and Eileen.

Our topographical nomenclature too--as we may now be prepared to
expect--has been also shamefully corrupted to suit English ears; but
unfortunately the difficulties attendant upon a realteration of our
place-names to their proper forms are very great, nor do I mean to go into
this question now, for it is one so long and so difficult that it would
require a lecture, or rather a series of lectures to itself. Suffice it to
say, that many of the best-known names in our history and annals have
become almost wholly unrecognisable, through the ignorant West-Britonising
of them. The unfortunate natives of the eighteenth century allowed all
kinds of havoc to be played with even their best-known names. For example
the river Feoir they allowed to be turned permanently into the Nore, which
happened this way. Some Englishman, asking the name of the river, was
told that it was _An Fheoir_, pronounced In n'yore, because the F when
preceded by the definite article _an_ is not sounded, so that in his
ignorance he mistook the word Feoir for Neoir, and the name has been thus
perpetuated. In the same way the great Connacht lake, Loch Corrib, is
really Loch Orrib, or rather Loch Orbsen, some Englishman having mistaken
the C at the end of loch for the beginning of the next word. Sometimes the
Ordnance Survey people make a rough guess at the Irish name and jot down
certain English letters almost on chance. Sometimes again they make an
Irish word resemble an English one, as in the celebrated Tailtin in Meath,
where the great gathering of the nation was held, and, which, to make sure
that no national memories should stick to it, has been West-Britonised
Telltown.[22] On the whole, our place names have been treated with about
the same respect as if they were the names of a savage tribe which had
never before been reduced to writing, and with about the same
intelligence and contempt as vulgar English squatters treat the
topographical nomenclature of the Red Indians. These things are now to a
certain extent stereotyped, and are difficult at this hour to change,
especially where Irish names have been translated into English, like
Swinford and Strokestown, or ignored as in Charleville or Midleton. But
though it would take the strength and goodwill of an united nation to put
our topographical nomenclature on a rational basis like that of Wales and
the Scotch Highlands, there is one thing which our Society can do, and
that is to insist up