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THE SOUTH ISLES OF ARAN
THE SOUTH ISLES OF ARAN
(_COUNTY GALWAY_)
BY
OLIVER J. BURKE, A.B., T.C.D.
Knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great
_BARRISTER-AT-LAW_
AUTHOR OF "THE HISTORY OF ROSS ABBEY," "HISTORY OF THE LORD CHANCELLORS
OF IRELAND," "HISTORY OF THE ARCHBISHOPS OF TUAM," "ANECDOTES OF
THE CONNAUGHT CIRCUIT"
"Signs and tokens round us thicken,
Hearts throb high and pulses quicken"
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1887
(_The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved._)
TO THE HON. MR. JUSTICE O'HAGAN,
ONE OF THE JUSTICES OF THE SUPREME COURT IN IRELAND.
* * * * *
MY DEAR JUDGE O'HAGAN,
During the vacation of last autumn I applied myself to collecting as
much information as possible concerning the South Isles of Aran, which I
had visited in connection with the Land Commission in the previous month
of July. Pressure of business and a severe illness compelled me to defer
until recently the arranging of my notes, which, in the hope that they
may direct the attention of those in power to the long neglected
Islands, I have resolved to publish, and I look on it as a good omen of
the success of my efforts that you have kindly allowed me to dedicate my
work to you, who have won so high a place in law and in literature.
Believe me to remain
Sincerely yours,
OLIVER J. BURKE.
OWER, HEADFORD,
CO. GALWAY,
_August 8, 1887_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Island of Aran--Galway bay, anciently Lough
Lurgan--Population--Religion, etc.--Inishmore, ruins on--Inishmaan,
ruins on--Inisheer, ruins on--Mail boat--Hotel--Aran
landscape--Flora--Potatoes--Aran wildfowl--Capture of the
puffin--Cragsmen--Geology of islands--Limestone
terraces--Boulders--Cliffs on islands--Seaweeds--Moving sands--_Pinus
maritima_ 1
CHAPTER II.
Monuments of Druidism--Druids--Cairns--Cromlechs--Baal,
worship of--Zodiacal rings--Sacred fires--Druidical
religion--Sir Edward Coke, on--Groves--Immense
fortresses--Dun AEngus--Its situation, dimensions, etc.--Dun
Conor--Christian remains--St. Enda, romantic
story of--His hapless love--Becomes a monk--Obtains
grant of Aran from King of Cashel--St. Brendon--His
leaving Aran for countries beyond the Atlantic--Rendered
into verse by Denis Florence MacCarthy--St.
Columba, his grief at leaving Aran--Rendered into
verse by Sir Aubrey De Vere--St. Fursa--Residence in
Aran--Pilgrimage to Rome--Buried in Aran--Aran
monuments, pagan and Christian, vested in Board of
Works--Churches facing the east--The north--Cloghauns--Dwellings
of the monks--_Teampul-Chiarain_--_Teampul
McDuach_--Holy well--Childless
marriages--Description of churches--Lonely lives of
the monks--One of the Popes said to be buried in
Aran--Ordnance Survey--Its vast stores of learning
unprinted 13
CHAPTER III.
Aran, 14th-18th centuries--A.D. 1308. O'Brien, lord of the
isles--In consideration of twelve tuns of wine annually
engages to protect the trade of Galway--A.D. 1334.
Aran plundered by Darcy--A.D. 1400. Henry IV. gives
license to certain persons to attack rebels in Aran--A.D.
1485. Franciscan monastery built--A.D. 1537. Suppression
of religious houses--A.D. 1560. Shipwreck of
Teige O'Brien, lord of the isles--A.D. 1570. Mortgage
of the islands--A.D. 1579. Mayor of Galway appointed
admiral of Galway bay, including Aran--1586. O'Brien
expulsed from Aran by the O'Flaherties--1587. Queen
Elizabeth grants islands to Sir John Rawson--1588.
Corporation of Galway petition in favour of O'Briens--Annals,
1618, 1641, 1645, 1651--Surrender of the islands
to the Commander-in-Chief of the Parliamentary forces--Annals,
1653, 1670, 1687, 1691, 1700, 1746, case of
_Mayor of Galway_ v. _Digby_--1754, 1786. Earldom of
Aran--1857 31
CHAPTER IV.
