Banagher - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

The town of Banagher is most likely the source of a phrase that is widely known in many English speaking countries in the world. "That beats Banagher!" is a common reaction to something extraordinary or to describe something that surpasses everything. The most commonly proposed explanation is that Banagher was entitled to send two members to Parliament following its charter of incorporation in 1628. It was known as an infamous pocket borough where the members were representative of the landed class, or indeed nominated by the local lord, without a vote taking place at all. When a member of the house spoke of a family (or rotten) borough, it was not unusual for someone to reply "Well, that beats Banagher!"

An alternative explanation is suggested, whereby there was an Irish minstrel called Bannagher, who was famous for telling wonderful stories; and a line from W.B. Yeats gives this theory some credence: "'Well', says he, 'to gratify them I will. So just a morsel. But Jack, this beats Bannagher.'" There is also an entry in Captain Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue of 1785 which says: "He beats Banaghan; an Irish saying of one who tells wonderful stories. Perhaps Banaghan was a minstrel famous for dealing in the marvellous".

There are numerous uses of the phrase in literature, including Trollope's The Kelly's and the O'Kellys (1848), p. 221; James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake (1939), p. 87.31; James Plunkett's Farewell Companions (1977), p. 293 and Edna O'Brien's Down By The River (1996), p. 1.

The phrase has a riposte: "And Banagher beats the Devil!". The origins of this are more difficult to trace but it does feature in a work by the Irish writer Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne, Messer Marco Polo (1925), p. 25, and it is in common usage in Ireland. Trollope asserted on his arrival in Ireland, "I was to live at a place called Banagher on the Shannon which I had heard of because of its having once been conquered, though it had heretofore conquered everything, including the Devil". Interestingly, a John O'Donovan, in an Ordnance Survey letter for King's County in 1838, attempts to trace the origins of the name Banagher. He states: "Of all the words which enter into Irish nomenclature Beannchair seems the most difficult of explanation" and goes on to say "This name 'beats the Devil.'" M.F. Kenny in his 2003 book Marathon Marriage uses a story of the devil losing a game of cards to a blacksmith named Banagher at the Black Stile at Garry Castle on the road between Banagher and Birr, as an explanation for the phrase.