The School of Canadian Irish Studies’ former O’Brien Visiting Scholar Patrick Duffy recently wrote a blog post about how the Irish landscape is full of unrecorded placenames, and that these almost-forgotten names are slowly being recovered.
Clifden, Connemara. The Scenery and Antiquities of Ireland, J. Stirling Coyne & N. P. Willis, c1841. LibraryIreland.com.
Mr. Duffy wrote specifically about the work of Tim Robinson, an Englishman, who learned Irish so he could talk to locals and obtain correct pronunciation of the names and the stories behind them as he carried on his field work on foot and bicycle in the west of Ireland. Mr. Robinson’s mission was “to restore the names faithfully in Irish, rather than in the pidgin Irish/English of the Ordnance Survey (OS).”
“Robinson came to live in the Aran islands and Connemara forty years ago and devoted his life to mapping and recovering their wealth of placenames, placelore (or dinnseanchas) and history. He saw his mission as compensation for what the Ordnance Survey did in the early nineteenth century when it mapped the land and landscape of the west but largely emptied them of their cultural and human significance as recorded, for example, in names and places.”
Mr. Robinson published intricate maps of the Aran Islands, The Burren and Connemara in “hand-crafted ‘organic’ cartography which tried to represent the complexities and intimacies of the human and physical landscapes.”
Read more in Mr. Duffy’s blog post, What’s in a name? What’s in the landscape?
The School of Canadian Irish Studies is a partnership between Montreal’s Concordia University and the Canadian Irish Studies Foundation. Its programs focus on Ireland’s rich history and culture and the contribution of Irish immigrants to Canada.
What a wonderful legacy he has left… hopefully some of the Irish/Gaelic historians will be thrilled with these maps and stories. Thanks for sharing them.