Tonight is "Bonfire Night" in the west of Ireland. So forget your Wimbledon. The word itself, bonfire, is derived from a 16th-century Middle English word "banefire", which, it won't surprise you to hear, originally concerned a fire in which bones were burned.
“Bone” itself is derived from the Old English “ban”, itself associated with the Old Frisian “ben”, Old Norse “bein”, Danish “ben” and German “bein”.
“Fire” is also from the Old English. In its case parentage goes to “fyr”. Predecessors would include Old Saxon and Old Frisian “fiur”, Old Norse “fuur”, Middle Dutch “vuur” and German “fuer”.
Related would be the Czech and Greek “pyr”, as in “pyre”.
“Fire”, as we spell it, goes back to about the 1200s, but it did not fully displace the Middle English “fier” (as in fiery!) until the 1600s.
Nowadays, bonfires describe any large planned fire that takes place outside.
Even within this island there are differences as to when "Bonfire Night" takes place. In Northern Ireland and in loyalist areas it is July 11th, eve of the Twelfth, when huge bonfires often have tricolours and effigies of the Pope on top.
In the UK it is on November 5th to mark Guy Fawkes’s unsuccessful attempt to blow up the houses of parliament in 1605. But in the west of Ireland, where the best bonfires of course take place, they go back to pagan times.
When I was growing up, every townland in our part of north Roscommon had its own bonfire, usually including music and dancing and often at a crossroads.
And part of the ritual included placing a live coal in a field belonging to you, for luck. I remember my grandfather doing just that.
Later, when we moved to the grand metropolis of Ballaghaderreen, Bonfire Night took on greater significance. In January, every street gang there began to prepare for its own bonfire by collecting tyres, and other flammable materials, to ensure they had the best of all.
The six months to June were fraught, as raids were regular by each gang on what the others had collected. It was even known that some could be driven by a rival gang from their own fire on Bonfire Night.
Such ignominy happened our Barrack St gang one year. The ensuing fighting was vicious. You may have seen the film Gangs of New York: where violence was concerned, it was mere Disney compared to Gangs of Ballaghaderreen. inaword@irishtimes.com
