Connemara
Connemara is a region on the Atlantic coast of western County Galway, in the west of Ireland. The region has a strong association with traditional Irish culture and containing most of the Connacht Irish-speaking Gaeltacht, a key part of its identity and the largest Gaeltacht in Ireland.. Historically, Connemara was part of the territory of Iar Connacht. Geographically, it has many mountains, peninsulas, coves, islands and small lakes. Connemara National Park is in the northwest. It is mostly rural and its largest settlement is Clifden.
Etymology
"Connemara" derives from the tribal name Conmhaícne Mara, which designated a branch of the Conmacne, an early tribal grouping that had a number of branches located in different parts of Connacht. Since this particular branch of the Conmacne lived by the sea, they became known as the Conmacne Mara.Definition
One common definition of the area is that it consists of most of west Galway, that is to say the part of the county west of Lough Corrib and Galway city, contained by Killary Harbour, Galway Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Some more restrictive definitions of Connemara define it as the historical territory of Conmhaícne Mara, i.e. just the far northwest of County Galway, bordering County Mayo. The name is also used to describe the Gaeltacht of western County Galway, though it is argued that this too is inaccurate as some of these areas lie outside of the traditional boundary of Connemara. There are arguments about where Connemara ends as it approaches Galway city, which is definitely not in Connemara – some argue for Barna, on the outskirts of Galway City, some for a line from Oughterard to Maam Cross, and then diagonally down to the coast, all within rural lands.The wider area of what is today known as Connemara was previously a sovereign kingdom known as Iar Connacht, under the kingship of the Ó Flaithbertaigh, until it became part of the English-administered Kingdom of Ireland in the 16th century.
History
The main town of Connemara is Clifden, which is surrounded by an area rich with megalithic tombs.The famous "Connemara Green marble" is found outcropping along a line between Streamstown and Lissoughter. It was a trade treasure used by the inhabitants in prehistoric times. It continues to be of great value today. It is available in large dimensional slabs suitable for buildings as well as for smaller pieces of jewellery.
Clan system
Before the Tudor and Cromwellian conquests, Connemara, like the rest of Gaelic Ireland, was ruled by Irish clans whose Chiefs and their derbhfine were expected to follow the same code of honour also expected of Scottish clan chiefs.In his biography of Rob Roy MacGregor, W.H. Murray described the code of honour as follows, "The abiding principle is cast up from the records of detail: that right must be seen to be done, no man left destitute, the given word honoured, the strictest honour observed to all who have given implicit trust, and that a guest's confidence in his safety must never be betrayed by his host, or vice versa. There was more of like kind, and each held as its kernel the simple ideal of trust honoured... Breaches of it were abhorred and damned... The ideal was applied 'with discretion'. Its interpretation went deeply into domestic life, but stayed shallow for war and politics."
The east of what is now Connemara was once called Delbhna Tír Dhá Locha, and was ruled by Kings who claimed descent from the Delbhna and Dál gCais of Thomond and kinship with King Brian Boru. The Kings of Delbhna Tír Dhá Locha eventually took the title and surname Mac Con Raoi.
The Chief of the Name of Clan Mac Con Raoi directly ruled as Lord of Gnó Mhór, which was later divided into the civil parishes of Kilcummin and Killannin. As was common practice at the time, due to the power they wielded through their war galleys, the Chiefs of Clan Mac Conraoi also fulfilled their duty to be providers for their clan members by demanding and receiving black rent on pain of piracy against ships who fished or traded within the Clan's territory. The Chiefs of Clan Mac Conraoi were accordingly numbered, along with the Chiefs of Clans O'Malley, O'Dowd, and O'Flaherty, among "the Sea Kings of Connacht". The nearby kingdom of Gnó Beag was ruled by the Chief of the Name of Clan Ó hÉanaí.
The Ó Cadhla clan were the rulers of West Connemara. Like the Chiefs of Clan Ó Cadhla clan, the Chiefs of Clan Mac Conghaile also claimed descent from the Conmhaícne Mara.
During the early 13th century, but all four clans were displaced and subjugated by the Chiefs of Clan Ó Flaithbertaigh, who had been driven west from Maigh Seola into Iar Connacht by the Mac William Uachtar branch of the House of Burgh, during the Hiberno-Norman invasion of Connacht.
According to Irish–American historian Bridget Connelly, "By the thirteenth century, the original inhabitants, the clans Conneely, Ó Cadhain, Ó Folan, and MacConroy, had been steadily driven westward from the Moycullen area to the seacoast between Moyrus and the Killaries. And by 1586, with the signing of the Articles of the Composition of Connacht that made Morrough O'Flaherty landlord over all in the name of Queen Elizabeth I, the MacConneelys and Ó Folans had sunk beneath the list of chieftains whose names appeared on the document. The Articles deprived all the original Irish clan chieftains not only of their title but also all of the rents, dues, and tribal rights they had possessed under Irish law."