Noble character of Aranite peasantry--Letters, 1841, by
Dr. Petrie; 1852, by Sir Francis Head, K.C.B.; 1875,
by Frank Thorpe Porter, Esq., B.L.; 1886, by Mr. R.
F. Mullery, clerk of Galway Union; by Philip Lyster,
Esq., R.M., B.L.--Rev. Fathers O'Donohoe, P.P., and
Waters, C.C.--_Sta viator_--Isle of O'Brazil--Gerald
Griffin's poem on 52
CHAPTER V.
Healthful islands--Old age in--Land Commission in Aran--Aran
fisheries--Letters, 1886, from Sir Thomas F.
Brady, fishery commissioner, on; from C.T. Redington,
J.P., D.L., on public works in islands; from Rev.
William Killride, on employment and on timber--"Many
places in the islands covered with trees" fifty
years ago--Poverty of fishermen--Baltimore fisheries--Baroness
Burdett-Coutts--Irish Reproductive Loan
Fund--Bounties given by Irish Parliament, in 1787, to
encourage deep sea fisheries--Trawling 65
CHAPTER VI.
Re-afforesting Aran--Dr. Lyons--Dermot O'Conor Donelan,
J.P.--Forest industries in Germany--Supports
300,000 families--Paper from young timber, etc. 82
CHAPTER VII.
Superstitions of the grove--Concerning the oak--The ash--The
mountain ash--The aspen--The pine--The
holly--The ivy--The hawthorn--The blackthorn--The
rose--The fern--The fairy flax--The hazel 88
APPENDIX A.
Conversant with the O'Briens--Bryan Boroimhe--His
descendants Kings of Thomond--and their descendants
Lords of Inchiquin, junior branch of Kings of
Thomond--Marshal MacMahon--Also junior branch,
O'Briens of Ballynalacken 105
APPENDIX B.
Statistics of Aran 110
THE SOUTH ISLES OF ARAN.
CHAPTER I.
"Oh, Aranmore! loved Aranmore,
How oft I dream of thee,
And of those days when by thy shore
I wandered young and free;
Full many a path I've tried since then,
Through pleasure's flowery maze,
But ne'er could find the bliss again
I felt in those sweet days."
THOMAS MOORE.
[Sidenote: POPE GREGORY THE GREAT]
The south isles of Aran, which shelter the Galway bay from the heavy
swell of the Atlantic, are Inishmore, the large island, nine miles in
length; Inishmaan, the middle island, two and a half miles in length;
Inisheer, the lesser, two miles in length; Straw Island, upon which the
lighthouse stands, and the Brannock Rocks or islands, all forming that
group which to the west bounds the Galway bay, and the ancient
jurisdiction of the Admiral of Galway. They lie in a line drawn from the
north-west to the south-east from Iar Connaught to the county of Clare.
Iar Connaught is separated from Inishmore, the largest and most
westerly island, by the North Sound, five and a half miles wide, called
by the natives _Bealagh-a-Lurgan_, "Lough Lurgan way." Lough Lurgan was
the ancient name of a lake that formerly lay west of Galway, and the
tradition is that in the old times before us--213 years from the
Flood--the waters of the Atlantic, sweeping in the full fury of their
force across the Aran barriers, united with the waters of the lake and
formed the Bay of Galway, leaving the islands of Aran the towering
remnants of the barriers which were too strong even for the Atlantic
billows to carry away. Between Inishmore and Inishmaan is Gregory's
Sound, a mile and a half wide, called by the natives _Bealagh-ne-Hayte_,
"Hayte's way." The present name was given to it by the monks, who called
the sound "Gregory," in honour of Pope Gregory the Great, after he had
converted or aided in converting the Anglo-Saxons to the Christian
faith. Between the middle island, Inishmaan, and Inisheer, the eastern
and smallest island, is the "foul sound," four miles wide; and between
Inisheer and the county of Clare is the "south sound," four miles wide.
This is the great waterway between "the old sea," as the natives call
the Atlantic, and the Bay of Galway.
[Sidenote: MANOR OF IAR CONNAUGHT.]
