Where does the name “Tara” come from?

I recently rewatched the “Guns of Navarone,” a Gregory Peck flick co-starring David Niven, Richard Harris, and Anthony Quinn. The WWII movie is well done and, though the acting is a bit cardboard at times, it’s a well-told story about the Allies blowing up a Nazi gun turret on a tall mountain overseeing the Aegean Sea that kept Allied ships from rescuing 2,000 British troops on an island about to be slaughtered by the Germans. Alas, it is fiction. The whole thing is made up.

As I wondered about other movies with the same fictional history bent, I thought of “Gone with the Wind.” Yes, set during the civil war, but it’s not a true story, it is instead novelist Margaret Mitchell’s imagination. However, there is a Tara Boulevard in Jonesboro, Georgia. As a side note, as a child I lived in Jonesboro, Tennessee, now calling itself by its original name, Jonesborough. And the county seat of Clayton County, Georgia had the same name before time shortened it to Jonesboro. So, where does the name Tara come from?

As a devoted reader of my column, you know the answer must be Ireland, and you are right again. It’s a lovely story about the life of Katie Scarlett O’Hara, the daughter of Irish immigrant Gerald O’Hara, a peasant farmer who won a 640-acre plot of land in a card game. In farming, a “square plot of land” is one mile by one mile, which is 640 acres. Mitchell initially called the father’s plantation Fontenoy Hall, but in one of Mitchell’s numerous rewrites, she changed the plantation name to Tara, after the Hill of Tara of Irish lore, in honor of her character’s Irish roots. 

The Hill of Tara is a beautiful story from a beautiful land. “Of the colonists that came to stay in the land, the Firbolgs were the earliest; and the bards tell us that Slainge, the first high king of that race, chose Tara Hill as the site of his royal palace and called it Druim Caein or the Beautiful Hill…[later] Heremon was married to his cousin, a beautiful and accomplished princess named Tea, and she asked her lord, even before they landed, to give her as her dower her choice hill in Erin, ‘that she might be interred therein, and that her mound and grave-stone might be raised thereon,’ and ‘where every prince to be born of her race should dwell forever.’ This favour was guaranteed to her; and then we are told that she chose Druim Caein, called also Laeth-Druim, the Beautiful Hill, which from her is called Tea-Muir, i.e., Tara, the Mound of Tea, and therein she was interred… There it has stood through all the changeful centuries, and the ashes of Tea’s offspring, who died for the land she loved, now rest in peace beneath its shadow.” Irish Essays: Literary and Historical: Tara, Pagan and Christian, John Healey (1908).

So, there you have it. Once again, the history of Ireland is ingrained in our history. A beautiful princess, descended from a goddess maybe, asks of her husband a gift not of diamonds or gold, which fit well on a finger, but a lasting gift upon which every Irish prince would dwell forever. That hill did not get lost to history, as do gold and diamonds; instead, that site is a sacred place even today. Long live Éire.

Kelly Burke, retired attorney, former district attorney and magistrate judge, writes about the law, rock ’n’ roll, and politics or anything that strikes him. These articles are not designed to give legal advice, but are designed to inform the public about how the law affects their daily lives. Contact Kelly at dakellyburke@gmail.com to comment on this article or suggest articles that you’d like to see, and visit his website at www.kellyrburke.com to view prior columns.

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