Monaghan

An inland meeting of counties

Lewis’s 1837 opening places Monaghan between Louth and Armagh on one side, Fermanagh and Cavan on the other, with Tyrone to the north and Meath to the south. A family’s nearest town or institution might lie outside the county named in a later postal address. ^[2]

Oriel and MacMahon country

The directory records Oriel, Uriel and Orgial as historical regional forms extending beyond Monaghan into neighbouring counties. It also associates much of the county’s political history with the MacMahons. Lewis’s proposed monk-related explanation of the county town’s name is not adopted as a definitive etymology here, and a local surname does not supply a personal pedigree. ^[2]

Patrick Kavanagh’s Inniskeen

Patrick Kavanagh was born in the Inniskeen district in 1904 and spent the first thirty-five years of his life there. Farming, shoemaking and the lanes around his home supplied material for writing that gave ordinary rural experience an unusual literary intensity. ^[3]

In a 1966 RTÉ documentary, Kavanagh returned to his birthplace and the national school at Kednaminsha. He read from Tarry Flynn and discussed the road and neighbouring landscape associated with his work. The surviving film offers his own account of the relationship between place and imagination. It is also a useful corrective to a sentimental picture of an uncomplicated homecoming: in another excerpt he describes an ambivalent relationship with Inniskeen and the excitement he found elsewhere. ^{[3] [4]}