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History of West & Southwestern
Ireland 1
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Southwestern Ireland is an area with
a varied landscape, scenic panoramas, natural amenities, a rich
archaeological and historical heritage.
The region figured prominently in a prehistoric trade in reindeer hides with peoples of
Mediterranean lands. Wide varieties
of geological formations have created a diversity of topographical features
throughout the area. The landscape varies from the relatively flat terrain in
the east, through large island-studded lakes, like Lough Conn, Lough Carra,
Lough Mask, renowned for their game fishing and beauty, to the naked
quartzite peaks along the indented Atlantic coast, with their rugged cliffs
interspersed with flat clean sandy beaches. The extensive tracts of blanket
bog in North Mayo County contrast with the mountains further south, and
illustrate the diversity of scenic panoramas of the county, which vary from
valley to valley. Mweelrea (819m.), the highest
mountain in Connacht situated just north of Killary Harbour, is the start of
a mountain range: Ben Gorm, Ben Creggan, the Sheeffry Hills, Maumtrasna and
the Partry mountains. This area has beautiful scenery, which includes Doo
Lough, Delphi Lodge, the Aasleagh Falls, Lough Mask, Lough Corrib, and Cong.
Further north, the landscape is dominated by Ireland's holy mountain, Croagh
Patrick, (765m., 2,510 feet), where thousands of pilgrims annually have worn
a path to the summit (where you have the church on the highest altitude in
Ireland). The view from the summit is enchanting on a clear day; the islands
of Inishturk and Inishbofin rise out of the pounding Atlantic waves on the
southwest, with Clare Island on the northwest, and the drumlin studded Clew
Bay to the north with Achill Island in the
background. The Nephin Beg range of mountains
lies north of Clew Bay, which give way to the blanket bog in North Mayo
County, and the spectacular sea-cliffs to the coastline between Benwee Head
and Downpatrick Head, and several sandy beaches all the way from the Mullet
peninsula to Inishcrone in Co. Sligo. Achill Island, the largest island off
the coast of Ireland with scenic cliffs and several picturesque villages like
Keel, Dooega, and Keem. The island is dominated by the spectacular peaks of
Croaghaun (668m) and Slievemore (627m.) The chief rivers are the Moy, Deel,
Palmerstown, Ballinglin, Glenamoy, Owenmore, Owening, Owenduff, Newport,
Bunowen, and the Erriff.
HISTORY
Please CLICK on underlined categories to view Southwestern Ireland has a rich
archaeological heritage dating from prehistoric times to the present. According to the present state of
archaeological knowledge, the first people arrived in Ireland sometime before
7000 BC during what is called the Mesolithic period. They were nomadic tribes
of hunters and fishing people who built no permanent structures such as
houses or tombs. The first colonization probably took place during that
period. Further details on the early
influx of peoples into Ireland may be found at <Migrate>,
<Shardana> and <Celts>. In the fourth millennium BC, during
the Neolithic period, another group of settlers arrived in Ireland, the first
farmers, who introduced agriculture and animal husbandry to the country as
well as the skills of pottery making and weaving. They started a custom of
burying their dead collectively (usually cremated) in large stone-built
chambered tombs known as megalithic tombs, the earliest surviving
architectural structures in the country. There are over 1,500 such tombs
identified in Ireland with over 160 in the Southwest. This fact indicates the
importance of the region during the Neolithic period and into the Bronze Age
(ca. 2000- 400 BC) when this phase of tomb building came to an end. In the literature on archaeology,
Irish megalithic tombs are divided in four classes: court-tombs, portal
tombs, passage-tomb and wedge-tombs, each style named after its chief
diagnostic feature. Each class of tomb probably represents a new major
colonization of the country by different groups of tomb-builders. The remains
of some megalithic tombs are so badly damaged that they cannot be accurately
identified by type and are consequently recorded as unclassified megalithic
tombs. Examples of all types decorate the landscape. County Mayo in the
southwest includes most of the archeologically significant sites. Eighty-five of the 400 plus court-tombs
known in Ireland are located in County Mayo alone. About 30 of these tombs
are situated in the hinterland of Bunatrahir and Killala Bays in north Mayo.
