​The Strong Rock and the Old Tongue: A Journey into Wexford’s Fossilized Past

​If you drive south out of Wexford town, the landscape begins to tighten. The hedges grow thicker, the sea salt hangs heavier in the air, and you cross an invisible border into the baronies of Forth and Bargy.

​This isn't just a different part of the "Model County"; for seven centuries, it was effectively a different country. I came here looking for two things: a language that refused to die and a family that built its foundation on "strong rocks."

​The Ghosts of Bannow Bay

​My journey starts at Bannow Bay. Standing on the quiet shore, it’s easy to imagine the scene in 1169: three ships cutting through the mist, carrying the first wave of Anglo-Normans.

​While history books focus on the knights in chainmail, I’m more interested in the people who followed in their wake—the archers, the sailors, and the plowmen recruited from the West Country of England (Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall). They brought with them a dialect of Middle English that, thanks to the geographic isolation of these baronies, became a "time capsule."

​They called it Yola—literally meaning "Old."

​Walking Through a "Zong"

​Walking through local villages today, you don't hear Yola spoken fluently—it took its last official breath in the mid-1800s—but its ghost is everywhere.

​Yola was Middle English frozen in amber. While the English in London was busy evolving through the Great Vowel Shift, the people of Forth and Bargy kept the "v" and "z" sounds of their 14th-century ancestors. In a Wexford pub three hundred years ago, you wouldn't hear a song; you’d hear a zong. You didn't speak to your father; you spoke to your vader.

​It’s a strange, musical realization: if Geoffrey Chaucer had wandered into a Wexford tavern in the year 1750, he probably would have understood the locals better than the King of England would have.

​The Rochford Legacy: The "Strong Rock"

​You cannot talk about this land without talking about the Rochfords. If the Yola-speakers were the "engine room" of South Wexford, the Rochfords were its architecture.

​The name is a literal translation of the Old French Roche-fort (Strong Rock). Unlike the "New English" settlers who arrived centuries later with Cromwell, the Rochfords were the original Norman stock. They arrived with the first wave of invaders and never left, becoming the quintessential "Old English" gentry—Catholic, aristocratic, and deeply woven into the local soil.

​While "Rochefort" is a common place name in France, the Irish Rochfords are a remarkably tight-knit clan. In the medieval period, they weren't just landlords; they were the "Captains of Wexford," serving as sheriffs and judges, presiding over the very fields where that strange Yola tongue was being shaped.

​Two Worlds, One Barony

​What strikes me most is the social "sandwich" that existed here for hundreds of years:

• ​The High Ground: The Rochfords and their peers, originally speaking Norman French and later shifting to Standard English to maintain their ties to the halls of power in Dublin.
• ​The Low Ground: The farmers and fishers, speaking a fossilized Middle English that became so unique it was eventually unintelligible to anyone outside the barony.

​A Living Echo

​As I head back toward the main roads, I realize that Yola isn't actually dead. It’s just hiding in the local accent. You hear it when a Wexford local says they are "lorking" (idle) or describes something as "quare" (very).

​The Rochfords gave the land its castles and its name, but the Yola-speakers gave it its soul. In South Wexford, the "Strong Rock" and the "Old Tongue" are two sides of the same ancient coin—a reminder that sometimes, if you stay in one place long enough, the rest of the world is the one that changes, not you.

​Sidebar: A Pocket Guide to Yola

​The next time you're in a South Wexford local, listen out for these "relic" words:

Yola Word Meaning Origin Note

Vader Father West Country "V" voicing

Zong Song West Country "Z" voicing

Lork To idle/loiter Still used in Wexford today!

Quare Very/Extremely The ultimate Wexford intensifier

Fornint Opposite/In front of Middle English roots

Chy A little bit Unique Yola colloquialism

Poage A kiss From the Middle English pouche

From Prophets to Pixels

The Resurrection of a Language Imagine if Latin weren't just for inscriptions, but was the language used to order a latte or text a friend. For the Hebrew language, this "fiction" became a reality. The story of the Hebrew revival is one of the most improbable linguistic feats in history—the only documented case of a "dead" language with no native speakers being successfully transformed into a living national tongue. A Language in Hibernation For nearly 2,000 years, Hebrew lived in a state of diglossia. It was used for prayer, literature, and legal contracts, but it wasn't used for the mundane business of daily life. By the time of Jesus (Yeshua), Hebrew had already begun its retreat. While it remained the language of the Temple, the common people primarily spoke Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Near East. After the Roman conquest and the subsequent Jewish Diaspora, Hebrew became a "sacred tongue" (Lashon HaKodesh)—beautiful and preserved, but essentially frozen in time. The Visionary: Eliezer Ben-Yehuda The revival began in the late 19th century with Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. He arrived in Palestine in 1881 with a radical conviction: there is no nationhood without a common language. Ben-Yehuda faced massive hurdles: religious opposition from those who felt Hebrew was too holy for everyday talk, and a massive vocabulary gap. How do you say "electricity" or "bicycle" in a language that stopped evolving in the 2nd century? Engineering a Modern Tongue To bridge the gap, Ben-Yehuda and his associates went on a "word-building" spree, using ancient roots to create modern terms: Airplane (Matos): Derived from the biblical root "to fly." Computer (Makhshev): Shares a root with the word for "thought." Link (Kishur): From the biblical root for "binding" a knot. They also embraced the language's neighbors. Modern Hebrew is heavily seasoned with Arabic slang, like Sababa (cool) and Yalla (let’s go), making it feel rhythmic, gritty, and alive. Why It Succeeded While Ben-Yehuda provided the spark, history provided the fuel. Early 20th-century immigrants spoke a "Tower of Babel" of languages—Yiddish, Ladino, Russian, and Arabic. To build a cohesive society, they needed a neutral, shared bridge. Hebrew became that bridge. The Living Miracle Today, Hebrew is spoken by over 9 million people. It has hip-hop, technical manuals, and Nobel Prize-winning literature. It proves that a language is more than just a set of rules; it is a vessel for identity. Hebrew didn't just survive; it adapted, proving that even after 2,000 years of silence, a voice can be found again.