Yola and Fingalian: The Forgotten Ancient English Dialects of Ireland

IN 1836 the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, The Earl of Mulgrave, visited Ballytrent in Co Wexford. A member of the English aristocracy, he was a man used to listening to formal speeches everywhere he went, and this trip would prove no different. Mulgrave would have sat through many in the south-east that year, but the one at Ballytrent was unlike anything he had ever heard.

There he received ‘The humble address of the inhabitants of the Barony of Forth, Wexford’ or, as they put it, ‘Ye soumissive Spakeen o’ouz Dwelleres o’ Baronie Forthe, Weisforthe.’ The address, read by Edmund Hore, was neither Modern English nor Irish; the Lord Lieutenant was listening to one of the last speakers of an almost forgotten dialect – Yola.