The Place-Names of Decies #222571

Native toponomy or the study of Irish Place-Names has hitherto received but scant attention at the hands of scholars. In the not distant future, however, the science is certain to attain a very considerable importance for, of the many branches of archæology, there is not one more useful to the scientific historian. It tells him - if he has learned to read its message - not only the physical appearance and character of the country in ages past, not only the story of flora and fauna in times whereof there is no written record, but many particulars moreover concerning the successive races who occupied the land - of their movements and their occupations, their culture and their social system, their institutions and their manner of thought. As the Saxon names of England borrow a hard and practical and matter-of-fact character from the racial mind of which they are the product so our Irish place-names, breathing a soft aroma of fancy, indicate themselves the offspring of a more imaginative people. At the same time it is proper here to note that there has been much exaggeration regarding the poetry latent in our Irish names. The imaginative in place-names is far less, proportionately, than the same element in the literature - less even than what one should prima facie, somehow or other, expect. It is the dreamy country schoolmaster and the disciple of Vallancey who have read into local nomenclature so much unwarranted poetry, or rather, subtilty - complexity of idea. As a matter of fact place-names in general, and Irish place-names in particular, are the simplest of simple things. In their concept there is no subtlety; in their genesis no conscious striving at effect.