TOWNLAND TALES: On Cartoors/Cartrons and Tangincartoors

Tangincartoor must be one of the most unusual sounding townland names, to my ears at least, in the Parish of Oughaval (from ‘Nua chabháil/chongbhail, ‘new settlement/foundation’).
The word is quite a corruption of the original Irish name, and it is entirely a phonetical corruption. ‘Teanga’ is the Irish word for ‘tongue’ [or ‘language’] and it can also be used in a topographical sense to mean ‘a tongue of land’ or any tongue-shaped piece of land resembling a tongue.
The Irish words ‘cartrún, cartún, cartúr,’ etc, are related borrowings from the Anglo-Normans (see Middle English ‘quarteren’) and refer to a measure of land. The version ‘cartúr’ is found as the name of a few townlands in counties Mayo, Clare and Galway.
The word teanga is found in several placenames in Ireland, eg, Teanga, Tang (Westmeath), Teanga Mheáin, Tangaveane (Donegal), and An Teanga, Tonguefield, (Dublin).
Here in Oughaval we have both a ‘Cartoor’ (a ‘quarter’) and a ‘Tangincartoor’ (‘the tongue of the quarter’) and, not surprisingly, they are both located quite close to one another, in that the ‘Tangincartoor’ literally becomes the ‘tongue’ or extension of the ‘Cartoor’. On the map they are linked together by the ‘umbilical cord’ of the Ballykip River, near Louisburgh.

Hill walk
I visited there recently because I wanted to walk to the top of the hill that marks the highest point in this townland. Ann and Michael Reilly in Laghta (from leacht, a ‘rock slab’) very kindly allowed me to access the hill across their farm. The hill is 390 meters high and located in the north-west part of the townland of Tangincartoor. William Bald called it Knockakishaan, ‘the hill of the wicker-basket or thornbush,’ but the Reillys call it ‘Cnocisheán’ and on some modern maps it is marked as Tangincartoor Hill. Most of the townland is located on the southern side of this mountain.
The linguistic element ‘tongue’ or ‘any tongue-like object,’ ‘tongue of land’ refers in this case to the land between two mountain streams on the eastern and western boundaries; they meet at the southern end of the townland.
I proceeded in a northerly direction from the summit to the fort-like Malmore Rock, An Meall Mór, ‘the big lump/knoll/hillock,’ in the townland of Boheh (Both The, ‘sheltered hut’). I then dropped down eastwards to pick up an ancient track connecting Durless (Durlas, ‘stronghold/oaken enclosure’) with Tawnyslinnaun (‘the mountain field of the shoulder-blade’), near Derrymore (‘old thicket or oakwood’). I followed the old track as far as a forest and then took the fire-break to the tarred road, before turning right and returning to Laghta.
While ‘Ceathrú’, anglicised to ‘Carrow’ or ‘Carra’, is very familiar to everyone as meaning the ‘quarter’, ‘Cartúr’ is older and rarer as a word. We blithely translate Carrowbaun, Carrowbeg and Carrowmore as the ‘white/grassy’?), small and big quarters, respectively, but ‘Cartoors’ stop us in our tracks and make us wonder a little more about the origin of this land division.
It is puzzling to know precisely how much of an area this ‘quarter’ represents, or should we just ignore it as we would if we heard someone talking about ‘the Latin Quarter’ of some city? Perhaps it is an area, like Connemara, with nebulous boundaries, of indeterminate size? Well, no. Notwithstanding the many anomalies that present themselves there seems to be general agreement that a ‘quarter’ (carrow, ceathrú) can be taken as loosely representing one hundred and twenty acres. It used to be called a ‘ploughland,’ or ‘seisreagh’ from the Irish seisreach meaning a team of horses yoked to a plough. In Connacht all were called quarters and cartrons; a quarter being four cartrons, and each cartron contained thirty acres.

Land divisions
The Ordnance Survey engineer of the 1800s, Sir Thomas Larcom, made land divisions and measures his special study and he produced a list of those most generally in use throughout the country at large together with their most usual subdivisions:
10 acres - 1 Gneeve; 2 Gneeves - 1 Sessinagh; 3 Sessinaghs - 1 Tate or Ballyboe; 2 Ballyboes - 1 Ploughland, Seisreagh or Carrow; 4 Ploughlands - 1 Ballybetagh, or Townland; 30 Ballybetaghs - Triocha Céad or Barony.
In Mayo, there are no less than twelve townlands named Lecarrow, from Leith Cheathrú, meaning ‘half quarter.’ A Leath-ceathrú equals sixty acres. There is a Lecarrow located in almost every barony, with one on Clare Island in the Parish of Kilgeever, so we may encounter one or two of them again another day.

Dr John O’Callaghan is a mountain walk leader who has organised and led expeditions both at home and abroad. He has served on the board of Mountaineering Ireland and is currently on the Irish Uplands Forum board.