I have two letters written in the late 1860s from my great great grandmother in Bournea Parish, near Roscrea, County Tipperary, to her son in Ohio. There is a word in the letters that no one who has seen the letters has been able to decipher. I have reason to believe the letters were written for my great great grandmother by someone outside the family, and it may be that the writer of the letter did not know how to spell the mystery word and did his or her best to reproduce it phonetically.

In the first letter, there is reference to "...John Maher of the rostir...". where "rostir" may be "roster". In the other letter, it looks like "...John Maher of the Bostketh...", where "Bosketh" may be "rosketh".

Recently I have seen the Irish for "marsh" that looks to me to be close to the puzzle-word. Unfortunately, now that I have found this site, I can't remember what is the Irish, but I think it is something close to roosketh, or even roosky. There is a town in Ireland named Roosky, and perhaps it derives from "marsh." If I am correct, the man mentioned in the letter would be John Maher of the marsh.

Can anyone help?

Thanks,

Tom Fitzsimmons.

The irish for marsh is 'Riasc'
REE-SK

Many thanks! I went back to the letters and looked "hard" at the words, and they seem to be this:

In the first letter, "Rootix"
In the second letter, "Rookth", where there might be an "s" or an "e" between the "k" and the "th".

As I said before, I think these are phonetic spellings, because people have told me that Irish has no letter "k".

It has no letter k, but there are k sounds, which are represented by the letter c.There is no soft c in irish just a hard one and any soft c sounds are represented by the letter s.

Just some thought.

The name "John Maher" may be a fairly common one with duplicates in the general area. In that case you might refer to one as JM from the hill and the other as JM from the glen eg. The other possibility is that the figure of speech used is actually a reference to parentage - Jimín Mhaire Thaig type or even where he worked JM of the X estate and JM of the Y estate. I think a little more conText is needed perhaps and to be honest if you could scan and upload that part of the letter there might be more chance of getting an answer.

Just some thought.

The name "John Maher" may be a fairly common one with duplicates in the general area. In that case you might refer to one as JM from the hill and the other as JM from the glen eg. The other possibility is that the figure of speech used is actually a reference to parentage - Jimín Mhaire Thaig type or even where he worked JM of the X estate and JM of the Y estate. I think a little more conText is needed perhaps and to be honest if you could scan and upload that part of the letter there might be more chance of getting an answer.