Others are scattered throughout the county in the hinterland of Ballina and
in places like Killasser in east Mayo, Ballycroy and Belmullet in the
north-west, Claremorris, Cong, Achill, Newport and Louisburgh. There are seven known
portal-tombs in the county (two in Ballyknock near Ballycastle; one in
Claggan, near Ballycroy; one at Gortbrack North and another at Knocknalower,
near Belmullet, one in Achill and another in Killasser); one identified
passage-tomb at Carrowreagh near Bonniconlon (alias
Bunnyconnellan) , with other possible ones in the Cong/Ballinrobe region. There are over 30 wedge-tombs and a
similar number of unclassified megalithic tombs in the county. The blanket bog which covers parts of
Ireland developed from the late 3rd millennium BC onwards and in places
covered the field systems, habitation-sites and tombs of the early farmers.
Extensive pre-bog field-systems with stone walls have been discovered
embedded in the bog in many parts of Ireland, notably at Behy, Glenulra and
Belderrig , west of Ballycastle in County Mayo.
The Behy/Glenulra region, known as the 'Céide Fields', contains a 1,500
hectare archaeological site, the most extensive Stone Age monument in the
world. There are many known monuments from
the Bronze Age: 34 wedge-tombs; 12 stone alignments/rows; 24 stone circles;
close to 300 ancient cooking-sites known as fulachta fiadh.
The area has also several monuments from the Early Iron Age (c. 400BC-AD
400): over 250 crannógs (lake-dwellings); over 100 promontory forts, and
numerous ring forts and souterrains. Early Christian Period The early history of the area is
obscure and frequently confusing with various tribes seeking control.
Christianity came to Ireland at the start of the fifth century, if not
earlier, and brought about many changes, including the introduction of
writing and reading. St. Patrick, Ireland's national apostle, whose floruit
was the fifth century, is chiefly credited with the conversion of the pagan
Gaels. Recent research indicates that St. Patrick spent considerable time in
the Southwest, where according to tradition and some written sources he spent
forty days and nights on the summit of Croagh Patrick fasting and praying for
the people of Ireland. He had
associations with places like Aghagower near Westport, Ballintubber (well-known nowadays for its medieval abbey
which has remained in continuous use through all vicissitudes from its
foundation in 1216); and Foghill near Killala, which has been identified by
some writers with the Silva Vocluti , 'the wood of
Fochluth beside the western sea' mentioned by St. Patrick himself in his Confessio. When
the Judeo-Christian Benedictine monks reached Ireland in 750 AD they found
there a vibrant civilization, which in some ways was far superior to that
which they were familiar with on the European Continent. They learned that this civilization had
many characteristics in common with Egypt and Libya, which was anathema to
them. The monks believed that all
wisdom had to derive from South Central Europe. Thus, they invented the myth that the Celts had reached Ireland
about 400 bce. and had brought the civilization with them (see Celts). This was
a fabrication and it is described in the Benedictines own operations manual
the "Auraicept na n'Ecese".
Julius Caesar in his book "The Conquest of Gaul" described
many Celts, and every one of their names can be translated with the Basque
dictionary, the "Celtic Language" not having yet existed. From the middle of the sixth century
onwards, hundreds of small monastic settlements were established around the
country, many of which became very important. Some examples of well-known
early monastic sites include Balla, Aughagower, Inishmaine, Ballintubber,
Errew, Kilmore Erris, Balla, Cong, Killala,
Turlough, Moyne near Cross, and island settlements off the Mullet Peninsula
such as Inishkea North, Inishkea South and Duvillaun More. About the middle of the 7th
Century AD there began a huge migration of Gnostic Christians from North
Africa. These were descendents of the
Shardana who had spread widely in the eastern Mediterranean and had given
rise to civilizations in Turkey and the Baltic Region (see Shardana). This Christian group also settled in other
places such as Scotland and points east. One of the most interesting monastic
sites was that from which County Mayo derives its name Maigh Eo. Colmán of
Lindisfarne, having been defeated by the 'Romanist' party at the synod of
Whitby (in Northumbria, in the northeast of England) in 663, withdrew with
his followers, via Iona, to Inishbofin off the west coast of Galway. As a
result of disagreement between the Irish and the English monks in the little
community, the latter moved to the 'plain of yews', about sixteen kilometers
south-east of the present town of Castlebar. The monastery they established
there, known as Mag nÉo na Sachsan ('of the Saxons'), became renowned as a
center of learning, and continued to attract monks of English birth for a
century and more after its foundation. It is an indication of
Southwestern region’s importance in the middle ages that, when, in 1152 AD,
the synod of Kells introduced a system of diocesan organization to the Irish
church, one of the dioceses established west of the Shannon was that of Mayo.
