Featured themes 17/11/2025

What’s in a worm?
Pollpeasty/Poll Péiste
(logainm.ie #52389).

Date: 17/11/2025

Still on the theme of the supernatural in placenames – following on from previous notes on the púca ‘a sprite; a ghost; a bogey-man’ – we turn to the Irish word péist, a borrowing from Latin bestia, initially meaning ‘(mythological) beast, monster’, developing to ‘(creeping) reptile’ and then simply ‘worm’ (eDIL s.v. píast; cf. FGB s.vv. péist, piast, biast).

Poll Péiste ‘pool, hole of (the) worm’ is the forerunner to two townland names in Co. Wexford, namely Poulpeasty (logainm.ie #1383824) near Taghmon and Pollpeasty (logainm.ie #52389) near Clonroche. It is interesting to note the collocation of péist with poll ‘pool, hole (cave?)’, similar to the many repetitions of Poll an Phúca “the pool, hole of the pooka” noted previously. There are even more examples as minor names. In the Gaeltacht we have Poll na Péiste (logainm.ie #1396883) in Co. Donegal and Poll na bPéist (logainm.ie #1399110) on the island of Árainn in Co. Galway (see Placenames (Ceantair Ghaeltachta) Order 2011). Other examples recorded from native Irish speakers during the 20th century include Poulnapeasta/Poll na Péiste (logainm.ie #1419995) in Co. Clare and Poulnabeast / Poll na bPiast (logainm.ie #1421720) in Co. Waterford.

P.W. Joyce explained Poll Péiste as “hole or pool of the péist or monstrous reptile” (Irish Names of Places Vol. 3, p.531). In keeping with Joyce, the foregoing examples could be explained ‘the hole or pool of the (fabulous) beast(s)’ or simply ‘(the) worm hole’. Indeed, the official English version of the townland name Poll na bPéist ‘the pool, hole of the worms/beasts’ north of Galway city is Wormhole (logainm.ie #20983).

We saw in a recent note that the referent of Pollaphuca/Poll an Phúca (logainm.ie #55309) near Arklow, Co. Wicklow, was a spring well in the south of the townland (called Puck’s Hole in English), from which a stream rises and flows down through a little glen. The abovementioned townland of Pollpeasty/Poll Péiste near Clonroche, Co. Wexford, also took its name from the source of a stream. This was given the corrupt name St. Paul’s Well on the first edition of the OS 6ʺ map (repeated on OS 25ʺ), but corrected to Pollpeasty on the revised OS 6ʺ map of 1925.

One townland name that explicitly unites worm and well is Tobernapeastia/Tobar na Péiste (logainm.ie #26830) in Co. Kilkenny. In this case we can be sure that the péist was not mythological but painfully mundane! The tradition recorded from the Irish-speaking locals in 1839 was that they used to wash their hands in the well-water “chúm siúbhal péiste do leigheas”, i.e. “to cure a bout of the worm-trouble” (Ordnance Survey Letters (Kilkenny) I: 188) (cf. Dinneen s.v. siubhal ‘[fit of] trouble’; Ó Dónaill s.vv. 3 seol, seolán; eDIL s.v. 1 séol (b)). Therefore Tobernapeastia/Tobar na Péiste, literally ‘the well of the worm’, is more accurately explained – at least in the later local understanding of the name – as ‘the well of (the cure for) the worm(-disease)’, and can be compared other well-names such as Tobar na Súl ‘the well (that cures disease) of the eyes’ and Tobar na gCluas ‘the well (that cures disease) of the ears’. Dr. Pádraig Ó Dálaigh (then Higher Placenames Officer at the Placenames Branch) visited Tobernapeastia in 2016 and discovered that the well was known locally as The Well of the Worms (see the thesis The Holy Wells of County Kilkenny). The name of the spring well at Pollpeasty, Co. Wexford (St. Paul’s Well (!) SO 6ʺ), may have the same curative origin.

Not all of the examples are necessarily mundane: in some placenames it is hard to escape the feeling that péist was originally intended to invoke some kind of legendary creature. One of the many lakes among the hills of Skreen in Co. Wexford – near Curracloe and Blackwater – is recorded in 16th-century sources as ‘Loghnebeist’ (Civil Survey Vol. IX, p.60) and ‘Loughnepeast’ (Inquisitions Leinster Jac. I 23). The local pronunciation is [lɔknə ˈbiːʃt], and the underlying name appears to be Loch na bPiast. According to the erstwhile owner of the land in which the lake is located – the late Jack Harding of 1960 All-Ireland hurling fame – the water level of this lake tends to rise during dry periods and fall during wet spells. This appears to have led to the belief that some kind of piastanna (péisteanna) in the sense ‘fabulous beasts’ were trapped at the bottom of the lake (cf. Irish Names of Places Vol. 1, p.197: “the imprisonment of these demonical monsters is commonly attributed to St Patrick”). A similar natural phenomenon may also lie behind other names containing péist: see for instance the note by the Northern Ireland Place-Name Project concerning Drumbest/Droim na bPiast “the ridge of the beasts, worms” (logainm.ie #62247) in Co. Armagh (‘Drimnebest’ (1669)), situated just north of a lake described in 1831 as “unfathomable in its centre” (placenamesni.org s.n. Drumbest).

Other occurrences of péist, et var., include:

Ailt na Péiste (logainm.ie #1395256)
Altnapaste/Allt na Péiste “the height, ravine of the beast, worm” (logainm.ie #16101)
Lisnapaste/Lios na Péiste “the ringfort of the beast, worm” (#13907) in Co. Donegal
Cappanapeasta/Ceapach na Péiste “the plot of the beast, worm” (logainm.ie #6161) in Co. Clare
Cornapaste/Corr na Péiste “the round hill of the beast, worm” (logainm.ie #40033) in Co. Monaghan
Gortnapeasty/Gort na Péiste “the field of the beast, worm” (logainm.ie #11332) in Co. Cork
Emlaghpeastia/Imleach Péiste “boundary land of the beast, worm” (logainm.ie #22412) in Co. Kerry.

(Conchubhar Ó Crualaoich & Aindí Mac Giolla Chomhghaill)

What’s in a worm? Pollpeasty/Poll Péiste (logainm.ie #52389).

What’s in a worm?
Pollpeasty/Poll Péiste
(logainm.ie #52389).