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Title: The South Isles of Aran
Author: Oliver J. Burke
Release Date: October 24, 2011 [EBook #37840]
Language: English
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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 Ængus--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, £1576; rent, £2067; 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 £6 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 £34 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 Ængus, 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 HEBÈ.]
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 Hebè 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 striæ, 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.
CHAPTER II.
"Remnants of things that have passed away,
Fragments of stone reared by creatures of clay."
_Siege of Corinth._
[Sidenote: THE DRUIDS.]
The "remnants of things that have passed away" are many on these
islands. In no other part of the United Kingdom are there confined in
spaces so narrow so many monuments of Pagan times; here are evidences of
two great ages of civilization--that of the Druids and that of the
Christians; but, whether of the Druids or of the Christians, Aran had
been the retreat in early times of the contemplative and the learned.
Sequestered and undisturbed, the natives have even to this day preserved
much of the moral and physical remains of the ancient world.
[Sidenote: DRUIDISM.]
The Aranites in their simplicity consider the remains of the Druids as
inviolable, being as they fondly imagine the enchanted haunts and
property of aerial beings, whose power of doing mischief they greatly
dread and studiously propitiate. The natives believe that the "cairns"
or circular mounds are the sepulchres of the mighty men of old, men of
renown, whose acts and deeds even now are celebrated in songs sung at
the cottage firesides by minstrels to the strings of the wandering
harper: on every lip are the exploits of Churcullen, of Gol, son of
Morna, of Oscar, and of Ossian, and here are pointed out the places
where they lived and died. We have also the immense "cromlechs" or altar
flags, supported on perpendicular pillars, as we may venture to call the
unhammered stones of about three feet in height, whilst under those
"cromlechs" still rest the remains of heroes whose faithful dogs
interred with them bear them company even in death. Here, too, no bad
memory is retained of the sacred fires of Bal (another name for the
sun), which were kept burning; for the sun, and the moon, and the stars
were by them reverenced; but the sun of the Druids was supposed to be
the most noble type of the Godhead--the most glorious object of the
material creation. The mysterious stones, twelve in number, encircling
the altars of sacrifice, sometimes said to be zodiacal rings, after the
twelve signs of the zodiac, are here frequently to be found. The
purifying ordeals the cattle were subject to at Aran until a very late
period are yet there remembered. The sacred fires on the first day of
each of the quarters blazed from cairn to cairn, amid prayers for the
fruits of the earth, and even yet, on St. John's Eve in June, huge
bonfires are lighted near every village through the island, for the
holy flame was considered essential to the cattle as a preservative from
contagious disorders. The Druids kindled after their manner two immense
fires, with great incantations, close to each other, whilst between
those fires the cattle were driven, and if they escaped unharmed it was
considered as auspicious as it would be inauspicious for man and beast
to be therein harmed, and hence the saying, "Placed between the two
fires of Baal." Concerning the mysteries of their religion, the Druids
did not commit them to writing, and therefore it is that so little is
known of their teachings or of what they taught, and what they did teach
is said by some to have been taught in the Greek language, "to the end,"
writes Sir Edward Coke, "that their discipline might not be made so
common amongst the vulgar, nay more, their very names and appellations
may serve as a proof of their use of the Greek tongue, they being called
Druids from [Greek: Drys], an oak, because, saith Pliny, they frequent
the woods where oaks are, and in all their sacrifices they use the
leaves of those trees."[2]
[Sidenote: SIR EDWARD COKE ON DRUIDISM.]
With Druidism departed the forests of the ilex and the quercus from
Aran. May we venture to hope that, in the coming changes, Aran may once
more be re-afforested, and that the islanders, who have now no coal, no
timber, and no turf to burn, may have at least timber to burn in great
abundance in the near future?
[Sidenote: FORTRESSES OF ARAN.]