In the aftermath of the Reformation, the Established Church united the see to
Tuam. Tuam, finally absorbed the
Catholic diocese by papal decree, some time after 1631. The monastery at Mayo
became a collegiate church sometime early in the 13th century, and about 1370
it became an abbey (St. Michael's) of Augustinian Canons. It survived until
the dissolution of the monasteries after the Reformation. It will be clear
from the foregoing that 'Mayo' as the name of the abbey and, more
importantly, of the diocese, was very much in circulation around 1570, when
it came to naming the new county established by Sir Henry Sidney. The Vikings or Norsemen
first attacked Ireland in 795 AD. and reached Southwestern Ireland around the
start of the ninth century. On arrival, they started to plunder and loot
places of wealth especially monasteries. It was partly in response to those
attacks that round towers were later erected in monastic enclosures (most
were erected in the 12 century). There are about 65 of these fine structures
surviving in Ireland, with five located in County Mayo: Aughagower, Balla,
Killala, Turlough and Meelock. The Viking invasion also led to the
establishment of settlements in a number of locations like Dublin, Cork,
Wexford and Waterford which later developed into towns and cities. The Anglo-Norman
colonization of Ireland from1169 AD. onwards was one of the most significant
events in the development of Ireland. The Southwest came under Norman control
in 1235. The Norman conquest meant the eclipse of many Gaelic lords and
chieftains, chiefly the O'Connors of Connacht, but the invaders soon adopted
Gaelic customs and began to marry with the native Irish and became: 'more
Irish than the Irish themselves'. This process of Gaelicisation is best
exemplified in the adoption by various Norman families and branches of
families of new surnames based on Gaelic-style patronymics. Examples of
surnames today with Norman origins include Barrett, Burke and Bourke,
Costello, Culkin, Davitt, Fitzmaurice, Gibbons, Jennings, Joyce, McEvilly,
Nally, Padden, Staunton and Walsh. The Normans started numerous towns and
developed some existing settlements into towns, as well as organizing fairs
and markets. They developed roads, bridges, seaports and promoted the growth
of trade both domestic and foreign as well as improving the agricultural
methods then in vogue. A noteworthy feature of the period
with which we have been dealing was the buildings of abbeys or friaries for
the new mendicant orders - Augustinians, Carmelites, Dominicans and
Franciscans - principally by the Hiberno-Norman families. A number of early
monastic sites - such as Cong, Inishmaine, Ballintubber, Errew, and Mayo - had
been chosen as locations for abbeys of the Augustinian Canons Regular, built
under the patronage of Gaelic families (particularly the O'Connors) in the
12th and 13th centuries. The first friary founded under Norman
auspices in Mayo was that of Straide (alias Strade)
established for the Franciscans by Jordan de Exeter, probably between 1240
and 1250. It was very soon (in 1252) transferred to the Dominicans. Another
Dominican house, also thought to have been founded by a de Exeter, was
Rathfran, dating from 1274. The Prendergasts founded Ballinasmalla, near
Claremorris, for the Carmelites around 1288. Another Carmelite foundation,
dating from 1298, was Burriscarra, which was built by the Stauntons.
Abandoned after about eighty years by the Carmelites it was later occupied by
the Augustinian friars. The Augustinians were given a house in Ballinrobe around 1313, by one of the de Burgos. No other
notable foundation is recorded for over a century, until about 1430, when the
Mac Costellos established the Dominicans in Urlaur and the Augustinians in
Ballyhaunis. A decade later Rosserk Friary was
founded for the Franciscan Third Order by one Joye (or Joyce). Nearby Moyne
Friary was built for the Franciscan friars by Mac Uilliam ochtarach (de
Burgo)around 1455, while, a couple of years later, the only Gaelic foundation
of the period, Murrisk, in the shadow of Croagh Patrick, was established for
the Augustinians by Tadhg Máille, the local chieftain. The latest foundation
of any significance was the Dominican Friary of Burrishoole, built around
1469 by Mac Uilliam ochtarach, Richard de Burgo of Turlough. Almost all the
foundations mentioned above were suppressed in the wake of the Reformation in
the 16th century. One or two have been rebuilt and restored, but in most
cases, only the ruins survive, pleasing, if poignant, late Gothic relics of
what must have been among the most striking buildings in the countryside of
pre-Tudor Ireland. The Lordship of
MacWilliam Eighter The 15th century was marked by frequent quarrels between the
Burkes (as the people of Mac Uilliam ochtair may be called for convenience)
and the Clanrickard Burkes of what is now County Galway, as well as by internecine
fighting among the minor Norman lords.. From mid-century onwards, the
O'Donnells, the great Gaelic lords of Tír Chonaill (in present-day Co.
