School: Ss. Peter & Paul (B.), Balbriggan
- Location:
- Balbriggan, Co. Dublin
- Teacher: Liam Cadhla
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0783, Page 377
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- 377
Balbriggan
Some people say, there was a robber or smuggler lived around here, long ago. His name was Broken. The place where he lived was called Bal-brekin. There is a little stream, flowing into the harbour, called he Brescan. Years ago, it was larger, and as he town was built along its banks, the place was called Baile-breacon. Legend says, there was an old palace near the river, and that we get the name Balbriggan, from the Irish words, baile= a place, brug = a pl. palace and alan = a river. That is, bail-brig-alann in Irish, or in English Balbriggan, place of the palace by the warter. Again, we have baile=a town, burg = hills, and alan = water, bale-burg-alann = Balbriggan = the town on the hills of the water. That is, that the town was was built on a number of hills near the sea. We are told, that there was a palace built on an island, which was gradually worn away with tides and the sea. That is how the name burg-Mara, palace of the sea came. We call it Bremore to-day. Others say it means the big palace.J Corrigan Told by teacher
Mill St.
- Collector
- J. Corrigan
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Balbriggan, Co. Dublin
