Date: 14/04/2025

In last week’s note on cnámh ‘bone’, we mentioned that the placename Meennagrauv / Mín na gCnámh ‘the level ground of the bones’ (logainm.ie #16118) in Co. Donegal was locally associated with the discovery of “the bones of the slain … gnawed by the wolves and bleaching to the sun and the northern blasts”. This provides a convenient, if gruesome, segue to this week’s theme of canines in placenames.

References to dogs, hounds and wolves are found in well over 100 Irish townland names, only a small selection of which can be mentioned here. The common Old Irish word for a dog was matad (eDIL s.v.). This word survives as madadh or mada in the modern dialects of Ulster and Connaught. Most of us learned madra in school, which is the word used in the modern Gaeltacht of Munster. (Madra was originally a collective noun meaning ‘dogs’.) Thus, in Munster placenames we have Knocknamadderee / Cnoc na Madraí ‘the hill of the dogs’ as the name of two townlands in Co. Cork (logainm.ie #10297; #12266) and Glenavaddra / Gleann an Mhadra ‘the valley of the dog’ (logainm.ie #49328) in Co. Waterford. We also find madra in south Leinster placenames, e.g. Seskinnamadra / Seisceann na Madraí ‘the marsh of the dogs’ (logainm.ie #3454) in Co. Carlow and Coolamaddra / Cúil an Mhadra (logainm.ie #54665) in southwest Co. Wicklow, the latter of which we will mention again below.

The picture changes once we get north of a line roughly from Dublin to Galway, however, and move from Leath Mhogha into Leath Choinn, to use the traditional names for the two halves of the island. Dogstown (logainm.ie #38776) in Co. Meath is a translation of the Irish townland name Baile na Madadh ‘the town(land) of the dogs’ and Rosehill (logainm.ie #3797) in Co. Cavan replaced Achadh na Madadh ‘the field of the dogs’. Moving further north, Coill na Madadh / Kilnamaddy ‘the wood of the dogs’ occurs as the name of four townlands – three in Co. Monaghan (logainm.ie #40166; #40859; #41124) and one in Co. Fermanagh (logainm.ie #61022; placenamesni.org Kilnamaddy) – and in Co. Donegal we have a Corravaddy / Corr an Mhadaidh ‘the round hill of the dog’ (logainm.ie #15505). Moving west, we find Crockawaddy / Cnoc an Mhadaidh ‘the hill of the dog’ (logainm.ie #28991) in Co. Leitrim and three townlands called Carrownamaddoo / Ceathrú na Madadh ‘the quarter of the dogs’ (logainm.ie #44918; #45006; #45491) in Co. Sligo.

In Modern Irish, the word for dog (mada(dh), madra) also occurs in the names of other animals. For example, madra uisce or mada uisce – literally ‘water-dog’ – is the word for ‘otter’. (Another word for the otter is dobarchú. This close compound – attested from the Old Irish period – also literally means ‘water-hound’.) It is no surprise, then, to find Oileán an Mhada Uisce (logainm.ie #30252) in Co. Leitrim translated as Otter Island.

Similarly, a very well-known synonym for the sionnach ‘fox’ is madra rua, meaning literally ‘red dog’. There is a Kilnamaddyroe / Coill na Madadh Rua ‘the wood of the foxes’ (logainm.ie #29085) in Co. Leitrim; the original Irish name of Browningstown (logainm.ie #13738) in Co. Cork was Cnocán an Mhadra Rua ‘the hillock of the fox’ (‘Knockanemaderaroo’ 1761); and the Irish form of Monavadaroe (logainm.ie #27046) in Co. Kilkenny is Móin an Mhadra Rua. (Note in respect of the last-mentioned anglicized form that in modern dialects, even where the word for ‘dog’ is madra there is a tendency to pronounce madra rua ‘fox’ as mada rua because of assimilation of the first of the two -r-. See for example the singular / plural pair mada rua / madraí rua in the Irish of West Kerry; Ó Sé, Gaeilge Chorca Dhuibhne §303.)