Donegal), interfered frequently in the affairs of north Connacht, as they
sought to extend their way southwards. They met with opposition from the Burkes,
who were also quite often embroiled in the affairs of their eastern
neighbors, the O'Connors of Roscommon and Sligo. Another Gaelic family, the
O'Kellys of east Galway and south Roscommon were usually to be found in
alliance with the Burkes.. The turn of the century saw the Lord
Deputy, Garrett Mór Fitzgerald, the great Earl of Kidare, ruling as virtual
king of Ireland. In August 1504 he demonstrated his power by inflicting a
crushing defeat on his son-in-law, Ulick Burke, Earl of Clanrickard, in a
battle at Cnoc Tuagh (Knockdoe) near Galway. Among those who joined the great
alliance against Clanrickard an his Munster allies were his cousins and
rivals, the Burkes. A mere thirty years after Cnoc Tuagh
the great House of Kildare succumbed to the growing might of the Tudor
monarchy, and by mid-century English power was making itself felt in
Connacht, where the rivalry between the Mayo and Clanrickard Burkes had
flared up again into war. By the late 1560s the Lord Deputy, Sir Henry
Sidney, had procured the submission of both de Burgo lords, and was making
provision for the future government of the province in the interests of the
Crown. In July 1569 Sir Edward Fitton was appointed President, or Governor,
of Connacht. One of the first tasks facing him and his council was to lay
down the boundaries of the new counties of Connacht and Thomond. Almost
immediately, he was faced with what was to become a commonplace over the next
thirty years - a rebellion by the Burkes in County Mayo. Fitton, with various
allies, including Clanrickard, met them in battle at Shrule in June 1570. The
outcome of the battle was somewhat indecisive, but Mac Uilliam ochtair
submitted and made peace shortly afterwards. 1572 saw another short-lived
revolt, this time in alliance with two sons of Clanrickard. When
Clanrickard's sons rebelled again in 1576, however, the Burkes remained
loyal, holding Castlebar for the Queen. It was in this last campaign, in
1576, that the remarkable 'sea-queen' came from the shores of Clew Bay,
Gráinne Ní Mháille (variously anglicised Granie ny Maille, Grace O'Malley,
Granuaile, etc.) first makes her appearance in history, offering the services
of her galleys and two hundred fighting men to Lord Deputy Sidney. But within
two years Gráinne's second husband, Risteard an Iarainn - a Burke, and
claimant to the MacWilliamship - was in revolt; his rebellion simmered on
until 1582, when the new Lord Deputy, Sir Nicholas Malbie, recognized him as
MacWilliam, and later knighted him. The new Governor of Connacht, Sir
Richard Bingham, suppressed a rebellion in 1585 by various branches of the
Burkes with great severity. A month later, a force of 2,000 Scots mercenaries
came to Connacht to assist the Burkes, but they were routed with a great slaughter
near Ardnaree. In the summer of 1588 AD., the
galleons of the Spanish Armada were wrecked by a storm along the west coast
of Ireland. Some of the hapless Spaniards came ashore in southwestern
Ireland, only to be robbed and imprisoned, and in many cases slaughtered. The pattern of land
ownership in the Southwest underwent a continuous if slow metamorphosis in
succeeding generations as clans evolved and grew stronger or were eclipsed by
their neighbors and London administrations began to play a more significant
and direct role in the affairs of Ireland. The traumatic Cromwellian
settlement, which commenced in 1641, ended a decade later with a stern regime
in absolute control of the country and grimly determined to reward its
friends and punish its enemies. The most significant feature of the
"Cromwellian settlement" as it is known, was the plan to repay
Commonwealth soldiers and adventurers for their services with grants of land
in ten Irish counties. The landowners displaced as a consequence of
implementing this scheme were, if found to be innocent of participation in
"the late rebellion", to be given lands, in proportion to their
original estates, in four counties west of the Shannon - Mayo, Galway, Roscommon
and Clare. The "transplantation to Connacht" also involved
transplantation within Connacht, as existing landowners west of the Shannon,
displaced to make way for the new arrivals, had to be found estates elsewhere
in the Province. For the vast majority of people in
southwestern Ireland the eighteenth century was a period of unrelieved
misery, with some minor famines. Because of the operation of what were called
'the penal laws', Catholics had no hope of social advancement while they remained
in their native land. However, emigration could and did lead to new
opportunities and challenges for many like William Brown (1777-1857), who
left Foxford at the age of nine and thirty years later was an admiral in the
fledgling Argentine Navy. Today he is revered as 'the father of the Argentine
Navy', and as a national hero in that country. Culturally, 16th century southwestern
Ireland made some contribution to the "hidden Ireland" of the time,
and two poets from the period have retained considerable popularity: Riocard
Bairéad (d. 1819) from the Mullet, whose songs included 'Eoghan Cóir', 'Preab
san l', and 'Tarraingt na Móna' and blind Anthony Raftery (d.1835) from
Killedan, near Kiltamagh (alias Kiltimagh) , who
spent most of his life in south and east Galway, and whose numerous
