Tales from the Townlands

"If that fekking idiot of a postman doesn't know that we live here, then they can just fekk off and get a local boy to deliver it. Ain't no sense in getting rid of the townlands. Stupid fekking house numbers and street names, Jesus."

She was a young nurse, leaning back and blowing smoke out of the open kitchen window. This was the first time I'd heard of the townlands, and it would not be the last.

A townland is, from what I can gather, the name of an area in Ireland. They are not towns as such, as you can have many townlands associated with a town. And they're not single property names, because you can have multiple properties on a townland. They are the townlands - touchstones to Irish's colourful history and folklore, and, as the nurse railed out against, under threat from the modern need for a billing address.

Townlands generally come from the old Irish, and some have very inviting, poetic translations. Standing at one point, for example, I could see "the Big Tate" (a tate is an old measurement of land, not based on area, but on the amount of cattle it could provide food to in a year), "the Fort of the Fairy Woman" and "the Fort of the Soothsayer". It is no wonder that a lot of people are interested in uncovering their meanings.

Though he was sitting at an angle sympathetic to the droop of his face, the old man sitting behind me in the car was quick and alive with local, historical information.

"That's where they set off the Enniskillen bomb, back in the Troubles," he said, "and a mighty shame it wasn't a bigger one."

Politically charged, he was also writing a collection of all the townland names and their meanings from the county of Fermanagh. We were actually on our way to the meeting of the local historical society, who were holding their Annual General Meeting, as well as launching a book about the "Chantry Inquisitions" of Counties Fermanagh and Monaghan (a book that is only required reading for people interested in local history and townlands).

"Those elections were rigged," he growled as we drove away, "they always are. It's the Bishop, you see, he always picks the folk he wants to run the society. That's why their journal's always filled with bloody church history."

I don't doubt him either, mainly because he didn't actually run, so couldn't have tasted any sour grapes. He was, though, interested in reading his book on the townlands. As was my uncle, an equally sage man, who'd been our chauffeur for the evening.

"See that man there, Jimmy," he said, as we passed a waving figure, "he's old Boyd, a real oddball. Keeps wanting to get lifts into town, but he reeks of filth. Keeps goats, you see, and he got stabbed a few years back"

My uncle's encyclopedic knowledge didn't end there. Every building, person, lane or field held a wealth of legends and history.

"That there house, with the caravan parked out the front, see it? A man came from England, to lay his claim on it, so he left the 'van there till it went all mouldy. He came out then, a few years back, and finally got onto the land. He only lasted about a year. You see those trees in the field? The ones that are standing by themselves, scattered around a bit? They're called "lone trees". We don't cut them down, see, some folk think they're fairy trees or the property of the druids. But this man, he went and lopped off parts of those trees, then got the cancer and died. So we leave the trees there, rightly so."

Even today, then, stories form a very important part of the Irish landscape. I've been taken on many tours now, with all manner of family members, and they are all the same: pointing out buildings and people and telling a story about them. There's the house where one brother died,so his surviving sibling stowed him away in the attic until he rotted. While, over there, is the woman who always collects herbs by the side of the road--she's got the cure for urine infections, passed on from her husband. Further down, there's the church whose site was determined by the cast of a spear and where, a century or so later, a bishop was cut down while he stood at the altar.

Though the phone and electricity companies will no doubt get their way, it's comforting to know that the townlands will still live on, carried through in the tales of their inhabitants.