Place Names:

by Ian Sherry of Rostrevor, Northern Ireland

I have little knowledge of mapping in America other than to assume that the place names of many cities and towns are named after the European locations the settlers came from. And to trust that native American names were collected as sensitively as our names were in the original survey of 1824. It is remarkable that the English officers Colby; Drummond; and Larcom knew of the importance of place names in the Irish psyche and to this end employed John O’Donovan; an Irish scholar in a class of his own. O’Donovan travelled throughout the island of Ireland interviewing ‘wise old heads;’ collecting Irish place names and translating them into English – in such a way that their original meaning would not be lost.

I joined the Ordnance Survey in 1966. It was an organization that truly hadn’t changed in more than 100 years. I was assigned to the Triangulation Section. Carrying the gear to the remotest places. For 15 days on the trot we carried theodolite, tellurometer, lights, car batteries, lunch bags and assorted accoutrements from sea level at Maggie’s Leap to the tower on the top of Slieve Donard; 2796 feet. To communicate from one mountain to another we used Morse Code. Hence the lights. When I see the profusion of mobile phones now…

I had a wonderful time in the Trig Section moving from place to place, we played sport in the various parishes and drank in the local pubs. Then I was a leveler. No, nothing to do with religion or indeed finance. I cut Bench Marks and give them a value (a height above sea level) linked to the national datum established (8th April 1837) at Poolbeg Lighthouse at Dublin Port. On sights that were selected with a view to permanency, benchmarks were indeed written in stone. Cold chisels for cutting were sharpened and tempered in the local forge.

At the height of ‘The Troubles’ I ran a secondary line along the International Border between Northern Ireland and The Republic. It’s curious how in time we became accustomed to our plight. Often we’d just stop for a while until the shooting subsided further up the road. Little did I know that with the advent of Sat. Nav. – in what I consider a very short time – my work would be obsolete; a curiosity from the past.

Over the years I worked in every discipline of the Ordnance Survey. Ireland is steeped in archaeology and it is the Field Man’s job to note anything that may be of interest. There is a field in Killowen looking directly over the Lough to Carlingford; that has a pile of stones in the corner – a possible souterrain. In a bungalow at the bottom of it a woman was baking bread. She was a sonsy no-nonsense woman and through the open kitchen window I asked her did she know anything about the pile of stones. ‘I do’ she said. ‘Every year on the night of the 7th of August two teams of small black men come up from under those stones and play a game of football in the field. Then they run back into the corner; and go back down’. She told me this in the most matter of fact way as she continued to prepare the dough for her griddle of bread.

In 1980 I was working in Carrickfergus and climbed a wall and started measuring in a big garden. Then thinking the owner might telephone the police I stopped; went back; got the van; and drove up the avenue to where a flight of granite steps led to the mansion’s double doors. There I rang the bell and to my alarm two things happened – well a number of things happened. The door opened a little and out of the courtyard at the side of the house tore two huge Rottweilers. Instinctively I shouted ‘goodness me’ or words to that effect and burst through the door slamming it behind me. Inadvertently bumping into and jostling a portly gentleman in a tartan waistcoat and red bow tie. I had my arms around him steadying us both. He was very shocked and so was I. “I’m from the Ordnance survey” I blurted – noting the place (a hall in the sense of an assembly space) dripping with antique artefacts and beginning to understand my ‘dancing partners’ alarm. In time we both calmed down. ‘I could easily have walked up the avenue and been torn to ribbons’ I said. ‘Oh not to worry‘ he replied loftily. ‘They’re trained guard dogs and would have simply shoulder charged you; knocked you down; and held you until I came.’ – Well thank God for that!

PS: Back in the 1970s I had a connection with an Irish language professor at Galway University. I pronounced a few field names to him; names local to me. (Carrigs; Spallic; The Altern. Lougie Dubie) First I described the feature then again and again pronounced the name. Each inflection in my voice changing the meaning. Translating Native American names is no doubt every bit as complex.