compositions included the ever-pupular 'Máire Ní Eidhin', 'Aithrí Reaftaraí'
and, of course, 'Cill Liadáin'. There were some stirrings in the west
in the 1790s, with reports of agrarian disturbances in Tirawley, and an
influx into County Mayo of Catholic refugees from Ulster following the
sectarian clashes in north Armagh in 1795, which led to the formation of the
Orange Society. Nevertheless, when the United Irishmen were forced by
government repression to move from working openly for reform to secretly
plotting revolution, and when Leinster and east Ulster blazed into rebellion
in June of 1798, no one expected Mayo to play a memorable role in the bloody
drama about to commence. The man who brought the region onto the stage of
Irish history in 1798 was a French general from Lorraine, a former dealer in
goat and rabbit skins named Joseph Amable Humbert. The Year of the French Ten weeks after the United Irishmen
had been crushed at Ballynahinch, Co. Down, and two months after the fall of
the rebel camp at Vinegar Hill, near Enniscorthy in Co. Wexford, Humbert
landed at Kilcummin strand, on Killala bay, with about 1,100 officers and men
of the army of the French Republic.
Four days later, on Sunday, 26 August, having taken Killala and Ballina, Humbert led about 700 of his men, and about
the same number of untrained Irish recruits, in an amazing all-night march
down the almost trackless west shore of Lough Conn, arriving next morning in
front of the startled British garrison of Castlebar.
The force opposing Humbert numbered about 1,700, under the command of General
Lake, and consisted mainly of Irish militia. After a short, sharp engagement,
the militia broke and fled, and were quickly joined by the remainder of the
garrison in a headlong flight which, for some of them, did not end till they
reached the safety of Tuam, Co. Galway. The episode, still remembered as 'the
races of Castlebar', was an ignominious defeat for the government forces and
a corresponding morale-booster for the small force opposing them, but it was
in no way decisive. Humbert realised that without additional aid from France
his expedition was doomed to failure. He remained in Castlebar for eight days
awaiting further orders from his superiors, and while he waited he
established a 'Republic of Connacht', with a young Catholic gentleman, John
Moore from Moorehall on the shores of Lough
Carra, as its president. When neither orders nor help were forthcoming,
Humbert marched his little army towards Sligo, winning a skirmish at
Collooney. Then hearing reports of a rising in the midlands, he swung
southeastward through Leitrim into Longford where, on September 8 the force
of 850 French troops and about a thousand Irish allies faced a force over
five times as strong under Lord Cornwallis and General Lake. The token battle at Ballinmuck ended
with Humbert's surrender after barely half an hour. The French soldiers were
treated honourably, but for the Irish the surrender meant slaughter. There
was more slaughter a fortnight later when Killala finally fell to General
Trench's forces. The little garrison (including its commander, Ferdy
O'Donnell) was massacred. The government forces were turned loose on the
countryside. The insurgents, or anyone suspected of having been involved in
the rising, were hunted down and butchered without mercy. It is estimated
that some 4-6 hundred were killed in the battle for Killala and in the course
of the 'mopping-up operations' which continued for some weeks, while others
died on the scaffold in towns like Castlebar and Claremorris,
where the high sheriff for County Mayo, the Honourable Denis Browne, M.P.,
brother of Lord Altamont, wreaked a terrible vengeance - thus earning for
himself the nickname which has survived in folk-memory to the present day,
'Donnchadh an Rópa' (Denis of the Rope). The awful aftermath of those few
stirring weeks, in what was long remembered with a mixture of pride and
horror, as Bliain na bhFrancach ('The year of the
French') ensured that it was a long time before the people of the region felt
free to celebrate in song the exploits of "The men of the West' and to
remind their countrymen that 'When Éire lay broken at
Wexford she looked for revenge to the West.' The Time before the Great Famine The early decades of the 19th century
saw a new outbreak of agrarian agitation with the rise of the 'Ribbon
Societies' in Connacht. These sought to protect tenants against eviction by
landlords who wished to clear their lands for grazing - to avail of the high
prices for cattle prevailing in the years immediately after the Napoleonic
Wars. Ribbonism had a strong sectarian tinge, being influenced by
inflammatory pamphlets which were widely circulated at the time and which
predicted the imminent overthrow of
'the Reformation'. Sectarian tensions were further
increased in this period by the activities of evangelical Protestant
missionaries seeking to 'redeem the Irish poor from the errors of Popery. One
of the best-known missions of this kind was that founded at Dugort, in
Achill, in 1831 by a Meathman, the Rev. Edward Nangle. The activities of the
missionaries and bible societies were strongly disapproved of by many,
perhaps most, of the clergy of the Established Church, but they received
important encouragement from two successive Protestant bishops of Tuam. Their
staunchest opponent was the Catholic archbishop of Tuam, John MacHale, a
supporter of Daniel O'Connell, a promoter of the Irish language, and a sturdy
