Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown – awordfromjapan

The feast day of St Nahi is on the 9th of August, and in times past the people of Blackrock, Co. Dublin would make a pilgrimage or “pattern” every August to a holy well associated with St Nahi at the base of the low sea cliffs at Seapoint, near Blackrock. The water of this well was thought to have miraculous curative properties for ailments and afflictions of the eyes.

The word “pattern” is used in Ireland to refer to a pilgrimage to a holy well or other location associated with a particular saint on that saint’s feast day. This word “pattern” is a variation of the English word “patron” or Irish patrún as in “patron saint”. Beside the well would often be found a tree covered with rags; the tradition was to soak a piece of cloth in the water and tie it to the tree. Some people believe that these devotional practices represent a continuation of a pre-Christian Celtic religion, to which a veneer of Christianity has been added.

This kind of folk religion was largely discouraged and suppressed by the official Catholic church from the 19th century. Although many holy wells all over Ireland remain active sites of devotion, the tradition is completely extinct in South County Dublin. In this part of Dublin (Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown), thanks to suburbanisation and other changes, there remains little trace of any of the wells, or at least none easily accessible to the public.

Today we set out to find St Nahi’s well. In Irish it is Tobar Naithí and it gives its name to Tobernea Terrace, off Seapoint Avenue. Tobernea Terrace is a row of grand 4-storey Victorian houses commanding a spectacular view out across the Bay to Howth. The well is on land belonging to the Scouts (29th Dublin Scout Den Blackrock), and the gates were locked when we arrived.

By sheer good fortune, however, while we were “scouting” for another possible way in, people started arriving and opened the gates. By even greater good fortune, when I inquired about the well, not only were they happy to invite us in to visit the well, but the lady we met was very knowledgeable about the well and its traditions.

The area is moderately overgrown, and the entrance of the tunnel leading to the well is not visible until you are very close. What we found was a large hole at ground level, partially covered by concrete. For safety, a sheet of wire fencing had been placed over the open part, and weighted down with blocks.

The tunnel appeared to be quite deep (to my regret, we had not brought a torch, so I couldn’t see how deep or wide it is). To my surprise, I could hear the sound of rapidly-flowing water, rather than the stillness I associate with well water. The run-off from the well forms an underground stream flowing under the sports field and the railway and emerging onto the foreshore. Thanks to recent heavy rain, this flow is probably more vigorous than usual.

From down here, the former line of the shore is very evident. Before the railway came through in the 1830s and straightened everything out, this piece of coastline must have been moderately dramatic, forming a small bay between the promontory at Maretimo (Lord Cloncurry’s estate) with its various follies and temples and the promontory at Seapoint with its Martello Tower. This inlet was cut off from the sea by the line of the railway and the resulting reclaimed land is now home to the Scouts den and playing fields.

The red line on the map shows the line of the low cliffs representing the former shoreline. The location of the well is marked as a red dot at the base of the cliffs

At the top of the former sea cliffs can be seen the 19th-century stone wall of Maretimo, with its whimsical features like castle turrets. Now this wall forms the rear boundary of the houses of Maretimo Gardens.

There are a few other holy wells in the area. There was one in a field at Ballyman (St Kevin’s well), to which we were taken on a walk from school one day by a teacher called Brian Murphy. It would be interesting to see whether it still exists. There’s St Begnet’s well on the rocky shoreline of Dalkey Island. And there is Lady’s Well in the grounds of Carraig na Gréine, now the Sue Ryder foundation in Dalkey. The well was accessed by a long tunnel from the shore, which I discovered and entered when I was young, but not knowing its purpose I didn’t follow all the way up to the well. The story goes that the 19th-century owner of the house, Charles Leslie, had the tunnel built to allow the public to access the well without walking across his grounds.

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.

Here’s the road sign of the street where I live now:

The Irish version has an error: it says “Ascaill Bhaile Shealin” instead of “Ascaill Bhaile Sheáin” (or even better, “Ascaill Bhaile Eoin”).

Here’s the street sign of the road where I grew up:

This one says “Bóthar Bhaile Bhrice” instead of “Bóthar Bhaile Bhríde”.

This kind of mistake, which is extremely common in this area, suggests to me that the people commissioning the signs just don’t care whether they are right or wrong.

These are not “typos” or slips; it’s obvious that the people actually making the signs don’t know any Irish, and are just blindly (and incompetently) copying a meaningless string of letters.

(Though that in itself is hardly an excuse; if it was your job to copy down three words in an unfamiliar language, if that was how you earned your living, would you not double-check to make sure you got it right?)

But the customer, in this case Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown county council, clearly doesn’t see the need for any quality control. They just order the signs, and then whatever random words come back, put them on permanent public display.

It’s not just the Irish version, by the way. Directly across the road from the “Ballybride Road” sign is this road sign, which in a case of equal opportunity illiteracy manages to misspell both the Irish and the English versions of the name.

“Rathmicheal Road” instead of “Rathmichael Road” and “Bóthar Ráth Michíl” instead of “Bóthar Ráth Mhichíl”.

The errors are not entirely random. A pattern I’ve noticed is the phantom “l”. Somewhere along the process of ordering and producing a sign, an “í” gets misinterpreted as an “l” (as in the Johnstown Avenue example above, and the two examples below). This makes me wonder if the wording is sent in the form of a handwritten scrawl rather than typed.

“Bóther Dúnta” instead of “Bóthar Dúnta”; “Deislú Droichid” instead of “Deisiú Droichid”.

“Gairdin Ul Mhaoileon” instead of “Gairdín Uí Mhaoileoin”.

This last one is just bizarre; I am at a loss for how it could have happened. After puzzling it over for a while, I guess the intended translation was “Clár na Duimhche”. But how that got transmuted into “Devche” is mystifying.

This kind of haphazard approach makes a mockery of the policy of official bilingualism. If even the people tasked with maintaining a token presence of the Irish language on street signs can’t be bothered to get it right, is it worth continuing at all?

To me, it is. I love to be reminded of the poetry and history embodied in the local Irish place names as I go about my daily life; Cill Iníon Léinín, Gleann na gCaorach, Baile na Manach alongside Killiney, Glenageary and Monkstown.

But I wish the local authorities would make the small extra effort to get it right. Déan é i gceart nó ná déan é!

Tag: Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown

Holy Well

Más fiú é a dhéanamh, is fiú é a dhéanamh i gceart