Horse racing and skin ailments
Leopardstown/Baile na Lobhar (logainm.ie #16624)
Date: 16/12/2024
We will wean ourselves slowly off the horses (we promise), but not before having a brief look at the placename Leopardstown, Co. Dublin, the site of the famous post-Christmas race-meeting.
The popularity of horse racing in early Ireland is perhaps one of the better known traits of Gaelic Irish society. Racing was a well-established feature of “the regular public assembly (óenach [Mod. Ir. aonach])” of the early period (Fergus Kelly, Early Irish Farming p.380). The word aonach ‘assembly; fair’ is found in a great number of placenames, likely indicating the location of these assemblies and the race-meetings that often went with them. Probably the most well known is Nenagh/An tAonach ‘the (place of) assembly’ (logainm.ie #1165378) in Co. Tipperary, a placename which would deserve a few weeks’ notes in itself. (Racecourse is also the name of a handful of townland names, all of which appear to be more recent English creations, e.g. logainm.ie #54178.)
We are far removed from Gaelic Ireland but the national enthusiasm for horse racing has remained undiminished, as can be seen at the great annual race-meetings such as the Leopardstown Christmas Festival, which takes place between Saint Stephen’s Day and the end of December. As a young boy one of the current writers, whose father was an avid follower of horse racing, genuinely believed that Leopardstown must have been so called in reference to the speed of the horses racing there! The childhood confusion is forgivable, as Leopardstown is a genuinely deceptive townland name. The modern English form in Leopard(s)- is a development of Leper(s)-, as found in the 17th-century attestations ‘Ballinlowra [otherwise] Lipperstown’ (1610), ‘Ballinlore alias Leperstowne’ (1654). As is clear from the aliases, it is a translation of ‘Ballenelowre’ (1534), ‘Ballenyloor’ (1585), etc., representing Irish Baile na Lobhar ‘the town(land) of the lepers’ (some references possibly indicating the variant Baile an Lobhair ‘the town(land) of the leper’). The original meaning is quite clear to Irish speakers, but the local residents – not to mention the marketing department of the Christmas Festival – would probably not be too enamoured with any “correction” of the English name to the original Leperstown.
The Irish word lobhar (FGB s.v. lobhar) could refer to the sufferer of any type of skin disease, not necessarily leprosy. In Old Irish the word originally meant a feeble or sick person (see eDIL s.v. lobur “weak, infirm…; one who is afflicted with some skin disease”); the more usual Old Irish word for leper was clam (eDIL s.v. clam; in Modern Irish clamh, now mainly used for mange in animals). Whatever the original sense intended with Baile na Lobhar, Leopardstown is not the only anglicized form that avoids a direct translation of lobhar. The townland name Flowerhill (logainm.ie #45631) in Co. Sligo has absolutely nothing to do with flowers, and in fact derives from a reinterpretation of the underlying Irish placename, Cnoc an Lobhair ‘the hill of the leper, ailing person’. Locally pronounced [ˌkro̤kəˈloːərʹ], or similar, when the local population were shifting from Irish- to English-speaking the name was – no doubt deliberately – reinterpreted as Cnoc an *Fhlobhair, containing the non-existent *flobhar [floːər], giving Flowerhill. We have already mentioned probably the most celebrated example of euphemistic pseudotranslation in Irish placenames, namely Cnoc an Chaca ‘the hill of the shit’ → Sugarhill (#31782) in Co. Limerick.
Pseudotranslations aside, references to lobhar ‘a leper, an ailing person’ (gen. sg. lobhair; gen. pl. lobhar) are very common in Irish townland names that were phonetically adapted into English, e.g.
- Knockaunalour/Cnocán na Lobhar ‘the hillock of the lepers, ailing persons’ (logainm.ie #9474), Dromalour/Drom an Lobhair ‘the ridge of the leper, ailing person’ (logainm.ie #10583) and Gortnalour/Gort na Lobhar ‘the field of the lepers, ailing persons’ (#9774) in Co. Cork;
- Cloonalour/Cluain na Lobhar ‘the pasture of the lepers, ailing persons’ (logainm.ie #24828) in Co. Kerry;
- Gortnalower/Gort na Lobhar “the field of the lepers, ailing persons” (logainm.ie #47920) – in the same parish as Spital-land/Fearann an Spidéil (logainm.ie #48177) – and Rathnalour/Ráth na Lobhar “the ring-fort of the lepers, ailing persons” (logainm.ie #48323) in Co. Tipperary;
- Leperstown/Baile na Lobhar (‘Ballylowre’) “the town(land) of the lepers, ailing persons” (logainm.ie #50388) and Monalour/Móin na Lobhar “the bogland of the lepers, ailing persons” (logainm.ie #49944) in Co. Waterford;
- Drumalure/Droim an Lobhair “the ridge of the leper, ailing person” (logainm.ie #4576) in Co. Cavan;
- Ballylower/Baile an Lobhair (logainm.ie #3139) in Co. Carlow;
- see also the Gaeltacht names Gort na Lobhar ‘the field of the lepers, ailing persons’ (#12984) and Tuairín na Lobhar ‘the (little) bleach green, green field of the lepers, ailing persons’ (logainm.ie #9755) in Co. Cork and Cnoc na Lobhar “the hill of the lepers, ailing persons” (logainm.ie #35419) in Co. Mayo.
Finally, in Co. Wexford we find the interesting example of the now-obsolete name ‘Parknelower’ (1666), likely from Páirc na Lobhar ‘the field, park of the lepers’ (Logainmneacha na hÉireann IV: Townland Names of Co. Wexford, p.1269). This name referred to an area in the vicinity of Maudlins/Maidilín (St. Mary’s) (#53492) in New Ross, apparently the location of an early leper hospital (A. Gwynn & N. Hadcock (1970) Medieval religious houses: Ireland, p.355). We have mentioned above that Gortnalower/Gort na Lobhar is in the same parish as Spital-land/Fearann an Spidéil in Co. Tipperary; note also that Leopardstown/Baile na Lobhar in Co. Dublin, the site of the Christmas races, was a ‘possession of St. Stephen’s Hospital, Dublin’ (1610).
(Conchubhar Ó Crualaoich & Aindí Mac Giolla Chomhghaill)