polemicist, who died at the age of ninety in 1881. These too were the years of the
campaign for Catholic Emancipation and, later, for the abolition of the
tithes which a predominately Catholic population was forced to pay for the upkeep
of the clergy of the Established Church. The Great Famine Early in the nineteenth century,
there were a number of famines in Ireland, culminating in the Great Famine of
1845 - 1849, when about a million people died and a further million went into
exile. The population increased from an estimated figure of four and a half
million in 1800 to over eight million by 1841. The pressure of this vast
increase exacerbated the fragile subsistence economy of the period, as land
became subdivided into smaller and smaller plots. Destitution was already a
fact of life for many and evictions became regular occurrences in the Irish
countryside. Most of the impoverished population depended on the potato as
their staple food product. Disaster struck in August 1845, when a killer
fungus (later diagnosed as Phytophthora infestans )
started to destroy the potato crop. The green stalks of potato ridges became
blighted and within a short time the rotting crop was producing a terrible
stench. About a third of the national potato crop was destroyed that year,
and an almost complete failure the following year led to a catastrophe for
the remainder of the decade. By 'black forty-seven', people were dying in
their thousands from starvation-related diseases. The workhouses, built in
the early 1840s to relieve appalling poverty, were unable to cope with the
numbers seeking admission. Various parsimonious relief measures were
inadequate to deal with the scale of the crisis. The number of evictions
increased. This process of 'clearance' (as it was called) was aided by the
'quarter-acre clause' (the infamous Gregory clause, called after its
proposer, Sir William Gregory MP of Coole Park, Co. Galway) in the Poor Law
Extension Act 1847 which excluded from relief anyone who had more than a
quarter acre of land. Any such unfortunate person who was starving had to
abandon his holding and go to the workhouse if he and his family wanted a
chance to survive. Conditions became worse in 1848 and 1849, with various
reports at the time recording dead bodies everywhere. The catastrophe was particularly bad
in County Mayo, where nearly ninety per cent of the population were dependent
on the potato. By 1848, Mayo was a county of total misery and despair, with
any attempts at alleviating measures in complete disarray. People were dying
and emigrating in their thousands. We will never know how many died in the
county during those terrible years. The 'official' statistics for the county
show that the population dropped from 388,887 in 1841 to 274,499 in 1851, but
it is accepted that the actual figure in 1841 was far higher than the
official census return. It can safely be said that over 100,000 died in
County Mayo alone from the famine epidemic and emigration began on a big
scale (there was some emigration before the Great Famine). Most emigrants
from the county went to the USA, Canada, England and Scotland, to become part
of the big Irish Diaspora scattered throughout the world. There are numerous reminders of the
Great Famine to be seen in southwestern Ireland: workhouse sites, famine
graves, sites of soup-kitchens, deserted homes and villages and even traces
of undug 'lazy-beds' in fields on the sides of hills. Many roads and lanes
were built as famine relief measures. There were nine workhouses in the
county: Ballina, Ballinrobe, Belmullet, Castlebar, Claremorris, Killala, Newport, Swinford and
Westport. Ironically, the great reduction in
the population, and especially the virtual annihilation of the formerly
numerous class of landless cottiers who had been hardest hit by the Great
Famine, enabled those who remained to considerably improve their standard of
living in the following decades. The new National Schools - despite the
opposition of those, such as Archbishop MacHale, who regarded them, with some
justification, as agents of Anglicization - succeeded in reducing the rate of
illiteracy by almost half in the forty years between 1841 and 1881. The
result was a population with rising expectations, and with growing confidence
in their own strength and in their ability to bring about a change in
conditions, and so, when bad harvests in 1877 and '78 and a disastrous one in
1879 brought the threat of another serious famine, particularly in the west,
the people were far better prepared to protect themselves than they had been
thirty years before. A small poverty-stricken place called
Knock, County Mayo, made headlines when it was announced that an apparition
of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Joseph and St. John had taken place there on
21 August 1879, witnessed by fifteen local people. The people who remained in
southwestern Ireland in the wake of the Great Famine soon showed that they
were resilient in the face of adversity. A national movement was initiated in
County Mayo during 1879 by Michael Davitt, James Daly, and others, which
brought about the greatest social change ever witnessed in Ireland. Michael
Davitt (1846 -1906), who was born at Straide, saw his family evicted at the
age of four, emigration to England, and experienced many hard knocks and
disappointments in his voyage through life. He became Mayo's most famous son
on the pages of Irish history and one of the great patriots of his country.
