Ploughing between a hard place and a rock
Screggan / An Screagán
‘the rough, rocky, stony ground’
Date: 01/09/2025
Since its inception in the 1930s, the National Ploughing Championships has grown exponentially to become rural Ireland’s largest annual event, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors over the course of the week. This year ‘The Ploughing’ is being held in the townland of An Screagán / Screggan (logainm.ie #1166663) in the civil parish of Lainn Eala / Lynally in Co. Offaly. Unlike the latter placename – more of which below – An Screagán simply describes the quality of the land. Formed on the word screag, using what we might call the ‘toponymic’ suffix -án, it denotes an area or patch of rough, rocky or stony ground. The ending -án normally operates as a diminutive – essentially X + -án means ‘little X’ – but in placenames it tends to indicate an area characterized by the word to which the suffix is attached. Therefore, screagán, although it could mean ‘little screag’, more likely conveys the meaning ‘screag-place’. (Compare bogán – a word of frequent occurrence in placenames – which means ‘(area of) soft ground’, formed from the adjective bog.) The word screagán is a variant of creagán – itself a diminutive of creag ‘rock’ (eDIL s.v. crec) – and is explained in dictionaries as a ‘rocky eminence’ or ‘(patch of) stony, barren, ground’ (FGB s.v. screagán; cf. eDIL s.v. screc). The most well-known example is probably the parish of An Creagán / Creggan (logainm.ie #2734; cf. PNNI) in Co. Armagh, subject of a famous Irish poem by Art Mac Cumhaidh (sung here by a local native speaker in the same year as the first Ploughing Championship).
A place called An Screagán / Screggan ‘(patch of) stony, barren, ground’ does not, on the face of it, seem like the best location for a ploughing competition (although we have a ready-made theme tune in another fine song, ‘The Rocks of Bawn’). Doing a little digging of our own, we find that the name An Screagán did not necessarily originally refer to the whole of the modern townland of Screggan. In fact, the wonderfully useful subsoil maps provided by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPAMaps) show that the southwestern half of Screggan consists of limestone gravel with limestone till in the northeastern half. It is just over the townland boundary to the east that we find two patches of surface bedrock, the feature to which An Screagán most likely originally referred. The townland in which this rocky area is located is called Mucklagh / An Muclach ‘the place of pigs; piggery’, a name which refers to how the land was used rather than its topography. The development of placenames from their original literal meaning is a fascinating topic in itself, but is a discussion for another day.
Deriving straightforwardly from a description of the land, Screggan in Co. Offaly is not the only townland name containing screagán, although examples are not very numerous. Anyone who has visited the Rock of Cashel in Co. Tipperary, located in the townland officially called Saint Patricksrock / Carraig Phádraig (#47551), will have been struck by the surface bedrock in and around the ecclesiastical site. It will come as no surprise to learn that the name of the rocky ground just below the church to the north is Scraggaun / An Screagán (#47524). Scriggan in Co. Derry – another example of An Screagán – seems to refer to a similar rocky feature (see placenamesni.org). However, it is the synonymous creagán (and its other variants) that prevails in townland names, to the extent that we could not possibly list all the examples here.
Our Screggan, the site of this year’s Ploughing Championship, is located in the civil parish of Lynally, the name of which is an anglicization of Lainn Eala ‘church of (the) swan’. The first element of that name is very interesting: it is related to the word llann which features so prominently in the toponymy of Wales. As to the second element, it derives from the name of the founding saint of the parish, Colmán Eala. This saint was very famous in the native Irish ecclesiastical tradition (see P. Ó Riain, A Dictionary of Irish Saints), to the extent that there exist a number of different Irish accounts of his life. Some of these attempt to explain the origin of the epithet Eala (see in Bethada Náem nÉrenn: ‘Betha Cholmain Eala annso’). A version of the genealogical background of this Colmán is provided, along with an account of his arrival in the territory in which he founded Lainn Eala. We are told that there was a lake here called Loch Eala ‘lake of (the) swan’, which neither man nor animal would dare approach because it was guarded by a wicked beast, conveniently called Lainn. [Peist urcoidech do bí i lLoch Eala … ni lamhadh duine na ainmide dol a n-gaire don loch ar a h-ecla … dob e comhainm na peiste-sin .i. Lainn]. Colmán summoned the aid of various saints and clerics, who decapitated the beast named Lainn and buried its remains in the newly consecrated graveyard. The lake in which Lainn lived was already called Loch Eala, let us not forget, but to drive the point home more swans arrived at the new church to sing soothing songs for the saints. Thus the placename Lainn Eala is explained. (For further references to this place in Irish sources see E-Onomasticon s.n. lann elo.)
As often happens in early Irish literature, we are left wondering whether Loch Eala was a real place or whether it was merely a literary creation. A sceptic would look at the present-day townland of Lynally Glebe / Lainn Eala (#42263) – where there is no lake – and scoff at the Irish story. But we will return to the scientific analysis of the EPA maps: this townland contains a very large area of alluvial soil stretching into the surrounding townlands, between the modern courses of the Tullamore River and the river Clodiagh. Indeed, the land just north of the ruins in Lynally are described as Flooded Bottoms on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey 6ʺ map. It is plausible that this is the site of the historical Loch Eala, and that the lake was gradually drained over the years. (Note that the EPA maps show that the little lake beside Mucklagh was also far larger once upon a time.)
As happens every now and again with these placename notes, there is a serious point to be made here. Rewetting is often considered as a measure to alleviate the risk of flooding; areas like this – where the former existence of natural lakes and wetlands are revealed by a combination of placename research and modern-day soil maps – might be prime candidates. However, if you have ever been to the Ploughing Championship down the years, you will know that it can be wet enough in September. Maybe it is just as well that the ploughing match will take place on the hard ground of An Screagán after all, and not the area once covered by Loch Eala and its horrible monster.
(Conchubhar Ó Crualaoich & Aindí Mac Giolla Chomhghaill)