Béal na Bláth or Béal na Blá (anglicised Bealnablath or Bealnabla)"Béal na Blá/Bealnablath"

Placenames Database of Ireland The Placenames Database of Ireland ( ga, Bunachar Logainmneacha na hÉireann), also known as , is a database and archive of place names in Ireland. It was created by Fiontar, Dublin City University in collaboration with the Placenames Branch of ...

. is a small village on the R585 road in

County Cork County Cork ( ga, Contae Chorcaí) is the largest and the southernmost county of Ireland, named after the city of Cork, the state's second-largest city. It is in the province of Munster and the Southern Region. Its largest market towns a ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. The area is best known as the site of the ambush and death of the Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins in 1922.

Michael Collins

On 22 August 1922, during the Irish Civil War, Michael Collins,

Chairman of the Provisional Government The Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State was a transitional post established in January 1922, lasting until the creation of the Irish Free State in December 1922. The Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921 was passed by th ...

and Commander-in-chief of the National Army, was killed in an ambush near Béal na Bláth by anti-treaty IRA forces while travelling in convoy from Bandon. The ambush was planned in a farmhouse in the village close to The Diamond Bar.Hopkinson, Michael. ''Green Against Green: the Irish civil war'', 1988, p. 177. Commemorations are held on the nearest Sunday to the anniversary of his death. A memorial cross (coordinates ) stands 1 km south of the village, at the site of the shooting in the

townland A townland ( ga, baile fearainn; Ulster-Scots: ''toonlann'') is a small geographical division of land, historically and currently used in Ireland and in the Western Isles in Scotland, typically covering . The townland system is of Gaelic orig ...

of Glannarogue (in Irish, ''Gleann na Ruaige''), on a

local road The road hierarchy categorizes roads according to their functions and capacities. While sources differ on the exact nomenclature, the basic hierarchy comprises freeways, arterials, collectors, and local roads. Generally, the functional hierarch ...

which was a dirt road when Collins was shot. A small white pillar marked with a cross, located just to the right of the steps, marks the exact spot where he fell.

Name

The original version of the name has become obscured with the passage of time. The

gives the official spelling as ''Béal na Blá'', with the alternative ''Béal na Bláth''. The two anglicisations are 'Bealnabla' and 'Bealnablath'. ''Béal'' means "mouth/opening/approach". The meaning of ''blá'' in this placename is asserted by academic authorities to mean "pasture-land", "good land", Marian O'Flaherty
'What's in a name: Béal na Blá, Béal na Bláth or Gleann na Ruaige?
RTÉ News, 20 August 2022, retrieved 20 August 2022 "green" or "lawn", while ''bláth'' can mean "blossom" or "buttermilk". The spelling ''Béal na mBláth'' (meaning "mouth of the flowers") is commonly used but does not fit with the pronunciation used by the last native Irish-language speakers in the area (who survived until the 1940s), nor does it accord with the historical record. This spelling of the name, and the associated translation, most likely arose through folk etymology among non-native speakers. Another suggested reconstruction of the original name is ''Béal Átha na Bláiche'', meaning "mouth of the ford of the buttermilk", by analogy to a similar placename in County Limerick.

References

Towns and villages in County Cork {{Cork-geo-stub