oops » Inishfree again, from Dooney Rock woods
news on the rialto:
 | louphoria on well, that didn’t last… |
 | Tom Genereaux on well, that didn’t last… |
| louphoria on well, that didn’t last… |
 | One Of A Kind on well, that didn’t last… |
 | kate & Jim on well, that didn’t last… |
My first thought, upon looking at the pictures, was to wonder if your Lake Inishfree was the one that William Butler Yeats wrote about? But now that I’ve looked it up (so that I could be sure I was quoting without error), I see that his lake is spelled differently (double “n” and no “h” – The Lake Isle of Innisfree)… so is it the same lake with variant spelling or are we dealing with two different lakes?
I will arise and go now,
And go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there,
Of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there,
A hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
I probably just spelled it wrong Jim – it is most definitely the same lake (although places in Ireland tend to have multiple spellings, sometimes from bad English translations of our Irish place names that were imposed on us etc.). Some day we’ll drive down towards the little isle he was talking about and I’ll take a photo of it from the shore for you
Oh, pictures of the isle, yes that would be lovely.
I can imagine that transliterating from Gaelic to English could result in multiple spelling variations (especially given the generally freestyle approach to spelling in those days anyway).
So many place names here in New England (other than the many names taken from the names of English towns and villages) are taken from the various tribal languages and the same word source can have various interpretations.