley, and my great-grandmother was from the townland of Umri Cam. You know, so so it's it's that sense of where all of those people were from and what that meant to them. Um, and you know, and it is it it is important to people, um, and it just crosses all boundaries, all divisions. You don't need to mention any of those things, you just need to say this is the land that you're standing.