The immense fortresses on the islands are said to be the finest
specimens of barbaric military structures extant in Europe. Built by the
pagan Firbolgs in the first century of the Christian era, these
mortarless walls, Cyclopean as they are called, having braved the
tempests of nineteen hundred years, still stand. On the large island,
and within four miles of our hotel, is Dun Ængus, which, covering many
acres, is on a precipice hundreds of feet in height. This fortress, in
the form of a horse-shoe, is unapproachable on the sea side, where the
Atlantic surges heavily against the solid rock, whose surfaces are
seamed, and scarred, and torn by the violence of the billows driven
against them by the winter tempests. Unapproachable by an enemy from the
sea, it is equally unapproachable by an enemy from the land, the only
entrance thereto being by a narrow avenue skirting the edge of the
cliff. The fortress consists of three enclosures, the inner, the middle,
and the outer. The inner measures 160 feet, on what may be called the
axis major from north to south of the horse-shoe on the ground plan,
whilst along the cliff it measures 144 feet. The mortarless wall which
surrounds this inmost enclosure is about 1100 feet from end to end, by
18 feet in height, and 12 feet in thickness. Now this one wall is made
up of three walls, each four feet thick, one against the other, like the
coats of an onion, which arrangement occurs in the middle and outside
enclosures, and which has this advantage, that if an enemy should
succeed in breaking down the exterior envelope, he would find behind it
a new face of masonry, instead of the easily disturbed loose interior of
a dry stone wall. The space between this inner and the next outside, or
middle enclosure, is perfectly clear, leaving ample scope for military
manoeuvres. The outside wall, which is almost an ellipse, encloses
about eleven acres, all studded over with an army of white pointed
stones, set slope-wise into the earth, like almonds on a plum-pudding,
save where a narrow avenue is left, so that no assailing force could
possibly approach the second wall, without having its ranks broken by
those intricate piles which answer the _chevaux-de-frise_ of modern
fortifications. The doorway with sloping jambs of Egyptian pattern
through the outer wall admits only one or two assailants together.
[Sidenote: DUN ÆNGUS.]
Dun Conor, an oval fort on the middle island, is much larger than Dun
Ængus, of which we have just been speaking, the axis major of Dun Conor
measuring 227 feet. It also stands on a high cliff, and its dry and
mortarless walls are built also on the coat of the onion principle.
Inisheer, the eastern island, contains a circular Dun called
Creggan-keel. Furmena Castle, also on this island, was, in later times,
the stronghold of the O'Briens--lords of the islands of Aran--and upon
these islands are many more fortresses. There is, on the north side of
Inishmore, Dun Onaght, a circular Firbolgic fort, measuring 92 feet
across; and on the south-west side, _Dubh Cahn_, "the black fort," a Dun
or fortress of very rude masonry, of enormous thickness, and overlooking
the cliffs.
[Sidenote: ST. ENDA.]
The Christian remains of the islands are many, and many are the names of
the saints still remembered who congregated here in the early days of
Irish Christianity. Amongst those remarkable heroes of the Cross, none
appears to have been greater than St. Enda, who has left his name
everywhere in the islands. To him, indeed, is due much of the success
that followed the footsteps of those missionaries who won, in the course
of centuries, for Aran the appellation of "Aran of the Saints." Enda was
the only son of Conel, King of Oriel, whose territories included the
modern counties of Louth, Armagh, and Fermanagh. This Enda had, however,
several sisters, the elder being the wife of the King of Cashel, whose
death is chronicled in the annals of the Four Masters as of the year
489; the younger was Fancha, the abbess of an abbey, or nunnery, wherein
were educated ladies of the court, amongst whom was one remarkable for
her great mental and personal attractions. Enda loved her, and hoped
that she would one day share with him the glories, such as they were, of
the throne of his fathers. His love for his affianced bride amounted to
an idolatry, but his idolatry must end, and his idol must die an early
death. The abbess brought him weeping into the chamber where the corpse
of his loved one was laid. Fancha then reminded him of how favour is
deceitful and how beauty is vain, and how the day, dim and remote, would
still come when he would be as his affianced bride now was. "Love not
the world, nor the things that are in the world!" exclaimed the abbess
with a vehemence that her earnestness inspired. That world was then
abjured, and straightway he entered a religious order, that of the
Regular Canons of St. Augustine, and after years of study and probation,
was ordained priest in Rome. He thence returned to the kingdom of Oriel
in Ireland, where he built several churches. Having visited his sister
and her husband the King of Cashel, the latter was, after much
hesitation, persuaded to confer upon God and upon Enda the islands of
Aran. Possession of a place so retired and so suited to study and
contemplation being thus obtained, Enda introduced there a multitude of
holy men, monks to live like the Essenes of old, a contemplative life.
He divided the islands into ten parts, and built ten monasteries, each
under the rule of its proper superior; whilst he chose a place for his
own residence on the eastern coast of the western island of Inishmore,
and there erected a monastery, the name and site of which are preserved
even to this day in the little village of Killeany (Kil-Enda), about a
mile from Kilronan. Half the island was assigned to this monastery, and
multitudes from afar flocked to Aran, which became the home of the
learned and the pious.
[Sidenote: ST. BRENDAN.]
