What is Ossory Irish and how does it relate to other dialects of the language?

As I mentioned in the introductory post, the dialect of Irish this blog will be focusing on is Ossory Irish. The Kingdom of Ossory existed roughly around the same area as the modern County Kilkenny and extended further north into parts of County Laois. It is in this area that the dialect was spoken but I have no reason to believe it did not also extend into parts of other counties. In this blog, I will be focusing mainly on Ossory Irish as it was spoken in County Kilkenny since it survived there longest and is documented better. Despite that, I will definitely make reference to the dialect from other areas too.

This map shows the dialects of the Gaelic

speaking world with Ossory (here Osraiġe)

in dark blue. Credit to @duilinn on

Twitter for the map.

Most of my main 'socio-linguistic' sources come from anecdotes and testimonies I've gathered from people primarily living in the townland of Borris Co. Carlow and surrounding areas of Ballytiglea, Skeoughvosteen, Cournellan (known as 'Clash'), et al. and experiences in surrounding towns like Bagenalstown, Goresbridge and Graiguenamanagh. These areas are dotted either side of the Kilkenny/Carlow border and so the county identity varies. People from Ballytiglea Co. Carlow consider themselves to be from Kilkenny because the nearest town is actually Goresbridge but people from the town of Borris itself will generally consider themselves to be from Carlow. You could say that whichever proper town the person's family is closest to and wherever their family graveyard is will be their county. Since traditionally these areas were also tied with Glenmore, the home of the last native speaker, I think it is perfectly suitable to include these areas within the range of Ossory Irish.

The Ossory dialect itself is an interesting one. You could class it under the branch of East Munster falling along one end of a spectrum which once stretched from parts of Clare eastwards. The dialect itself shares many features with the Irish found in Ring Co. Waterford, however, it is definitely distinct. It contains many features formerly found in parts of Tipperary, Clare and certainly elsewhere in Leinster with a good deal of its own unique qualities too.

The next few posts will talk about things like the phonemic transcription and then after that, I will start my overview of this dialect.