However, although the distribution of the forms mada(dh) vs. madra in townland names broadly corresponds to modern usage in the surviving dialects (see also Wagner, Linguistic Atlas and Survey of Irish Dialects I p.56 for further evidence from the 1940s), this is not to suggest that mada(dh) was unknown or unused in Munster/south Leinster. We find the townland Porchavodda / Páirc an Mhada ‘the field of the dog’ (#3044) situated about halfway between the two aforementioned townlands Seisceann an Mhadra / Seskinnamadra in Co. Carlow and Cúil an Mhadra / Coolamaddra in south Co. Wicklow. (We should perhaps mention a well-known piece of folklore recorded by the Ordnance Survey in Powerscourt in north Co. Wicklow. They were shown a spot where Fiacha mac Aodha Ó Broin – who had routed the English at the Battle of Glenmalure in 1580 – “used to hang every person that could not say Cú and Maddú (i.e. Hound and Dog) in the Irish language” (Ordnance Survey Letters 15/12/1838, p.17). Interesting though it is, this story – told by a local man described by Eugene O’Curry as “an old and poor Protestant” – is of little value as evidence of the pronunciation of the Irish word for ‘dog’ in Fiacha Ó Broin’s native dialect!) As noted above, madra was originally a collective noun: whether singular or plural, it is found in the northern half of Ireland in minor placenames such as Loch an Mhadra Uisce / Lough Madderiska (#1371657) in Co. Galway and Loch an Mhadra Alla (#1396353) in the Donegal Gaeltacht. An unusual genitive plural form is found in Carrownamaddra / Ceathrú na Madradh ‘the quarter of the dogs’ (logainm.ie #19513) in south Co. Galway, with the local pronunciation recorded as /-ˈmɑːdro/ in 1955. (Note also the variety in the early historical spellings, e.g. ‘-maddragh’ 1613, ‘-madree’ 1617.)

Another common enough word in Modern Irish is mada(dh) allta or madra allta – literally ‘wild dog’ – meaning ‘wolf’ (FGB s.v. madra). There is no direct evidence of any townland name containing this Irish word. Therefore it is very interesting to note the 16th- and 17th-century translations of the aforementioned Coolamaddera / Cúil an Mhadra (logainm.ie #54665) in Co. Wicklow as ‘Wolf-ys-hole’ (1560), ‘Wolfeshoal’ (1619) and ‘Wolfesden’ (1627) [i.e., Wolf’s Hole, Wolf’s Den]. It would seem that in this placename, at least, mada(dh)/madra might not have required the adjective allta ‘wild’ to be understood as ‘wolf’. (Compare the numerous examples of placenames in uninhabited areas referring to muc “pig”, cat “cat”, etc., where wild pigs and wild cats are surely to be understood.) While it would be rash to extrapolate this single example of a 16th-/17th-century English interpretations, there may be many more references to wolves in townland names than appear at first sight, in the form of the unqualified generic mada/madra.

This brings us, eventually, to Glennamaddy / Gleann na Madadh (logainm.ie #1411949) in Co. Galway. This place was the subject of the song Four Country Roads, one of the smash hits of 1981. “Four roads to Glenamaddy,” sang country and western legend Big Tom, “are the four dusty byways to my heart.” Big Tom probably never considered the possibility that those four roads may in fact have been leading into the Valley of the Wolves.

(Conchubhar Ó Crualaoich & Aindí Mac Giolla Chomhghaill)

• Páirc an Mhada/Porchavodda
• Seisceann na Madraí/Seskinnamadra
• Achadh na Madadh/Rosehill
• Cnoc na Madraí/Knocknamadderee
• Cnoc na Madraí/Knocknamadderee
• Cnocán an Mhadra Rua/Browningstown
• Corr an Mhadaidh/Corravaddy
• Mín na gCnámh/Meenagrauv
• Ceathrú na Madradh/Carrownamaddra
• Móin an Mhadra Rua/Monavadaroe
• Cnoc an Mhadaidh/Crockawaddy
• Coill na Madadh Rua/Kilnamaddyroe
• Oileán an Mhada Uisce/Otter Island
• Baile na Madadh/Dogstown
• Coill na Madadh/Kilnamaddy
• Coill na Madadh/Kilnamaddy
• Coill na Madadh/Kilnamaddy
• Ceathrú na Madadh/Carrownamaddoo
• Ceathrú na Madadh/Carrownamaddoo
• Ceathrú na Madadh/Carrownamaddoo
• Gleann an Mhadra/Glenavaddra
• Cúil an Mhadra/Coolamaddra
• Coill na Madadh/Kilnamaddy
• Loch an Mhadra Uisce/Lough Madderiska
• Loch an Mhadra Alla/Lough Avadderalla
• Gleann na Madadh/Glenamaddy

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