Cormac Mac Diarmata, 6th c.
The fort that gave the name
Long before the Normans, this part of south Wexford was the territory of the Uí Bairche - the tribal grouping whose name survives in the barony of Bargy. Tradition has it that a 6th-century chief of the Uí Bairche, Cormac Mac Diarmata, was for a time recognised as king of Leinster, and that he had a coastal stronghold here. Dún Cormaic - Cormac's fort - became the placename. The fort itself is gone. The name has outlasted every other thing the man ever did.
The lost dialect of Forth and Bargy
Yola
Duncormick sits in the old barony of Bargy, one of the two south-Wexford baronies where Yola was spoken. Yola was a Middle-English dialect brought in by the Welsh, Norman and Flemish settlers after 1169 and preserved here, in a small pocket of country, for nearly seven hundred years. Most of its vocabulary was Old English; the borrowings were Irish and French. It stopped being a daily language by the mid-19th century - the Famine, the railway, mass literacy in standard English finished what they always finish. A glossary survives. A few rhymes survive. Most of what survives is in the place names you drive past on the way here.
The Boolavogue cottage
P.J. McCall's summer
Patrick Joseph McCall - Dublin publican's son, ballad-writer, antiquarian - kept a summer cottage in Duncormick. From it, in 1898, the centenary of the 1798 Rebellion, he wrote "Boolavogue" to the old air "Eochaill" (Youghal Harbour). He also wrote "Kelly the Boy from Killanne" and "Follow Me up to Carlow" - three of the most-sung Irish rebel songs in the canon. A plaque on the cottage marks the connection. He died in 1919. The songs are still sung weekly in pubs across the country, including, on the right night, the one across the road.
Open 1906, shut 1976, gone 2010
The South Wexford line
Duncormick had its own station from 1 August 1906 - the day the Rosslare-to-Waterford South Wexford line opened - until 6 September 1976, when the smaller stations along the route closed. The line itself stayed open for passengers until 18 September 2010, and is still used occasionally for empty stock movements. The Wellingtonbridge sugar-beet sidings up the line were the line's economic engine; when the sugar factory at Mallow shut in 2006, the line was finished within four years. The Duncormick platform is still there, weeds through the ballast.