Amongst the remarkable men that there clustered, were St. Kieran,
founder of Clonmacnoise, who died in 549, and St. Brendan. The history
of the latter abounds with fable, but it is admitted that a thousand
years before Christopher Columbus, he crossed the Atlantic and landed on
the coast of Florida, where there is a strip of country which, according
to Humboldt, in his Cosmos, bore the name of _Irland it Milka_, "Ireland
of the white man." The visit of St. Brendan to Aran, previous to his
departure to the great western continent, has been described by one of
the most musical of our poets--Denis Florence MacCarthy--as follows:--
"Hearing how blessed Enda lived apart,
Amid the sacred caves of Aran-mör,
And how beneath his eye, spread like a chart,
Lay all the isles of that remotest shore;
And how he had collected in his mind
All that was known to the man of the "old sea,"[3]
I left the hill of miracles behind,
And sailed from out the shallow sandy Leigh.
"Again I sailed and crossed the stormy sound,
That lies beneath Binn-Aite's rocky height,
And there upon the shore, the saint I found
Waiting my coming through the tardy night.
He led me to his home beside the wave,
Where with his monks the pious father dwelled,
And to my listening ear he freely gave
The sacred knowledge that his bosom held.
"When I proclaimed the project that I nursed,
How it was for this that I his blessing sought,
An irrepressible cry of joy outburst
From his pure lips, that blessed me for the thought.
He said that he, too, had in visions strayed,
O'er the untrack'd ocean's billowing foam;
Bid me have hope, that God would give me aid,
And bring me safe back to my native home.
"Thus having sought for knowledge and for strength,
For the unheard-of voyage that I planned,
I left those myriad isles, and turned at length
Southward my barque, and sought my native land.
There I made all things ready day by day;
The wicker boat with ox-skins covered o'er,
Chose the good monks, companions of my way,
And waited for the wind to leave the shore."
[Sidenote: ST. FINNIAN.]
Another of St. Enda's disciples was St. Finnian of Moville--and it was
from Aran he set out on his pilgrimage to Rome. Soon after he returned
to Ireland, bringing with him a copy of the Gospels, the Papal
benediction, and the Canons of St. Finnian. Again departing for Italy,
he was made Bishop of Lucca, in Italy, where he died in 588.
[Sidenote: ST. COLUMBA.]
St. Columba spent years in Aran, and deeply was he grieved at leaving it
for Iona. His bitter lament in Irish verse has been translated into
English metre by the late Sir Aubrey De Vere, Bart., in part as
follows:--
1.
"Farewell to Aran isle, farewell!
I steer for Hy; my heart is sore,
The breakers burst, the billows swell,
'Twixt Aran's isle and Alba's shore.
2.
"Thus spake the son of God, 'Depart!'
Oh Aran isle, God's will be done!
By angels thronged this hour thou art:
I sit within my barque alone.
3.
"Oh Modan, well for thee the while!
Fair falls thy lot and well art thou,
Thy seat is set in Aran isle,
Eastward to Alba turns my prow.
4.
"Oh Aran, sun of all the west!
My heart is thine! as sweet to close
Our dying eyes in thee as rest
Where Peter and where Paul repose.
5.
"Oh Aran, sun of all the west,
My heart its grave hath found;
He walks in regions of the blest,
The man that hears thy church bells sound.
6.
"Oh Aran blest--oh Aran blest!
Accursed the man that loves not thee;
The dead man cradled in thy breast
No demon scares him--well is he."[4]
[Sidenote: ST. FURSA.]
Amongst the other ecclesiastical notabilities that frequented Aran in
the sixth century was St. Fursa, whose life has been written by scores
of writers, as well by the Venerable Bede as by Archbishop Usher, the
greatest ornament of the Protestant Church in Ireland. The visions of
Fursa were, we are informed by the Rev. J. Carey, in his admirable
translation of Dante, the groundwork of the _Inferno_. The beautiful
imagery of Fursa's fancy, which threw a charm over every subject that he
handled, may be well illustrated by his rhapsodies on seeing for the
first time the city of Rome, as staff in hand he wended his way to the
Eternal City. Falling on his knees, with outstretched arms, he
exclaimed, "Rome! oh, Rome! I hail thee, admirable by apostolic
triumphs. Rome, decorated by the roses of the martyrs, whitened by the
lilies of the confessors, crowned by the palms of the virgins, thou that
containest the bones and relics of the saints, may thy authority never
fade!"[5] Strange, is it not, that the first sight of the city of Rome
should produce in the minds of men feelings which words almost fail to
convey!
[Sidenote: GIBBON.]