Tumelty’s Horse

It was a pleasant enough October morning, but Johnnie Tumelty didn’t like the look of things when the black horse wasn’t waiting for him in the field behind the house. He left the sheaf of oats at the gate, walked down the loanan, up the face field and into Dan’s Wood. The black horse was dead. He only needed that glimpse of the dark lump slumped above the fallen larch. Wearily he climbed up to it, leaned over a hazel bough, and cried. He sobbed “Ah Billy Boy. Billy Boy,” and with tears running down his face he asked “What’ll I do with you now?” He looked at the hole in the ground where the tree was uprooted and went home for a pick, a shovel, and a rope.

In the crater under the upturned roots he toiled, clearing shale and gravel for a grave, four foot deep at the top, two foot deep at the bottom, its base hard grey clay. He could dig no deeper so he put the rope around the horses back heels which were up the hill, and tried to pull him over, but there was no budgin’ the dead weight.

Focused, he went direct home, had a cup of tea and a slice of loaf, and came back with a hatchet, a crowbar and a saw. Frantically he dismembered the horse. The head, the neck, the legs, and with every ounce of his ebbing strength he crowbarred Billy’s remaining bulk into the hole. Then from the skim of soil and shale on Dan’s Wood he covered the grave and standing on it stuck the crowbar right down and into Billy’s belly; to let out the gas. It was a long day, he was beyond tired, and so at the edge of dark he fed the dog and went to bed.

Sheamie Bannon and Tommy Redmond had run the fields over and back to Tumiltys all their lives. Sometimes a help, more often a hindrance (but at least a contact) for an eccentric, reclusive man. They had seen Johnnie up in “The Wood” burying Billy and had took a skite over. The big door was closed so Sheamie cupped his hands and looked in the bedroom window to see a tangle of sheets and blankets, an unsettled shape, moaning “Whoa Billy, Whoa.” To this day Tommy Redmond doesn’t know what possessed him to go over to the ditch, take two flat stones, and clap them together to mimic a galloping horse. An action that caused the explosion. Shamie could see the old man jump out on the floor, roarin’, and with the sheets tangled round him and the dog barkin’, he burst down to the kitchen, pulled back the big door and over the half door bellowed, “Whoa Billy Woah.” His frame was twitching, his face lathered in sweat.

The next morning Johnnie Tumilty trudged up to the wood. He carried a long handled shovel, he knew he had done too much the day before, because he was still tired and with every twist and turn he was sore. Badgers had unearthed Billy; grey backed crows were picking at the entrails; and so as best he could he pulled it all together and tidied up the grave.

At half past eleven that night, after diversions in Drumreagh Hall, Sheamie and Tommy couldn’t go home. Up at Tumiltys they rattled the “clapper stones” and duly got Johnnie out of bed. It was the sort of devilish entertainment they couldn’t resist, the adrenalin rush of rattling two stones and bringing an old man roarin’ and shoutin’ “Whoa Billy” to the door.

By Thursday Johnnie Tumelty was in tatters. Four times the horse’s ghost had haunted him. He couldn’t eat, sleep, couldn’t now go to bed, he was hallucinating. He knew he shouldn’t have cut the legs off the horse. That was it, Billy was coming back to tell him he had no afterlife, he wasn’t complete, couldn’t get away, he was forever frozen in his clay lined grave. Forever to torture Johnnie, the ghoulish puppetry of just the legs and the hooves rattelin’ at the door.

Sheamie and Tommy had given it a rest on the Friday night, but on the Saturday night they couldn’t resist it and were again getting ready for the excitement, tiptoeing about on Tumelty’s street. When, ‘as Gods me judge’ what should come galloping up the loanin but the black horse. He was big and powerful, and shod. His nostrils were flared, his mane flying and he would have galloped over the top of them had he not pirouetted and give them time to run. Out over the field in front of Tumelty’s house and down the rough ground to retch and shiver on the road.

Johnnie Tumelty opened the big door and saw the horse dancing on the street. “Whoa Ho Billy; Whoa” he said soothingly; “Whoa Billy Boy” and for the first time in a week he was happy and went contentedly to bed.