The Much Maligned Sappers

There is a popular narrative concerning Irish placenames, that the 19th century British army sappers who mapped Ireland didn’t understand Gaeilge and that as a result they anglicised the fine Irish names, corrupting them into gibberish. To add weight to this idea Brian Friel’s play ‘Translations’ is oft mentioned, a play where this theme is used as a literary device. The narrative continues that the Irish scholar John O’Donovan saved the proper Irish forms of many of these names for posterity.

But who has actually looked at the records of the much maligned sappers? Firstly the process of anglicising names was underway from early medieval times, long before the Six Inch field survey of the 1830s/40s.. Notwithstanding this the records of the sappers, now held in the National Archives, demonstrate time and again that they had a grasp of the basic structures of Irish and where they do anglicise names, their forms look true to local use. After all they employed local labour to help the work and would have heard the names directly. Look at this sample of fieldwork from Donegal dated 1835, of the time & region where Translations is set. See how they wrote them down: Sruth na leaca, Lough na mbrick mor, Lough na mbrick geal, Lough na mbin etc – these are written closely as to how they might be now. As in Sruth na Leaca, Loch na mBric Mór, Loch na mBric Geal, Loch na mBinn etc ‘Bric’ is a plural of ‘breac’, a word for trout. ‘Breac Geal’ i.e. silvery trout refers to sea trout.

By contrast I’ve inset a typical actual published Six Inch map form, for example where the sappers ‘Lough na mbrick geal’ (Loch na mBric Geal) is printed as ‘Lough Nabrackgal’. This after being standardised and contracted by the offices of O’Donovan and the Ordnance Survey in Dublin. So just who corrupted the names? The popular narrative needs turning on its head and it’s long past time to restore the reputation of the much maligned sappers and their field work!

#eastwestmapping #irishmaps #johncreedonireland