Sunday, November 11, 2007
Ballymoney - ‘Town of bigots’…
WHEN Ballymoney Council was asked to provide Irish street names in three villages last week, the vote didn’t pass - perhaps unsurprising in a unionist-dominated council. However, the vote was (I believe) four for and four against, with the mayor - hardline Paisleyite John Finlay and casting vote holder - abstaining. Like Finlay, most of the DUP councillors actually abstained, with only two DUP and two independent unionists voting against the signs. The Council seems to have gone against the spirit, if not the letter, of its own rules. It’s something you’d expect Irish language newspaper La Nua to get annoyed about, and it does, in its balanced front page story last week. However, the headline on the splash - Baile na mbiogóidí (Town of bigots) - goes beyond ‘whataboutery’. Fighting perceived sectarianism is fair enough - but labelling the entire population of Ballymoney as bigots is counterproductive and just plain stupid. Just imagine a whole town suing a paper for defamation...!
Belfast Gonzo @ 04:52 AM
Dewi and Dawkins
I think Daragh Smith suggests that one of the female descendants of Noah can be seen exiting stage right in a ship in the biblical account, and a female arrivee of similar name from the same region appearing in the Irish mythological record at about the right time for them to be one and the same.
Maybe all that lost tribe of Israel stuff had something in it after all.....
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 04:07 PMDewi, I think street names in the countryside were probably introduced in the 1970s. Fermanagh refused to go with the flow.
Townlands are making a come back; they’ll be included in the new database address lists. Sadly, few members of the younger generation know where the boundaries are. Maybe placenames and their meanings will be included in the primary school syllabus.
Deriving Irish forms from anglicised or English ones is fairly speculative. For example, the ‘correct’ form for Bushmills translates as Bushmill!!
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 04:08 PMPerhaps you miss the point, Dewi, militant republicans promoting the language is counter productive, especially when they are hostile to other forms of cultural expression. Ironically, one of our local lodges is Ballyoglagh LOL 1190.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 04:17 PMAnyone who promotes the language, whatever political leanings, is doing a good thing IMHO.
Ballyoglagh = Armytown ?
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 04:27 PMOr then again why not change Ballymoney to Ballyguile - Baile gCaol - the town of the narrows (cf Loughguile).
The population in Dunloy would really be up in arms then. Maybe the council could make everything red and white and cover it in shamrocks too.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 04:35 PMUMH, here’s some info on townlands. Sadly, the Ballymoney Ancestry site links to parish maps at PRONI and many of the numbers are missing.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 04:43 PMI was always taught at School (in Ballymoney over 20 years ago) that Ballymoney meant ‘town on the bog’ - the bog in question being the nearby Garry Bog.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 04:46 PMSoldier’s town, I think, Dewi.
I don’t follow your argument about language promotion. I assumed you’d not use a negative approach. SF is fundamentally a fascist organisation and should be kept well away from the promotion of the Irish language to reluctant takers.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 05:04 PMLlanelli (used to be Llanelly) stuffed by the way.... Is a bog the same as a moor ?
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 05:04 PMDewi @ 03:24 PM and others:
The Public Health Act of 1848 and the Local Government Act of 1858 ordered that houses should be numbered. I assume both of those applied to the (then) whole UK. It didn’t stop the “Dunrovins”, “Bidawees” and similar affectations subverting the system. In like vein, we have all those “personalised” number-plates at variance with a rational national system: vanity over sanity.
If one looks at the 1841 Census, it is usual to find townland names (and I’m not just talking Ireland there). With later censuses, we get numbers and streets. I guess that (Victorian bureaucracy apart) there was a direct correlation with the growth and use of the penny post, and also of working-class literacy.
As for the wider point, as in Ulster McNulty @ 03:51 PM responding to Ulster’s my homeland @ 03:41 PM, I was struck by the list of townland names, all based on Gaelic derivations.
Take Rasharkin as just one example. As an Anglicised name that’s merely a direction. When we return to its original, Ros Earcáin, we are in Larkin’s wood. Thus is added a new layer of meaning, so the reversion has merit. Since, politically and denominationally, it is a “mixed” area, I cannot see how “Ulsterness” is diminished by acknowledging both variants.
Only in Norn Iron ...
This place-name thing is pretty general. I was born in a small town called “Wells”: none of us worried there was a “city” of similar size and identical name the other side of the country. In 1857 the railway company, for marketing purposes, had decided it was “Wells-on-Sea”. Then in 1956, when the railway was about to be axed, the local Council decided we were “Wells-next-the-Sea”. Later still, the Post Office consigned us to the NR23 code. Most disorientating? Not really.
