riages,” as it is still called, to the N.W., the exact position which Tailltiu’s fert or grave-mound occupied with regard to the óenach, according to the Leabhar Gabhala. The great Ring must not be confused, as has been done, with the great circular platform in Telltown which is called the Rathduff or “Black Fort,” and is not named in connection with the sports. There are four ponds or artificial lakes between this Rath and the Lug. The histories and handbooks of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century are silent on this most important site.[1] The phrase “a Telltown marriage” is proverbial in Meath; I heard it among the peasantry round Slane in the same county in 1880-82, and round Navan in 1887. In the thinly peopled Telltown district I only heard of it in the name “the Rath of the marriages.” Our chief authorities are John O’Donovan[2] and Dr. William Wilde,[3] both writing of the period round 1836, when there existed Irish speakers, local sports, and traditions of the god Oengus of the Brugh and of other legendary personages. John O’Donovan nearly always overlooks the fact of early place-names covering a far wider extent than their modern equivalents, and of townlands being split up, sometimes into as many as 4 or 5 divisions.[4] He accordingly asserts, without the least reason, that the “fair” had been “moved from Telltown into Oristown.” The latter name is not found in early records; his derivation of Oristown, from Orientstown, i.e. Rath airthir (the “East fort” of the “Lives” of St. Patrick, certainly at Donaghpatrick Church), is absurd, being really from the Bermingham or “Oris” (mac Feorais, i.e.
- ↑ Indeed, so are they all upon the earthworks of Tara.
- ↑ “Ordnance Survey Letters,” Co. Meath (MSS. R.I.Acad. 14 E. 23), pp. 35-38, pp. 58-60, also his notes in “Leabhar na g Ceart,” p. 243, and Ann. Four Masters.
- ↑ “The Beauties of the Boyne and Blackwater,” pp. 16-17.
- ↑ Anyone who has collated the maps and surveys of 1655 with the Ordnance Survey can attest this.
