Abstract

There is a certain territorial logic to our referencing points when we describe where we are from. In the Bronx or Melbourne, or London, there is little point in introducing oneself as being from Ballynahalisk (County Cork), or Drumskinney and Montiaghroe (County Fermanagh). It is obviously a question of scale. But there is also a latent sense of 'It's-such-a-small-rural-backward-blip-on-the-landscape' that I wouldn't mention it. This was especially true up to forty or fifty years ago, when there was a sensitivity about rural rusticity, reflected in the term 'culchie'.