During the 16th century, but legendary local pirate queen Grace O'Malley is on record as having said, with regard to her followers, .
Even though she has traditionally been viewed as an icon of Irish nationalism, Grace O'Malley, in reality, sided with Queen Elizabeth I against Red Hugh O'Donnell and Aodh Mór Ó Néill during the Nine Years War, after which her known descendants became completely assimilated into the British upper class. Even though O'Donnell and O'Neill were seeking primarily to end the religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Ireland by the English Queen her officials, O'Malley almost certainly considered herself completely justified under the code of conduct in siding with the Crown of England against them.
The feud began in 1595, when O'Donnell re-instated the Chiefdom of Clan MacWilliam Íochdar of the completely Gaelicised House of Burgh in County Mayo, which had been abolished under the policy of surrender and regrant. Instead, however, of allowing Clan a Burc to summon a gathering at which the nobles and commons would debate and then choose one of the derbhfine of the last chief to lead them, O'Donnell instead chose to appoint his ally Tiobóid mac Walter Ciotach Búrca as Chief of the Name. By passing over the claim of her son Tiobóid na Long Búrca to the Chiefdom, O'Donnell made himself a permanent and very dangerous enemy out of his mother's former ally; Grace O'Malley. The latter was swift to retaliate by launching an English-backed regime change war, in which she fought against Hugh Roe in order to wrest the White Wand of the Chiefdom away from Tiobóid Mac Walter Ciotach and give it to her son. She was joined in this by the Clan O'Flaherty and the Irish clans of Connemara who followed their mantle.
Irish clan chief, historian, and refugee in Habsburg Spain Philip O'Sullivan Beare later went on the record as a very harsh critic of Niall Garbh O'Donnell, Tiobóid na Long Búrca, Grace O'Malley, and other members of the Gaelic nobility of Ireland who similarly launched regime change wars within their clans with English backing. Having the benefit of hindsight regarding the long-term fallout from Tiobóid na Long Búrca's uprising against his Chief and many others like it nationwide, O'Sullivan Beare wrote, "The Catholics might have been able to find a remedy for all these evils, had it not been that they were destroyed from within by another and greater internal disease. For most of the families, clans, and towns of the Catholic chiefs, who took up arms in defense of the Catholic Faith, were divided into different factions, each having different leaders and following lords who were fighting for their estates and chieftaincies. The less powerful of them joined the English party in the hope of gaining the chieftainship of their clans, if the existing chieftains were removed from their position and property, and the English craftily held out that hope to them. Thus, short-sighted men, putting their private affairs before the public defence of their Holy Faith, turned their allies, followers, and towns from the Catholic chiefs and transferred to the English great resources, but in the end did not obtain what they wished for, but accomplished what they did not desire. For it was not they, but the English who got the properties of and rich patrimonies of the Catholic nobles and their kinsmen; and the Holy Faith of Christ Jesus, bereft of its defenders, lay open to the barbarous violence and lust of the heretics. There was one device by which the English were able to crush the forces of the Irish Chiefs, by promising their honours and revenues to such of their own kinsmen as would seduce their followers and allies from them, but when the war was over the English did not keep their promises."
Religious persecution
Before the Suppression of the Monasteries was spread to Connemara, the Dominican Order had a monastery about to the north of what is now Roundstone.During the centuries of religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Ireland that began under Henry VIII and ended only with Catholic emancipation in 1829, the Irish people, according to Marcus Tanner, clung to the Tridentine Mass, "crossed themselves when they passed Protestant ministers on the road, had to be dragged into Protestant churches and put cotton wool in their ears rather than listen to Protestant sermons."
File:Mass in a Connemara Cabin by Aloysius O'Kelly.png|thumb|250px|Mass in a Connemara Cabin by Aloysius O'Kelly, 1883. The custom of priests saying Mass secretly in people's homes dates to the penal laws-era. It was especially common in rural areas.
According to historian and folklorist Seumas MacManus, "Throughout these dreadful centuries, too, the hunted priest -- who in his youth had been smuggled to the Continent of Europe to receive his training -- tended the flame of faith. He lurked like a thief among the hills. On Sundays and Feast Days he celebrated Mass at a rock, on a remote mountainside, while the congregation knelt on the heather of the hillside, under the open heavens. While he said Mass, faithful sentries watched from all the nearby hilltops, to give timely warning of the approaching priest-hunter and his guard of British soldiers. But sometimes the troops came on them unawares, and the Mass Rock was bespattered with his blood, -- and men, women, and children caught in the crime of worshipping God among the rocks, were frequently slaughtered on the mountainside."
