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SYMPOSIUM:
"All through the North, As I
Walked Forth..."
Northern Ireland's Place Names, Folklife and Landscape
May 16, 2007,
Library of Congress,
Washington, DC
SCHEDULE
2:30-3:00 pm -- WELCOME & INTRODUCTION: Library
Officials and Peggy Bulger (Director, American
Folklife Center)
Edward Redmond (Geography and Map Division)
delivered a presentation on cartobibliographic resources
on Northern Ireland at the Library of Congress.
3:00-3:40 pm -- INVITED
SPEAKER: Kay
Muhr (Northern
Ireland Place Names Project, Queen's University, Belfast) on Richard
Bartlett and Place-Names on his Maps of Ulster, 1600-1603 [biography]
Abstract: Mapmaker Richard Bartlett accompanied Charles Blount, Lord Deputy
Mountjoy, on his campaign in Ulster to defeat Hugh O'Neill, Lord
of Tyrone, in 1600-1602. Little is known of the mapmaker himself.
A Richard Bartlett was mentioned as 'employed in the north and
at the siege of Kinsale', and a Mr. Bartlett was listed in the
English army in Ireland 1601, as the 'lord Deputy's cornet.' This
officer's post, as representative of cavalry with personal access
to Mountjoy, may have been a cover for a brief to provide a visual
record of the campaign, as Mountjoy's secretary Fynes Morrison
was doing in writing.
Unfortunately, almost the only other thing we know is the young man's end. After
the Flight of the Earls in September 1607, much of the land in the west of Ulster
was confiscated or 'escheated' to be allocated to new, English, owners. Sir
John Davies was in charge of the Escheated County mapping, and he said his surveyors
worked under guard in 1609, 'for one Barkeley being appointed by the late Earl
of Devonshire [Lord Deputy Mountjoy] to draw a true and perfect map of the north
parts of Ulster (the old maps being false and defective), when he came into Tyrconnell
[Donegal] the inhabitants took off his head, because they would not have their
country discovered.'
Three of Bartlett's manuscript maps of (probably) 1603 are the present subject,
especially the South-East Ulster map, now published in Hayes McCoy's atlas, 1964.
The maps show Ulster districts and their boundaries, lakes, hills, woods, churches
(often roofless), castles, and crannog islands. South-East Ulster adds routeways
and campaign tents, star forts, and comment on events. Some types of names shown
are: Ancient Ulster -- ecclesiastical arrangements, plotting Ptolemy's map (150
AD), the Native political and cultural system and families, including inauguration
sites, Settlements, and churches, Hills, Rivers, and Passes -- which were of interest
then for travel, now because they may preserve a record of names which have been
lost.
3:40-3:55 pm -- Response and discussion
3:55-4:15 pm -- Break
4:15-4:55 pm -- INVITED SPEAKER: Henry
Glassie (Professor, Indiana
University, Indiana University, Bloomington) on
Ballymenone:
The Power of Place and the Riddle of History
[biography]
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Abstract: When he was collecting information for the Ordnance Survey, the
antiquarian John O'Donovan passed through the County Fermanagh in 1835.
He found that a name, reported centuries earlier in the Annals of the Four
Masters (compiled between 1632 and 1636 in a monastery in County Donegal),
was used for the place where the Arney River flows into Upper Lough Erne.
Though inscribed on no map, absent from official documents, and unknown beyond
the district, that old name, Ballymenone, was still in use when I settled
into Fermanagh for study in 1972.
I came to this place, just north of the
border, to learn how country people endure through history. That year, 1972,
was the bloodiest year of the Troubles, and during the decade that followed,
I sat at the hearth with Hugh Nolan, Michael Boyle, Peter Flanagan, and Hugh
Patrick Owens, learning their view of history. To hold to the truth, they
restricted their responsibility to a small region that stretched eight miles
north and east, ten miles south and west, from their home in Ballymenone.
They ordered their history less chronologically than spatially. Places on
the familiar, hilly landscape carried names, the names evoked events. The
events were cast into narratives that the local historians arranged typologically
into three great classes: saints, battles, and the neighbors.
The stories
of the saints who brought Christianity to Fermanagh placed upon the people
the obligation of neighborly love. Their stories of battles taught them about
violence and defeat. The tales they told of the neighbors revealed how people
could prevail in the context of love and hate by adhering to the virtues
of faith, courage and wit.
The place they walked and worked was a place of
deep, disturbing history. Their history, based in place and unfolding through
tales that sketched the outlines of moral action, was a resource for endurance.
The narrated landscape of Ballymenone drove them into engagement with the
past and forced them into the knowledge that there
is no human choice but choice.
4:55-5:15 pm -- Response and discussion
5:15-5:30 -- Concluding
remarks and book signing. Henry Glassie will sign
copies of his book (with an accompanying CD), The
Stars of Ballymenone, Indiana
University Press, 2006.
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