The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #71328   Message #1222453
Posted By: PoppaGator
09-Jul-04 - 02:31 PM
Thread Name: Origins: What is a Bantry Girl?
Subject: RE: Origins: What is a Bantry Girl?
I was aware of the town named Bantry at the head of Bantry Bay in the southwest corner of Ireland; I didn't know about any Bantry in Co Wexford in the southeast, but I don't doubt that it's there.

I'm not surprised two Bantrys might exist, because I know it's not the only town name that occurs in more than one Irish county. There's a Turlough in County Mayo, just outside Castlebar, site of a very interesting and fairly new museum documenting old-time "Country Life" in the West of Ireland. I'm not sure exactly where the other Turlough is located, but we had already encountered one such town elsewhere before visiting the museum in Mayo's Turlough. Who knows --there might be three or more of them; "turlough" is the Irish word for a kind of pond or lake that appears seasonally, drying up and disappearing underground for part of each year.

Hopefully, a given town name can be used only once per county! The confusion would be too much otherwise.