James Daly (1835-1910), who played a crucial role in the early land agitation
in the area, came from Boghadoon, near Lahardaun, and was editor of The Connacht Telegraph newspaper. The land agitation
started at a meeting held in Irishtown, near Ballindine, County Mayo, on
Sunday 20 April 1879. The meeting, which was attended by a crowd variously
estimated at from four to fifteen thousand, arose out of a threat to evict a
number of tenants for arrears of rent from the estate of a local absentee
landlord. The meeting led not only to the cancellation of the proposed
evictions but to a general reduction of rents. Of far greater consequence,
however, were the wider political effects of the meeting, whose reverberations
were to be felt throughout the whole of Ireland over the next quarter of a
century. On 1 June 1879, the Fenian leader,
John Devoy, Michael Davitt and the county Wicklow landlord and MP for Meath,
Charles Stewart Parnell, met in Dublin, and apparently agreed on 'the new
departure', whereby the Fenians and the constitutional nationalists agreed to
combine in a struggle to reform the Irish land-system. One week later Parnell
urged a meeting of tenants in Westport 'to hold a firm grip on your homesteads
and lands'. His call came as potato blight was spreading once more through
the west, and the number of evictions for non-payment of rent was rising
steadily. On 16 August, under Davitt's leadership, the National Land League
of Mayo was founded in Castlebar, and two months later the campaign moved
well beyond the borders of the county with the inauguration in Dublin of the
Irish National Land League, with Parnell as its President, and Michael
Davitt, its acknowledged father, as one of its secretaries. The story of the 'Land
War' over the next two decades is part of Irish history. However, southwestern Ireland played a
prominent, and sometimes violent, role in the struggle. Almost half of what
were termed 'agrarian outrages' (maiming of cattle, destruction of property,
wounding and even killing of land agents, landlords, and those who were
considered 'land grabbers') in the early 1880s occurred in counties Mayo,
Kerry and west Galway. At the same time, Mayo attracted international
attention, and in the process gave a new word to the English language, by
initiating a rather novel form of non-violent protest. This involved a
campaign of ostracisation against Lord Erne's Mayo agent, a Norfolk man named
Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott, whose efforts to secure the harvest from
the estate on the eastern shore of Lough Mask necessitated the importation of
some fifty Orangemen, mostly from Cavan, and a force of about a thousand
soldiers and police to protect them. The campaign against the 'Boycott Relief
Expedition' was orchestrated by Father John O'Malley, parish priest of
Kilmolara (resident in the Neale), and it was he who suggested the term
'boycotting' as being easier for his parishioners to pronounce that
'ostracisation'. The unfortunate Boycott realized by late November 1880 that
all his efforts had been in vain (the harvest had cost over 10,000 - 'a
shilling for every turnip dug' said Parnell), and so, taking his family with
him, he returned to England until the agitation had subsided. The land agitation
was gradually resolved by a scheme of a state-aided land purchase, under
which the tenants became full owners of the land. A series of land purchase
acts provided the finance which enabled the tenants to purchase the land from
landlords and repay the loans with interest over a number of years. Tenant
farmers became owner-occupiers within a generation and in the process created
the foundations for the politically stable society we enjoy today. Thanks to the vision of
Mother Agnes Morrogh-Bernard (1842 - 1932), the Foxford Woollen Mill was
established in 1892. She made Foxford synonymous throughout the world with
high quality tweeds, rugs and blankets. The Land agitation
destroyed servility and paved the way for the emergence of a modern
democracy. Under the provisions of the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898,
Grand Juries (which consisted of the chief landowners in each county) were
abolished and replaced by county councils with a significant extension of
local democracy. The change saw some readjustments to county boundaries..
