Béal na Bláth or Béal na Blá (anglicised Bealnablath or Bealnabla)
is a small village on the
R585 road in
County Cork
County Cork () is the largest and the southernmost Counties of Ireland, county of Republic of Ireland, Ireland, named after the city of Cork (city), Cork, the state's second-largest city. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster ...
,
Ireland
Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
. The area is best known as the site of the ambush and death of the Irish revolutionary leader
Michael Collins in 1922.
Name
The original version of the name has become obscured with the passage of time. The
Placenames Database of Ireland
The Placenames Database of Ireland (), 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 the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, ...
gives the official spelling as , with the alternative considered not to be supported by the linguistic evidence.
The two anglicisations are 'Bealnabla' and 'Bealnablath'.
means "mouth/opening/approach".
The meaning of in this placename has been 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 can mean "blossom" or "buttermilk".
''Béal na Blá'' would therefore mean "the entrance to the good land", most likely referring to an area of land adjacent to the nearby
River Bride.
The spelling (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
Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological) reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a mo ...
among non-native speakers.County Limerick
County Limerick () is a western Counties of Ireland, county in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster and is located in the Mid-West Region, Ireland, Mid-West which comprises part of the Southern Reg ...
.
Michael Collins
On 22 August 1922, during the Irish Civil War
The Irish Civil War (; 28 June 1922 – 24 May 1923) was a conflict that followed the Irish War of Independence and accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State, an entity independent from the United Kingdom but within the British Emp ...
, Michael Collins, Chairman of the Provisional Government 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. Commemorations are held on the nearest Sunday to the anniversary of his death. A memorial cross (coordinates ) stands 1 km south of the village near the site of the shooting in the townland
A townland (; Ulster-Scots: ''toonlann'') is a traditional small land division used in Ireland and in the Western Isles of Scotland, typically covering . The townland system is of medieval Gaelic origin, predating the Norman invasion, and mo ...
of Glannarogue (), on a local road which was a dirt road when Collins was shot.[ It does not mark the actual spot where Collins fell, which was
further south and on the left-hand side of the road heading north.][Edward O’Mahony]
'The Ambush at Béal na mBláth'
Collins 22 Society, 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2025
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beal na Blath
Towns and villages in County Cork