The sum of the lengths of the three islands and of the two intervening
sounds is eighteen miles. The area of the entire group is 11,288 acres;
poor law valuation, L1576; rent, L2067; poor rate, a shilling in the
pound; average poor rate for ten years, three shillings; population,
3118 Catholics, and 45 Protestants. Aran is in the Catholic archdiocese
and in the Protestant diocese of Tuam. In the islands are three Catholic
churches and one Protestant, two priests, one parson, and one doctor,
and there are schools, schoolmasters, schoolmistresses, and scholars,
_et hoc genus omne_; and there is a petty sessions court, and there are
three police-barracks and eighteen policemen. The fishing-boats or
curraghs of the third class, which are ribs covered with canvas, and
worth L6 each, are 130 in number; of the second class there are 34
boats, and of the first class there are none. There are no paupers from
the islands in the workhouse, which is in Galway, and there is no
workhouse on the island; neither is there an auxiliary workhouse, nor an
hospital, nor an infirmary, nor a midwife, nor a jail, nor grand jury
works, though there is a grand jury cess of L34 12_s._ 2_d._
[Sidenote: THE ARAN MAIL-BOAT.]
Of Inishmore, or the great island, Kilronan is the capital--a village
with a good hotel. Killeany was the ancient capital, formerly the
residence of the lords of the manor of Iar Connaught. The other places
of note are Oghil, Onaght, Bungowla, Kilmurry, Dun AEngus, Dun Eochla,
Dubh Chathair or the black fort. So also on that island are the ruins of
the churches of Tempul Benin with its rectangular enclosures and group
of cells, of Tempul Brecan and Cross, of Tempul Beg Mac Dara, of Tempul
More Mac Dara, of Tempul Assurniadhe, of Tempul-an-cheathrair-Aluin, and
of St. Enda and the ruins of the seven churches.
On the middle island of Inishmaan are the ruins of the fortresses of Dun
Chona and Dunfarbagh, and the villages, five in number. On the eastern
island of Inisheer are St. Gobnet's chapel, Ballyhees, Largi, Furmina,
Trawkera, near which there is a lake a quarter of a mile in
circumference and of great depth, which might be converted into a useful
harbour by cutting an entrance into it through the rocky shore.
The harbour of Kilronan is spacious, but not fitted for vessels of heavy
tonnage. A pier of four or five hundred yards is built out into the sea,
alongside of which was moored during the tempestuous days of the last
week of July (1886) her Majesty's mail-boat--a large-sized sailing
yacht, provided with a cabin and forecastle, and manned by a remarkably
civil and obliging crew. But it is to be lamented that no steamer has as
yet been placed on the line between Galway and Aran, in consequence of
which, frequently for four or five days, communication with the mainland
becomes impossible. Letters remained unanswered, and newspapers remained
unread; so that nation might rise against nation, and kingdom against
kingdom, but the islanders in happy repose, undisturbed by the postman
or by the magnetic wire, would in their isles of peace have happily
lived on in blissful ignorance of the painful turmoils that reigned
around.
[Sidenote: THE BLACK-EYED HEBE.]
At the hotel the tourist will be served with a homely and wholesome
fare--prime veal and sweet and tender mutton, for the Aran herbage is
renowned for the tenderness of the meat that it produces. At dinner a
bottle of the mountain-dew, with a smell as divine as it is illegal, may
be by accident produced; and for all this, when the guest requests that
he might be informed of the charges, the reply ten to one will be, "Oh,
anything your honour likes to give!"--at least, such was said by the
black-eyed Hebe who ministered to the wants of the writer of these
pages.
[Sidenote: THE FLORA OF ARAN.]
