Translation according to P. W. Joyce:
Ballyleen in Carlow, Galway, and Waterford; the townland of the lin [leen] or flax. For lin, flax, see vol. ii. p. 327 [reproduced below]. Sixty years ago flax was much grown in the southern half of Ireland : but that is all over.
Flax. One of the names of this plant is still preserved in a great number of the European languages, the forms slightly varying, but all derived from the root lin. The Greek word is linon; Latin linum (whence Eng. linen and linseed); A. Sax. lin; Russ lenu; Bohem. len, etc. This shows that it was cultivated by the western Aryan people since before the time of their separation into the various nationalities of Europe. The investigations of Dr. Oswald Heer of Munich have led him to believe that the original home of cultivated flax was on the shores of the Mediterranean; it was cultivated in Egypt more than 4,000 years ago; and it has been found in the oldest of the lake dwellings of Switzerland. The Celtic tribes who first set foot on our shores, brought the plant and a knowledge of its cultivation with them; and corresponding to all the names given above, is the Irish lín [leen], which is still the word in universal use for flax. Besides the evidence of philology, our own records show that linen was manufactured in Ireland from the earliest historic times. It was a favourite article of dress, and was worked up and dyed in a great variety of forms and colours, and exported besides in large quantities to foreign nations. So that the manufacture for which one portion of Ireland is is famous at the present day, is merely an energetic development of an industry, whose history is lost in the twilight of antiquity. We have a great number of places to which this plant has given names, and the word lin generally appears in the modernised forms leen, lin, and line, - most commonly the first. Coolaleen in the parish of Killeedy in Limerick near the village of Broadford, is in Irish Cúil-a'-lín, the corner of the flax; Crockaleen near Enniskillen, flax-hill; Gortaleen in Cork and Kerry, the field of the flax. From the nature of some of the names we may infer that the species they commemorate was the wild or fairy-flax, or as they call it in some places, lín-na-mnasighe [leenamnaw-shee]. This was probably the case in Killaleen near the town of Monaghan, both signifying the wood (coill) of the flax. Other places seem to have received their names, not from producing flax, but because they were selected as drying-places for it, after steeping; such as Lisheenaleen in Cork, Galway, and Tipperary, and Rathleen near Inistioge in Kilkenny, where, probably, the flax was spread out on the green area of the lisheen, rath, or fort. And the peasantry were, no doubt, long accustomed to put their flax to steep after pulling, in the pools of Monaleen (moin, a bog) near Newtown Mountkennedy in Wicklow; and of Curraghaleen (curragh, a marsh) near the railway line, four miles west of Athlone.