placenamesDerrylin
Doire Loinn
Derrylin’s history joins successive generations of parish building with the manuscript culture of Knockninny and the recollections of local footballers.
The name
These Irish name elements are associated with this record in the Logainm glossary.
An element’s translation is a clue, rather than a complete explanation of the name. Its form and meaning depend on local history and the full Irish name.
Recorded forms
- Doire Loinn · Irish · main form · validated name
- Derrylin · English · main form
Place & story
From a thatched chapel to Saint Ninnidh’s
Knockninny parish records that Captain Smith of Callowhill leased an acre to Mrs Gunn in 1797 for a church built under Father Michael Wynne. That thatched building served until 1837, when Father Edward McHugh organised its replacement. Mass was first celebrated in the present Saint Ninnidh's in 1839. The sequence preserves the names of the people involved in establishing a permanent place of Catholic worship in the village. [2]
Brian Maguire and the Book of Knockninny
The Book of Knockninny brings together manuscripts compiled in the Derrylin district in the early eighteenth century under Brian Maguire's patronage. Preserved in the Royal Irish Academy, its more than a thousand pages contain poetry, genealogy, religious texts and narratives. Scholars Raymond Gillespie and Brendan Scott edited a study of this manuscript culture in 2019. Local presentations at Aughakillymaude connected that research with the district in which the books originated, renewing awareness of an important Gaelic literary inheritance. [3]
Rebuilding the football club
In a 2011 GAA oral-history interview, Paddy Maguire recalled football falling away in Derrylin through emigration during the late 1940s. Local cooperation revived the team in 1951, and Tommy Gunn remembered a junior league victory in 1957. Their account also describes fundraising for grounds acquired in 1969 through collections, concerts and raffles, followed by voluntary building work. These recollections show the club depending on community organisation as much as individual performances on the field. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Fermanagh
- Barony
- Knockninny
- Civil parish
- Kinawley
- Within
- Derrylin
- Coordinates
- 54.20009, -7.57091 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1413360 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Derrylin. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Knockninny Parish: Saint Ninnidh’s Church history · Knockninny Parish
- Myths and poems of rarely seen historic manuscripts to be reproduced, 26 October 2019 · Seamus Enright, The Anglo-Celt
- GAA Oral History Project interview report FR/1/7, 7 February 2011, pages 5–6 · Arlene Crampsie, GAA Oral History Project
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2012-01-11. How this page was prepared.