It was eleven hundred years after Fursa's first salutation to the city
of Rome that Edward Gibbon, when musing amid the ruins of the Capitol
whilst the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of
Jupiter, formed the idea of writing "The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire," and what his feelings were on seeing for the first time the
holy city he thus in that immortal work informs us: "My temper is not
very susceptible of enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm which I do not feel I
have ever scorned to affect, but at the distance of twenty-five years, I
can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my
mind as I first approached and entered the Eternal City. After a
sleepless night I trod with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum." St.
Fursa, returning on foot through France, died at Peronne, and his body
was conveyed to the island of Aran, where amongst his _quondam_ brethren
he now, awaiting the resurrection of the just, reposes.
Of the monuments, as well pre-Christian as Christian, in these islands,
there are twenty-one, vested in the secretary of the Commissioners of
Public Works in Ireland, to be preserved as national monuments. (See
next page.)
[Sidenote: RUINS.]
Ruins everywhere meet the eye of the tourist in Aran--ruined abbeys,
ruined monasteries, ruined nunneries, ruined cells, ruined churches,
ruined schools, ruined forts, ruined forests, and ruined towers. With
one exception the churches of Aran face the east. I heard somewhere,
when on the islands, that that is not exactly true, but that they faced
the point of the compass at which the sun rose on the day that the
foundation stone was laid. Be that as it may, there is the Oratory of
St. Banon, which directly faces the north. It is fifteen feet long, by
seventeen feet high to the summit of the gables, by eleven feet in breadth.
COUNTY OF GALWAY.
BARONY OF ARAN.
--------------+----------------+--------------------------------------
Parish. | Townland. | Monuments.
--------------+----------------+--------------------------------------
Inisheer, | Inisheer | Great Fort, with stone-roofed Cells,
or | | and O'Brien's Castle.
Lesser Island | | Fort with Mound and Monument.
| | Ruins of Church--Kill-Gobnet, etc.
| | Ruins of Church--Burial-place of
| | Seven Daughters, whose names are
| | unknown.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempúl Coemhan.
| |
Inishmaan, | Carrowntemple | Fort Mothar Dún.
or | Carrownlisheen | Fort of Conor.
Middle Island | | Ruins of Church--Kill Canonagh.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempúl Caireach
| | Derquin.
| |
Inishmore, | Onaght | Fort Dún Ængus.
or | Killeaney | Fort Dún Eochla.
Great Island | | Dubh Chathair or the Black Fort.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempúl Benin, with
| | rectangular enclosure and group
| | of Cells.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempúl Brecan and
| | Cross.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempúl beg mac Dara.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempúl more mac
| | Dara.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempúl Assurniadhe.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempúl Ciara
| | Monastir.
| | Ruins of Church--Tempúl à Phoill (the
| | seven churches).
| | Ruins of Church--Tempúl an Cheathrair
| | Aluin.
| | Ruins of Church--Teglach Enda (St.
| | Enda's Church).
--------------+----------------+--------------------------------------
[Sidenote: CLOGHAUNS.]
Close by are the remains of the hermitage, partly sunk in the rock, and
of some cloghauns, or stone-roofed dwellings. How those solitaries, who
for centuries held up the lamp of learning which shone across Europe
during the long night which followed the breaking up of the Roman
empire, could live in such comfortless cells, it is impossible to
apprehend: circular chambers about twenty feet in exterior diameter,
with a hole in the stone beehive roof for a chimney, and with an
Egyptian-like doorway that a tall man could with difficulty enter.
_Teampul-Chiarain_ has a beautiful eastern window, with some crosses.
Four miles from Kilronan are Kilmurvey and _Teampul McDuach_, a
sixth-century church, consisting of nave and choir in beautiful
preservation. There are windows there of remote antiquity, with lintels
formed of two leaning stones; and there is a semicircular window of
great beauty of a more recent date. There is a stone leaning against the
eastern gable with a rudely cut opening which seems to have been the
head of the more ancient window. The narrow doorway is like the entrance
to an Egyptian tomb. Another small church, _Teampul-beg_, together with
a holy well and monastic enclosure, is worthy of inspection. At the
north-western side of the Inishmore island, and six miles from
Kilronan, are the remains of the seven churches, one of which is called
_Teampul Brecain_--the church of St. Braccan, who was the founder of the
monastery of Ardbraccan, now the cathedral church of the diocese of
Meath. The ruined church of _Teampul-saght-Machree_ is an object of
interest on the middle island. The eastern island in ancient times was
called _Aran-Coemhan_ in honour of _St. Coemhan_ (St. Kevin), brother of
St. Kevin of Glendalough. He was one of the most renowned of the saints
of Aran, and is believed to have not unfrequently abated storms after
being piously invoked.
