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The most poignant component of the first episode of Creedon’s new Atlas Of Ireland series, which airs on RTE One at 6:30 p. m. m. , takes position in the first minutes.
John and the RTE team are out on the pitch at Shamrock Rovers Football Club, asking everyone they know if they know what “Tallaght” means, where the stadium is.
Suffice it to say that few of them do. In fact, the only user who has any idea what this means is a woman of Eastern European descent. She is the only local who knows that Tallaght has “something to do with the plague”, and she is not wrong, because Tallaght means “plague burial post”.
Read more: RTE’s John Creedon worked everything that happened to him to take care of his 4 daughters
This only reiterates the fact that most Irish people have no concept about the history of their surroundings. But one guy who does have it is John Creedon.
The RTE Radio announcer is passionate about Irish job names and learns the meaning of each of them. And, in fact, he knows his business. He wrote a best-selling e-book on the subject, called That Place We Call Home, and is now back with a third series of his popular exhibition Creedon’s Atlas Of Ireland, and expects more audience than ever, as the pandemic has made other people more interested in the history of the places they live and stop at their stays.
John says: “A large number of other people have rediscovered all those posts in Ireland, and their significance, the closures, and especially when they started to ‘stay’. Whereas before, when my generation was heading straight to the airport, everyone suddenly, other people started heading to Mayo, Galway, Donegal. Some wondered, ‘Ugh, why are we going here? It’s going to rain, it’s going to be’ and then they would get there and realize that the beaches are beautiful, ‘oh, we had good weather’, ‘we fished a fish’, ‘this place to eat was beautiful’ and they would see symptoms that said Westport and they would see symptoms that said Cathair na Mart and they would wonder, ‘What does this mean?’
“People ask questions like, ‘Why is it called Connemara?What does that mean?’
“And even while we were filming, my whole team was telling me, ‘God, I never had a idea of that and now I can’t go anywhere without wondering what the call of the position means,’ so I think I’m thirsty because wisdom has been awakened in the country, so maybe my own moment to expand the screen intelligently because other people seem to be curious again.
It is possible that he is just beginning to appeal to most of us, however, John has been fascinated with the meaning and history of position names from an early age.
He said, “Place names have been one of my wonderful loves. Growing up, I came here from a very large family, one of 12 children, and while we lived in Cork city centre, we had roots in the Wild West and both while enjoying the village, my summers were spent in the countryside.
“I listened to my father, who spoke Irish, and he talked about all the places he grew up, and they seemed to have lovely names. I was fascinated by their sound and what they meant.
“And even in the city center when I was little, we had Armenians living next door, we had a Ugandan doctor, we had a Turkish delight factory, it was a very colorful childhood, you may have lived on the lower east side. from New York and I was so curious about those things and I walked the streets making those little visits in my head.
“And even now, that fascination has never wavered. Even walking now, I think, “What’s on the floor below us?Are there swords, helmets, engagement rings?” They were other genuine people who lived here before us, even though they are no longer here, and I would like to think that our generation would have the same respect that other people would ask and ask in the future, ‘How did you get through the pandemic?Was it really that bad?
And while it wasn’t too bad for John and the Atlas crew, he admitted that filming the pandemic did have its challenges.
He said: “Recording the pandemic was definitely a challenge, I don’t forget the first day we went out and were given permission to paint and an old man came out of a hotel and saw me and came here with his outstretched his hand and I said, ‘I’m so sorry, but I don’t have the right’ and he looked at me like I was a snob or something. so it was definitely a challenge.
“But I have to say, and I mean it, that I think the RTE Cork team is great. Now we are all friends right now, we are all running hard, we all know each other, we know what he wants. “fact. We laughed, it’s a bit crazy, so even if the pandemic was a challenge, we did.
“It was a bit of a stop/start and once or twice we lost a collaborator because they had Covid and we had to cancel the shooting in their village.
“The nature of this kind of program is complicated, you take a look at thousands of other things like tide, weather, light, etc. , everything related to Covid.
“Or you can schedule an interview for 3 weeks, which is not a great introductory period, and locate that in the area of those 3 weeks, the situation was replaced twice, so it’s a challenge, but it’s not. Stop us and there are some things in this series that I find fantastic.
John highlights an episode in which he visited County Fermanagh and met with former Northern Ireland Prime Minister and former DUP leader Arlene Foster.
He says, “I think a lot of other people would find the episode with Arlene Foster very appealing. I know he’s a strong character, but we got along well. I immediately gave her all the credentials of my ancestors in Fermanagh for her To see that I was there with no other goal than to communicate about places, and some very attractive things appeared with her.
And some other episodes of this series also marked John for other reasons. He said: “In the first episode we met Pat Shortt and laughed a lot when we found out the meaning of one of his standout characters, Butty Brennan, and how, as a child, he laughed in the back of the car as they passed glengoole because he looked so funny and, of course, in his comedy sketches.
“Then, we started episode 3 in Donegal and the weather was just lovely. We met Moya Brennan from Clannad and there was a totally old, almost pre-Celtic atmosphere there. We visited Poisoned Glen which is one of the most amazing places with towering mountains and a beautiful stream that runs through it.
“I’ve been very fortunate to be able to travel to many exotic places, all over India, China, the land of the polar bear, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that when I drive through Donegal, it prevents me from on my tracks because it’s so beautiful or when I head west into my parents’ heart, I think, ‘Wow’ or I stop at a place to eat local and I think, ‘Almighty God, this is beautiful. ‘
“I still have a lot of enthusiasm for Ireland and what I discovered is that the names of the stalls are like stickers, if you take them off and see what they say, they will regularly tell you the story.
“I’ve gone around the country a thousand times and I see a booth and I think, ‘Wow, I’d like to know the meaning of that name. ‘
“Walking past a position without knowing what it means is a pity. Even in a very fashionable position like Tallaght, a suburb of Dublin, you have a very old bond and if you don’t take a look at the label and take it off, I miss the successive layers of history there.
And John feels it’s vital that we install components of our own history into any new progression that emerges in the country so that, in the future, other people will better understand the times we live in.
He said: “In the long term, I would like to hear new Irish brought in by other people. The Normans are part of our history, just like the English settlers, the Gaelics of origin, the French refugees, the Vikings, the Iberians, their blood flows through all our veins, so in the long run, I would like to think that maybe we are going to ask ourselves “who are we, what message should we leave behind?”
“I know some young Poles who move to a Gaelscoil that my own grandchildren attend and there are two elegance helpers who are Polish and speak a bit of Irish, so I would like to see an estate called ‘Lesser Poland’ in Irish.
“Or even advised in my book, which I think would be a smart idea, however, the next time we open a public park, property or playground, it will be an opportunity to recognize, honor and write in our own history the Filipino nurses and doctors who have given so much to the pandemic.
So why not call it Manila Park and let other people ask, ‘Why Manila Park’ and we’ll tell you it’s because so many Filipinos came here at the time of the pandemic because we didn’t have enough Irish nurses?or doctors.
“Place names are a very specialized box in many ways, yet we all go through that, we all go through symptoms along the way. We ask other people where they come from and that means one thing to one user and another thing to another. “.
“We are all passing through and that is why we do not stick to anything, especially the earth, because it is certain that in a hundred years we will no longer be there. I walk all the time in cemeteries and tell myself that there are millions of them and very few of us. I think it was Shakespeare who said, “The total global is a stage” and, in fact, he was right.
Credon’s Atlas of Ireland airs on RTE One at 6:30 p. m. m.
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