Hello List, I wonder if anyone could be of assistance. I have the transportation papers of one of my ancestors a James Toole. The name on the papers which is a bit faded looks like Turloch(Tarlock? Turluck?) W. Galway has anyone got any ideas on what it could be as I have not been able to find it, Regards Sandy Australia

Just a caveat here, Sandy, to help you in your search: a turlough or turloch is a temporary lake, especially in Ireland*. There are a lot of places in the West of Ireland called turlough or variants of it (Turloughmor, Turloughbeg, etc.). It's rather like the word "tobar/Tubber", which means "a well". There are zillions of holy wells in Ireland so there are lots of places with names containing tobar (Tubber, Tubbercurry, Tubbereen, Tubber-na-carrig ......). So I wonder whether your piece of paper has any other words which might qualify the turlough. Pádraig (the Paddy that was) * Flat-bottomed sinkholes in limestone areas, in particular in that barren limestone pavement landscape in western Ireland called the Burren, can become flooded in wet weather as underground systems fill up and the water table rises. The resulting lakes, turloughs, can appear quite quickly after a spell of wet weather, vanishing again within a few days of the rain stopping. Some lakes are seasonal, water-filled in winter but reliably dry enough in summer to be used for pasture. Turloughs empty through parts of the floor of the sinkholes and also through swallow holes—small depressions filled with loose rocks. Researchers in Ireland argue turloughs are unique, quite unlike others, such as some English meres, and types variously called dolines, uvalas and poljes. The Irish ones are more erratic in the way they appear and disappear, as the result of climate, underlying rock type, and depth of soil in the sinkholes that holds back drainage. The word is from Irish turloch, deriving from tur, dry, plus loch, lake, the second element being pronounced with a guttural ch as in the Scots loch.