School: Christian Brothers, Athlone
- Location:
- Athlone, Co. Westmeath
- Teacher: Brother Meskill
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0749, Page 225
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Christian Brothers, Athlone
- XML Page 225
- XML “Áth Luain”
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
- The earliest name extant was Ath Mór. Dr Strean tries to prove that Ath Luain means the Ford of the Moon. He states that the local people called it "Baile na seacht - mhiana" or "Baile tús na Seachtmhaine. He backed up this statement by showing that moon-worship was practised in the locality as several lunettes or Cresents of Gold were dug up in an adjacent bog sold to a Dublin jeweller for £858 (another document gives £27,000)Woods in his Annals of Westmeath states the place gets its name because the river below the weir is lunar in shape and because the Pagan natives worshipped the Moon herabouts.
