Words and Proper Names

formaoil (in place names)

15152.
FitzPatrick (Elizabeth): Formaoil na Fiann: hunting preserves and assembly places in Gaelic Ireland.
In PHCC 32 (2013), pp. 95–118.
Offers a detailed study of formaoil place-names in Ireland.
18291.
FitzPatrick (Elizabeth): Finn’s wilderness and boundary landforms in medieval Ireland.
In Landscape and myth in North-Western Europe (2019), pp. 113–146.
Studies the term formaoil used in place-names in Ireland and Scotland (variously anglicized as Fermoyle, Formoyle, Formil, Formal, etc.), and argues it was applied to particular bare-topped hills and mountains connected to the idea of wilderness, boundaries and conflict, and in fíanaigecht also conceived as hunting reserve and place of contact with the Otherworld for Finn and his fían.