How do you measure the length of Ireland? Daft question. But it used to be taken from Mizen Head in Co Cork (Carn U Neid) to the White Lady Rock on the Antrim Coast Road, north of Carnlough. You can't miss it - a tall pillar of limestone, on the sea side, with what looks like a head on top. Clogbastucan: "stone of the stack or pile". This is from one of the entries in a book published today by the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen's University, Belfast. A Dictionary of Ulster Place- names. Full of pithy fact and allusion, it covers all nine counties. As the press release notes: "Ulster placenames are based on such things as geographical features, family names, legends and events, early religious sites, animals and plants . . . and successive waves of Norse, Anglo-Norman, Scots and English settlers have made an impact on later names".
Patrick McKay is the author and treats of some 1,300 place-names and backgrounds. There are about 50 neat illustrations. Not far away from the White Lady is the famous rope bridge, here spelled Carrickarade, adding that the name comes perhaps from Carraig an Raid or "rock of the throwing or casting". For Carrickarade is a large rock forming a tiny island off the North Antrim coast, in the townland of Knocksoghy, famous for the bridge connecting the island, thrown across to the same island so that the fishermen could get out their nets to catch the salmon as they returned, in season, to spawn in their native rivers, be it Bush, Bann or Foyle. The dorsy (more often Dorsey?), the gateway. This is Paddy Falloon country in Armagh, seat of a series of large, linear earthworks which at one time controlled the approaches to Navan Fort, capital of Ulster. Pomeroy, a village in Tyrone seems easy. Maybe, the book suggests, it comes from French pommeraie or apple orchard. Or pomme de roi, apple of the king, for James 1st granted the district to Sir William Parsons. Or even in 1690 when a woman gave William III a gift of apples pommes au roi, apples for the king.
And the Giants of the Giants' Causeway? The author says it could be from loose translation of the Irish Clochan na bhFomhrach "a mythic race who are depicted as demonic opponents of the divine Tuatha de Danaan in the mediaeval Book of Invasions". There are other versions given. Much detail of parish, barony and townland. Softback £7.50 stg. Y