The Aran landscape as your vessel approaches from Galway is a peculiar
one--peculiar to Aran. From the soft sea beach on the Galway side of the
island, which varies in breadth from one to four miles across, slope
fields of bare rocks terrace over terrace, sometimes nine in number,
until they reach the topmost cliff on the south-west or ocean side
hundreds of feet over the Atlantic. This terraced landscape has the
appearance of being a barren and rocky wilderness; but on closer
inspection threads of fresh green herbages can be traced in the
cleavages and deeply cut fissures of the rocks, and it is in those
cleavages that the richest profusion of botanical specimens are to be
found. The cleft upon which we stood was teeming with purple heather,
foxglove, scarlet geranium, and wild thyme, with the golden leaf of the
variegated ivy; the crimson berries of the orchis and the red fruit of
the wild strawberry forming a rich contrast to the delicate blue of the
forget-me-not. Here, too, were the harebell and speedwell, fringed with
the delicate frond of the maidenhair fern. In other clefts was the
richness of the white and red clover, intermingled with a variety of
medicinal herbs, amongst which were the wild garlic and the kenneen or
fairy flax, much relied on for its medicinal qualities. In several of
the localities in the islands the tormentil root, which serves in place
of bark for tanning, and another plant which gives a fine blue dye and
which the islanders use in colouring woollen cloths manufactured by them
for their own wear, are to be found. The Aran isles contain many rare
plants; but, owing to the absence of turf bogs and scarcity of damp
ground, there are neither marshy nor heathy plants, nor sedges, nor
rushes. Even so, the flora of Aran is decidedly rich. On the hillsides
are a great variety of flowering plants indigenous to the soil, which
blossom at different times of the year. In the rocky dells there are
several kinds of convolvulus of very rich florescence. The Madagascar
periwinkle seems to be perfectly acclimatized and blossoms profusely,
and we were happy to find an abundant growth of hops, the introduction
of which is ascribed to the monks of the olden time.
[Sidenote: ORNITHOLOGY OF ARAN.]
The tillage of the islands comprises potatoes, mangold wurzel, vetches,
rape, clover, oats, and barley. The potatoes almost exclusively planted
are "the Protestants;" and a Protestant tourist unarmed felt somewhat
alarmed at the startling intelligence that "dinner would be ready as
soon as the Protestants that were on the gridiron would be roasted." The
dinner brought up, need it be told that our Anglican friend enjoyed the
joke of our witty waitress quite as much as we ourselves did?
[Sidenote: TANKS WANTING IN ARAN.]
The crops are greatly devastated by caterpillars and grubs. The
abundance of these pernicious insects is attributed to the great
scarcity of sparrows and other small birds. Starlings are seldom seen;
but never a swallow. Sea gulls are numerous, and amongst the sea birds
the osprey or sea eagle is a conspicuous object. Neither the raven,
rook, crow, nor jackdaw visits the islands; but there is a handsome bird
which is very numerous, especially in the north island. The chough,
which, in addition to plumage dark and glossy like that of the jackdaw,
displays a beak and legs of bright scarlet. It is said that this bird
was formerly to be seen in flocks on various parts of the English
coasts, and that now it cannot be found in any part of the United
Kingdom except in Aran. Plovers, gannets, pigeons, duck, teal, and
divers breed abundantly on the rocky ledges. The cliffs are the resort
of countless puffins (_Anas Leucopsis_); the popular belief being that
they spring from the driftwood[1]. Their flesh supplies a rich lamp oil,
and their feathers fetch a high price in the London markets. The capture
of these birds is a dangerous occupation for the cragsmen, who descend
from the cliffs by means of a rope to the haunts of the puffin, and
having spent the night in the dangerous occupation, ensnaring and
killing them as they sleep on the rocky ledges, they are hauled up in
the morning, having realized ten or twelve shillings during the night.
In the summer of 1816, two unfortunate fellows engaged in this frightful
occupation missed their footing, and falling, were dashed to pieces on
the rocks below. The solitary bittern, called in Irish the
_Boonaun-Laynagh_, frequents the low-lying ground on the Galway side of
the island, and hares and rabbits are very plentiful also. On the barren
sheets of rocks the peasants (denominated lazy and idle, by lazy and
idle writers and speakers) have with tireless toil walled in and made
numberless gardens in which potatoes mealy and dry are grown. The
meteorological aspirations of the Aran peasant are for rain,
diametrically the opposite of what their brethren on the mainland
desire. A dry summer gives to Aran a parched and burnt-up hue, when the
cattle faint and die if not removed to the mainland. Tanks, such as they
have in Ceylon, are sadly wanting in those islands, and the expense of
their construction must be a trifling matter indeed.
[Sidenote: ICE-CUT FURROWS.]