The railway was also guilty of the Egglescliffe and Eaglescliffe cock-up in North Yorkshire.
For many years I have lived in Norf Lunnun. Here “Highgate” is considered more desirable an address than “Crouch End”. Some years back the local estate agents discovered terra incognita called “Highgate Spinney”, where bits of the latter rubbed up against the former.
So, I find all this stiff-neck and sweaty-collar stuff about place-names in Irish a triumph of blinkers over brains.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 05:05 PMBole, Bogtown makes more sense than the alternative Baile Muine - townland of the thicket.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 05:09 PMSolier something like Fian ain’t it - thought Oglagh was army - stand to be corrected however ! Tangential on Sinn Fein and disagree - secretive due to history but if everything keeps together will be normal pretty soon.
What did Lemass say about the young FF - L
“Slightly constitutional party” think SF are getting there.Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 05:11 PMDewi, you could think of moor as upland bog.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 05:16 PMDawkins,
Say what you please as an Englishman, you’re entitled - I say what I like as an Irishman in England. The kindest thing Ballymoney (and Distict - thank you, Nevin) Council could do to my mind is to apply to the Tourist Board for a grant to have liquid digital display screens implanted on the foreheads of its citizenry in order that other English speaking tourists could understand their spoken “first language”, English.
Nevin,
Thank you for the correction. No doubt the good folk of Ballymoney surrounding district are now happy to be included as bigots as well. God bless them.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 05:22 PM“..think SF are getting there.”
We are at the stage Dev was at in 1927 when he realised that to gain power it was necessary to take the oath. On the sound Protestant principle that ‘Paris is worth a Mass’ he wasn’t wrong!
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 05:23 PMAgreed on Dev thing. However things are looking pretty dodgy these last couple of weeks - and an explosion at Rememberance service in Newry. That’s terribly worrying.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 05:35 PM“When we return to its original, Ros Earcáin, we are in Larkin’s wood.”
Larkin appears to be a different name from a different part of Ireland, Malcolm; Earcáin is probably the predecessor of Harkin/Harkan.
Now here’s a quaint thing. Developer Seymour Sweeney’s son is call Ross and the Sweeney of Sweeney’s Frenzy allegedly lived at Rasharkin. Does Rasharkin want him back? ;)
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 05:37 PMMalcolm - should have been Wells under the sea after reading your brilliant recent blog…
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 05:44 PMlib2016 @ 05:23 PM:
Nice thought. How does that square with abstentionism as a campaign strategy for a (2009/10) Westminster General Election?
Sorry: off topic.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 05:47 PMMalcolm,
why would Sinn Fein want to abstain from the Dail when it is becoming clearer by the day who really makes the rules here?
P.S. Even the SDLP don’t bother turning up at Westminster any more so abstentionism there really doesn’t count.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 05:56 PMI agree on ending abstentionism - there’s some constitutional stuff going on where we could do with a hand in the Imperial Parliament.. And I repeat a powerful ILA can only be enacted at Westminster.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 05:58 PM-
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 06:02 PM
dewi @ 05:44 PM:
Too kind, too kind.
By the look of it, further down the coast they were damn lucky. If the storm surge hadn’t been an hour out of kilter with the spring tide ... good-night East Anglia. Typically, the BBC were instantly asking why the evacuation warning when it was all a false alarm.
So why am I (presently resident on a 250 foot contour line) occasionally contemplating a nice retirement on the Down or the northern coast?
However, I (wilfully) failed Irish in Leaving Cert, so I’d be all right inland at Ballymoney, now.
By the way, I went looking for the stats on Ballymoney. It’s quite a pocket of deprivation, especially in housing (is that because of decanting the less affluent from the coastal areas?). Despite communications and position, the local economy seems consistently to lose out to Coleraine as the local focus (e.g. the new Causeway Hospital).
It seems to me that the Borough Council has more pressing problems than street signs.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 06:07 PMDoes anyone know what the names of the streets in question?
I’ll just go up and put them up meself, never mind going begging at the council’s door.
I think it sad that people just don’t make greater use of their paint brushers.
I notice that Newry has become Newry / An tIúr on many road-signs in Newry and Mourne - very official looking too but I doubht if Roads Service are directly responsible.
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 06:24 PMBallymoney district council stats:
Posted by on Nov 11, 2007 @ 06:33 PM