These developments were aided by the Gaelic Revival of the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. After the defeat of 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin,
fourteen of its leaders, including a Westport man, Major John MacBride, were
executed. McBride had led a small Irish Brigade in the Boer War in South
Africa against the British, and was married for a time to the beautiful Maud
Gonne, the love of the poet W.B. Yeats. (Their son, Seán, became an
international lawyer of renown, the founder of a political party - Clann na
Poblachta, Minister for External Affairs in the first inter-party government
in Ireland 1948 - '51, and winner of the Nobel and Lenin Peace Prizes). The
historic general election of 1918, in which Sinn Féin candidates won a
landslide victory, led to the establishment of 'the first Dáil', or native
parliament, in January 1919, which was not recognised by Britain. The first
public session in Ireland of the new Republican law courts was held in Ballinrobe on 17 May 1919. These developments were
followed by the war of independence, with a number of incidents in County
Mayo, notably at Foxford, Islandeady, Toormakeady, Kilmeena and Carrowkennedy
near Westport. A truce was declared in July 1921, followed by the Anglo Irish
Treaty of 6 December. The subsequent split in Republican ranks led to a
tragic civil war (1922 - '23), again with a number of so called 'incidents'
in County Mayo, but nothing compared to the atrocities which took place
elsewhere in Ireland. The rights and wrongs of the 'civil
war' dominated Irish political life for a generation and relegated economic,
social and cultural development to second place. Since 1922 the history of
the Southwest is little different from the national one but, with a high
birth rate and few opportunities for employment at home, numerous sons and
daughters of the county became part of the great-extended Irish family
scattered throughout the globe. The population fell from 172,690 in 1926 to
161,349 in 1936 and 133,052 by 1956. The chief source of livelihood for
families during this period was farming, where incomes were low and in many
cases had to be supplemented by emigrants' remittances or savings from
seasonal migratory work in England. In the latter case, many emigrants had
not completed their national school education when they were forced by
economic necessity to supplement the family income. The prevailing economic
situation was aggravated by 'the economic war' (1933 - '38), and later by the
Second World War. Following the publication of the
First Programme for Economic Expansion in 1958, industrial policy in Ireland
was changed from protectionism to free trade with the objective of
establishing an export-orientated manufacturing sector in the country by
attracting foreign investment and promoting private enterprise. Many
multinational corporations began operations in Ireland and new employment
opportunities were created in industry and services, while the agricultural
labour force continued to decline. Some multinationals were established in
the Southwest: Travenol, later Baxter Healthcare (1972), Hollister (1976),
Asahi (1977), and some indigenous firms like Rowear (Ballina), Killala
Precision Components (the 1996 'small business of the year'), and Berry's
Printing Works in Westport established national and international reputations
for excellence. In the sphere of national politics,
it could be argued that the Southwest Region has made a more than
proportionate contribution in the decades since independence. In addition to
several government ministers, three leaders of Irish political parties in
this century were born in County Mayo: Thomas J. O'Connell, who became leader
of the Labour Party in 1927, was born in Bekan; Joseph Blowick, who was
leader of the Clann na Talmhan party in the first inter-party Government from
1948 - 1951, was born near Balla, and Charles J. Haughey, who became leader
of the Fianna Fáil party in 1979, was born in Castlebar. Castlebar-born
Padraig Flynn, who earned a lot of deserved credit for the excellent road
system around Castlebar, became Ireland's European Commissioner in 1993, with
responsibility for Social Affairs and Employment. There was another honor for
Mayo when Ballina-born
Mary Robinson (née Bourke), an eminent barrister and former law professor and
senator, became the seventh President of Ireland on 3 December 1990, the
first woman to hold that office (and the second woman in the world to be
democratically elected a Head of State). ------------------------------------------------------------------ Appreciation is extended to
Edo Nyland, Bernard O'Hara & Nollaig Omuraile for their assistance in the
preparation of this history.
========================================== For further detail, please
refer to: Nyland, Edo. 2001. Linguistic Archaeology: AnIntroduction. Trafford Publ., Victoria, B.C., Canada. ISBN 1-55212-668-4. 541 p. [
see abstract & summary] Nyland, Edo. 2002.
Odysseus and the Sea Peoples: A Bronze Age History of Scotland Trafford Publ., Victoria, B.C., Canada.
307 p. [see
abstract & summary]. |