One of the most remarkable features in the conformation of Inishmore is,
that between the overlapping strata or terraces of limestone,
thirty-seven feet in thickness in some places and eighteen in others,
are beds of shale. The highest of the terraces is 320 feet over
high-water mark, on the perpendicular cliff overlooking the Atlantic. On
the sixth lowest of these descending steps the village of Kilronan, the
capital of the island, over against the Galway bay, is built, and under
that terrace and over the seventh is a shale bed which contains the
water supply for the glebe and upper village wells.
[Sidenote: BOULDERS.]
Those who delight in geological speculations will find in these isles
much to interest them. Here are deep furrows in the hard rocks, cut as
they say by passing icebergs. One of these ice-cut furrows may be seen
near the shore of Killeany Bay, about two hundred yards north-east of
Lough Atalia, and a quarter of a mile from Kilronan. It is about seven
yards long, nearly a yard wide, having a bearing of east by north.
Though the icebergs have left their striae, and though their passage is
marked by the deep furrows cut by them as they moved, nevertheless the
patches of boulder drift on the surface are few; but the bergs in their
passage from the north district did drop some huge metamorphic rocks,
not one of which is indigenous, so to speak, to the islands, but have
been carried from a district such as that of Oughterard. Strange that
some limestone boulders have also been dropped, carried from some
far-off limestone district. These boulders have withstood the wreck of
ages, but the weather-beaten rocks under them are so worn as here and
there to present the appearance of pedestals bearing up the
superincumbent masses. Whilst there is much to arrest the attention as
you look from the hotel windows towards Galway over the Galway bay,
bounded on the north by the grotesque desolation of the Connemara
mountains, and on the south by the rocky mountains of the county of
Clare, it is on the south-west side of the islands of Aran that the
scene is awfully sublime, terrific, and impressive--rendered more awful
by reason of the confusion of the waters and of the roaring of the waves
of the sea. The heavy swell of the Atlantic there rolls in angry billows
against the cliffs dark and perpendicular, hundreds of feet in
height--cliffs perforated by winding caverns worn by the violence of the
waves, from one of which, having an aperture in the surface, was
projected a column of water to the height of a ship's mast. Whilst many
of these cliffs rise perpendicularly from the ocean, many of them have
sea terraces or steps at foot below the high-water mark. At
_Illaun-a-naur_, on the south-easterly side of the great island, are
sea-terraced cliffs which are fendered by a rampart formed of enormous
blocks of limestone upheaved from the depths of the ocean and hurled
with violence on the rampart which now forms a foot barrier against the
further encroachment of the Atlantic.
[Sidenote: SEA WEEDS.]
The seaweeds around the Aran islands are peculiarly fitted for the
production and manufacture of kelp, of which there are two varieties,
one made from the black weed, and the other from the red. The black
usually grows above the low-water mark of the neap-tide, whilst all the
red grows below it. The red weed kelp is the most valuable, as in
general it gives salts containing iodine. Marine plants, such as the
sea-anemones, the rock-grown samphire, and the sea-cabbage grow around
the islands in great profusion.
Another remarkable feature in Aran is the enormous amount of fine
quartzose--moving sands which, blown in thick clouds by the winds, fill
the nooks and corners and crevices of the islands. These sands, which
are said to possess the property of preserving bodies uncorrupted after
death, might be fixed and utilized in the same manner as the sands of
Arcachon on the west coast of France have been fixed and utilized, by
planting therein vast forests of the _Pinus maritima_, the interlacery
of whose roots would do the twofold duty of fixing the sands and
creating a soil enriched by the amount of nitrogen therein digested and
deposited. At Trawmore, on the south of Killeany Bay, proofs have lately
been discovered not only of the movement of the sand-hills, but also of
the appearance of fields and buildings submerged on the sea-coast.
[Sidenote: MOVING SANDS IN ARAN.]
These islands in prehistoric times must have suffered much from the
convulsions which then shook the world--in later times they appear to
have suffered little, though Richard Kirwan the chemist relates that in
his memory, in the year 1774, a fearful thunderstorm visited Inishmore,
when a granite block of enormous dimensions, called the "Gregory," was
struck by lightning, shattered to atoms, and flung into the sea.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Denis Florence McCarthy's Poems, p. 87 note.