According to historian and folklorist Tony Nugent, several Mass rocks survive in Connemara from this era. There is one located along the boreen named Baile Eamoinn near Spiddal. Two others are located at Barr na Daoire and at Caorán Beag in Carraroe. A fourth, Cluain Duibh, is located near Moycullen at Clooniff. The cartographer Tim Robinson has written of a fifth Mass rock, located in the Townland of "An Tulaigh", which also includes two holy wells and, formerly, a Christian pilgrimage chapel dedicated to St. Columkille, who is said in the oral tradition to have visited the region. The Mass rock was built from several of the many boulders scattered by glaciers around Lough Clurra and is named in Irish "Cloch an tSagairt", but which was formerly marked as "Druid's altar" and dolmen on the old Ordnance Survey maps.
After taking the island in 1653, the New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell turned the nearby island of Inishbofin, County Galway, into a prison camp for Roman Catholic priests arrested while exercising their religious ministry covertly in other parts of Ireland. Inishmore, in the nearby Aran Islands, was used for exactly the same purpose. The last priests held on both islands were finally released following the Stuart Restoration in 1662.
One of the last Chiefs of Clan O'Flaherty and Lord of Iar Connacht was the 17th-century historian Ruaidhrí Ó Flaithbheartaigh, who lost the greater part of his ancestral lands during the Cromwellian confiscations of the 1650s.
After being dispossessed, Ó Flaithbheartaigh settled near Spiddal wrote a book of Irish history in Neo-Latin titled Ogygia, which was published in 1685 as Ogygia: seu Rerum Hibernicarum Chronologia & etc., in 1793 it was translated into English by Rev. James Hely, as Ogygia, or a Chronological account of Irish Events . Ogygia, the island of Calypso in Homer's The Odyssey, was used by Ó Flaithbheartaigh as a poetic allegory for Ireland. Drawing from numerous ancient documents, Ogygia traces Irish history back before Saint Patrick and into Pre-Christian Irish mythology.
Simultaneously, however, Máirtín Mór Ó Máille, who claimed descent from the derbhfine of the last Chief of the Name of the Clan O'Malley and Lord of Umhaill as well as kinship with the famous pirate queen Grace O'Malley, ran much of Anglo-Irish landlord Richard "Humanity Dick" Martin's estates from his residence at "Keeraun House" and the surrounding region, which are still known locally as "the demesne", as a "middleman".
From the rock known as "O'Malley's Seat at the mouth of the creek known as An Dólain near the village of An Caorán Beag in Carraroe, Ó Máille also ran, with the enthusiastic collusion of his employer, one of the busiest smuggling operations in South Connemara and regularly unloaded cargoes smuggled in from Guernsey. Like many other members of the Gaelic nobility of Ireland before him, Ó Máille was a legendary figure even in his own lifetime, entertaining all guests with several barrels of wine and feasts of roasted sheep and cattle, which were always fully eaten before having to be salted.
This arrangement continued until around 1800. While hosting Rt.-Rev. Edmund Ffrench, the Dominican Warden of Galway and future Roman Catholic Bishop of Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora, however, Máirtín Mór Ó Máille presided over an accidental breach of hospitality. As Warden Ffrench's visit was on a Friday, the Friar's was only eating fish and seafood. When one of the household servants of Máirtín Mór accidentally poured a meat gravy upon his plate, the future Bishop understood that it was unintentional and graciously waved the plate away. The future Bishop's cousin, Thomas Ffrench, however, was less forgiving and demanded satisfaction. This resulted in a duel during which Máirtín Mór was mortally wounded.
Sir Richard Martin, who had not been in Connemara at the time, was shocked and angry to hear of his middleman's death, saying, "Ó Máille preferred a hole in his guts to one in his honour, but there wouldn't have been a hole in either if I'd been told of it!"
Meanwhile another branch of the Gaelic nobility, who claimed descent from the derbhfine of the last O'Flaherty Chiefs, similarly lived in a thatch-covered long house at Renvyle and acted as both clan leaders and "middlemen" for the Anglo-Irish Blake family of Galway City, who were granted much of the region under the Acts of Settlement in 1677. This arrangement continued until 1811, when Henry Blake ended a 130-year-long tradition of his family acting as absentee landlords and evicted 86-year-old Anthony O'Flaherty, his relatives, and his retainers. Henry Blake then demolished Anthony O'Flaherty's longhouse and built Renvyle House on the site.