Norman Settlement
By 1800, Wexford had already experienced at least three waves of colonisation. The Vikings had first arrived almost 1,000 years previously and set up Wexford town. Then, in around 1170, the Normans arrived from England with Strongbow. Subsequent wars with England throughout the centuries brought yet more settlement.
Barony of Forth and Bargy Vocabulary
An example of the unique language spoken by the inhabitants of the Barony of Forth and Bargy, Co. Wexford. The excerpt is from the Appendix of Robert Fraser's survey of Co. Wexford, 1807.
Copyright managed by the Library Council.Barony of Forth and Bargy Vocabulary
Copyright managed by the Library Council.
Copyright managed by the Library Council.
Barony of Forth and Bargy Vocabulary
An example of the unique language spoken by the inhabitants of the Barony of Forth and Bargy, Co. Wexford. The excerpt is from the Appendix of Robert Fraser's survey of Co. Wexford, 1807.
Copyright managed by the Library Council.An interesting window into a succesful settlement is seen in the barony of Forth and Bargy. Situated in the south of Wexford, this area comprised around 60 square miles.
In 1170, a troop of Norman soldiers had been granted land by Dermot MacMurrough and settled in the south of Wexford. In around 1650, they were joined by more English settlers. Robert Fraser found that this small community had a unique language of its own. This language came to be known as Yola. Expand the image above to see a list of some of the words spoken in Forth and Bargy in the 1800s.
Yola appeared to be a dialect of Old English, with some influences from other languages. Although several people wrote about the language spoken in Forth and Bargy before Fraser's visit and since, aspects of its origins were hard to trace.
Further groups of English people began to arrive and introduced the influence of more modern English, but the dialect still remained unique. The descendants of the colonists interacted with Irish natives over the generations, so some Irish was also brought into their speech. Yola was in decline around the time of Fraser's visit, and it had died out by the end of the nineteenth century.
Wexford contained some of the largest Norman settlements in medieval Ireland. The north of Wexford, however, remained Gaelic Irish in character under the MacMurrough and Kavanagh families.