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The Origin and History of Irish Names of Places
The Origin and History of Irish Names of Places Author:P W Joyce Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: —even at the present day—Bohernaglogh; and the existence of this name, on the very line leading to the ancient ford over the Liffey, leaves scarcely any doubt th... more »at this was a part of the ancient Slighe Cua- lann. It must he regarded as a fact of great interest, that the modern-looking name Stonybatter—changed as it has been in the course of ages—descends to us with a history seventeen hundred years old written on its front. Booteratown (near Dublin) is another member of the same family; it is merely another form of Bat- terstown, i. e., Roadtown. In a roll of about the year 1435 it is written in the Anglo-Irish form, Bally- bothyr (Baile-an-bhothair—town of the road), of which the present name, Booterstown, is a kind of half translation. In old Anglo-Irish documents frequent mention is made of a road leading from Dublin to Bray. In a roll of the fifteenth century it is called Bothyr-de-Bree (road of Bray); and it is stated that it was by this road the O'Byrnes and O'Tooles usually came to Dublin. It is very probable that the Booterstown road and this Bray road were one and the same, and that both were a continuation of the ancient Slighe Cualann. CHAPTER III. CORRUPTIONS. While the majority of names have been modernized in accordance with the principles just laid down, great numbers, on the other hand, have been contractedand corrupted in a variety of ways. Some of these corruptions took place in the Irish language; but far the greatest number were introduced by the English-speaking people in transferring the words from the Irish to the English language. These corruptions are sometimes so extremely irregular and unexpected, that it is impossible to reduce them to rule, or to assign them to any general or uniform influence except mere ignorance, or the universal tenden...« less