An Irishman’s Diary about Termonfeckin

Driving up the M1 at the weekend, I took a detour through Drogheda and headed towards the coast on the R166. I was confident this was the right road, but the usual lack of direction signs unnerved me. So, partly for confirmation, and partly to entertain the two boys in the back seat, I wound down the window and asked someone, “Is this the way to Termonfeckin?”

Sure enough, it was. And sure enough, the question provoked giggles behind me. “Daddy said ‘feckin’”, announced the nine-year-old to his teenage brother, delighted.

I let them enjoy the moment briefly, before spoiling it with a lecture on the history of early Christian Ireland and its influence on toponymy. Termonfeckin meant “Fechin’s Sanctuary”, I told the captive audience as we drove on – the Fechin in question being a 7th-century saint whose name sounded less rude in the original Irish.

To prove the point, I asked if they remembered us visiting a place in Connemara some years ago called Omey Island. They didn’t, but that didn’t stop me reminding them that the island had the ruins of an old church called (in English) Templefeheen, and that this referred to the selfsame holy man, whose “c” had somehow hardened in a transit of the country.

I can’t say my passengers were impressed with this information. I can say, however, that by the time I’d explained it, and then stopped to admire the 16th-century Termonfeckin Castle from several angles, they were sorry they’d laughed.

We didn’t have time to search out the village’s GAA club, St Fechin’s – home of “the Feckers” as they’re known – because we had our own game to attend farther up the M1. But back on the motorway, I fell to thinking about the accidental relationship between the saint and the term that has become our national swear word.

The unfortunate coincidence must the main reason for the shortage of people called Fechin in modern Ireland– both the country of 30 or 40 years ago, when children were still routinely christened after saints, and the more recent one, where old Irish names, saintly or otherwise, have been fashionable.

I know there are a few brave Fechins out there, and I presume it’s the more poetic, soft-c version they prefer. But I also know that, even in Connemara, where the name was once popular, the Latin version Festus (shortened to Festy) was often preferred. Either this betrayed a love of the classics in those parts, or it arose from fear that the soft c would not travel well in a hard, Anglo-Saxon world.

As Templefeheen and Termonfeckin demonstrate, the saint himself travelled widely, at least in reputation. In fact the place most associated with him is neither of those coastal extremes, but a land-locked midpoint, at Fore in Co Westmeath. There are also places in Scotland named after him, most notably the village of St Vigeans – another derivative, via Latin – near Arbroath.

So he must have been a very influential figure in his era, although probably not as influential as one legend suggests. This has it that, at a time when food was scarce in Ireland, the political leadership besought the leading holy men, including Fechin, to pray for a plague on the lower orders. The saints obliged, successfully, according to the story, but it proved a suicide mission, since many of them died too.

The plague, at least, was real. Probably yellow fever, it struck during the years 664-665AD and killed large numbers, including St Fechin, who, according to the Annals of the Four Masters, died on February 14th, 665. That would make this week his official 1,350th anniversary. So who knows? We may soon see a Fechin revival, as it were, in the birth columns.

Until then, at least, the holy man remains condemned to a Dante-esque purgatory wherein he is commemorated mainly in the form of a swear word.

Indeed, thanks to those latter-day missionaries, Father Ted and friends, his cult is now growing in Britain too. But then maybe he would be consoled by the thought that his name is at least considered a politer alternative to another Anglo-Saxon f-word.

I invoked the saint myself at the weekend, as it happens. And not only him, but also one of the holy wells with which he was associated.

It happened when my nine-year-old son, referring back to the earlier lecture, asked with a grin if he could take the name for his confirmation next year. To which proposal, I said no. Or as I put it, more piously: “No, you Fechin-well can’t”.

@FrankmcnallyIT