Your ancestor's townland of origin
Sunday morning brought another emailed "Letter from Ireland." Today Mike Collins has written about townlands:
Maybe you have heard the Irish term "townland" before? If you have examined most Irish record sets - you will notice that Ireland is divided administratively into:
- Counties
- Then: Civil Parishes
- Then: Townlands (or streets if in a city or town!)
However, the thing that most confuses people is the misleading word "Townland". You see, it has nothing to do with a "Town"!
So, how did the word "townland" come about? Well, a "townland" is a slight mistranslation from the original Irish - "baile fearainn" (pronounced "bal-ya far-in") which is more appropriately translated into English as "home land" or "home territory". "Baile" can mean either "town" or "home" in English. So, you could say that "Townland" is a mistranslation of the term "baile fearainn". However, we are stuck with it at this stage!
Many townland names...have been used in Ireland for well over a thousand years. In fact, the Normans, and later the English, adopted townland boundaries for use in their administrative boundaries and then rolled up groups of townlands into civil parishes. The use of townland names has prevailed in Ireland from earliest times right up to today. Ask one of your ancestors where they came from and they would often give the county, the nearest town or city and the actual townland name where they lived.
The name of my father's townland "Foilnamuck" - meaning "cliff of the pigs" usually describes an long-forgotten feature of the landscape contained within that townland. For example, "Dromana" comes from the Irish "drom eanigh" translating to English as "ridge over the marshes". This is a classic descriptive name for an Irish townland - one that explicitly spells out a feature and makes a place recognisable in conversation.
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