Irish in Hilltown in 1890

"R.L. Praeger—a nephew of Patterson—writes of Hilltown in 1937: ‘Half a century ago, when I first knew it, it was a “backward” place—one might still hear Irish spoken by the old people, who were full of old tales.’ And again in 1941: ‘When I first knew Hilltown, fifty years ago, you could still hear Irish spoken if you knew where to find it.’[i]"

Ciarán Duibhín

[i] R.L. Praeger, The Way That I Went (Dublin and London, 1937), p 127; id., A Populous Solitude (Dublin, 1941), p 63.