[Sidenote: CHILDLESS MARRIAGES.]
There is a legend in the islands worthy of remembrance by those whose
marriages are as yet unblest with children. We speak of that of St.
Braccan's bed, where many a fair devotee has prayed and has had her
prayers granted, as Anna of old had in the temple of Silo,[6] when the
Lord bestowed on her childless marriage a child who was afterwards the
prophet Samuel.
[Sidenote: ARAN CHURCHES.]
The churches are all of small dimensions--never more than sixty feet in
length--at the eastern end of which is not unfrequently a chancel in
which the altar was placed. Between the nave of the church and the
chancel was the chancel arch of a semicircular form, a very beautiful
specimen of which exists in the Protestant cathedral of Tuam. These
temples, very imperfectly lighted by small windows splaying inwards, do
not appear to have ever been glazed. The chancel had usually two or
three windows--one of which is always in the centre of the east end,
with another in the south wall, another in the south wall of the nave,
sometimes, though rarely, two in number. The windows are frequently
triangular-headed, but more usually arched semicircularly, whilst the
doorway is almost universally covered by a horizontal lintel consisting
of a single stone. In all cases the sides of the doorways incline like
the doorways in the old Cyclopean buildings, to which they bear a
striking resemblance. The smaller churches were usually roofed with
stone, whilst the larger ones were roofed with wood covered with thatch.
The wells are carefully preserved, the scarcity of water rendering the
possession of a well almost as precious to them as to the Eastern
shepherds in the days of Rebecca.
The Aran churches, it must be admitted, have little in them to interest
the mind or captivate the senses; nevertheless, in their symmetrical
simplicity, their dimly lighted naves, in the total absence of
everything that could distract attention, there is an expression of
fitness for their purpose too often wanting in modern temples of the
highest pretensions.
[Sidenote: LIVES OF THE MONKS.]
The monastic establishments close by contained little that would savour
of luxury. The cells of the friars were low, narrow huts, built of the
roughest materials, which formed, by the regular distribution of the
streets, a large and populous village, enclosing within a common wall a
church and hospital, perhaps a library. The austere inmates slept on the
ground, on a hard mat or a rough blanket, and the same bundle of palm
leaves, served them as a seat by day and a pillow by night. The brethren
were supported by their manual labour, and the duty of labour was
strenuously recommended as a penance, as an exercise, and as the most
laudable means of securing their daily subsistence. "_Laborare est
orare_" was a monastic maxim. The garden and the fields which the
industry of the monks had rescued from the forest or the morass were
cultivated by their ceaseless toil. In the evening they assembled for
vocal or mental prayer, and they were awakened by a rustic horn, or by
the convent bell in the night, for the public worship of the monastery.
Even sleep, the last refuge of the unhappy, was rigorously measured; and
it was to lives of self-denial like this that great multitudes in the
first century of the Christian era betook themselves. Pliny, who lived
when Christ was crucified, surveyed with astonishment the monks of the
first century, "a solitary people," he says, "who dwelt amongst the palm
trees near the Dead Sea, who increased, and who subsisted without money,
who fled from the pleasures of life, and who derived from the disgust
and repentance of mankind a perpetual supply of voluntary
associates."[7]
[Sidenote: ORDNANCE SURVEY.]
On Inisheer island is a signal tower, and near it is an old castle on an
eminence. Here is shown the "bed of St. Coemhan," much famed for its
miraculous cures. On the south-west point is a lighthouse showing a
light one hundred and ten feet in height. It is stated in the
_Leabhar-braec_ that one of the Popes was interred in the great island
of Aran. The same is repeated in one of the volumes of the Ordnance
Survey, a work which, never printed, is stowed away on the shelves of
the Royal Irish Academy, liable at any moment to be destroyed by a
conflagration. In the three or four volumes on the county of Galway are
contained, and in the English language, the inquisitions of Elizabeth,
the subsequent patents of James I., and much learning touching tithes,
fisheries, abbeys, abbey lands, priories, and monasteries, as well as
letters on these subjects between Petrie and O'Donovan and other
antiquarians employed on that survey.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] II. Coke's Reports, part iii. Preface, p. viii.
[3] The "Old Sea," the ancient name of the Atlantic in Irish.
[4] Sir Aubrey De Vere, "Irish Odes," p. 274.
[5] Colgani, Acta SS. Hiberniæ.
[6] 1 Sam. i. 9-17.
[7] Pliny, Hist. Nat., v. 15.
CHAPTER III.
ISLES OF ARAN, 14TH-18TH CENTURIES.
"Long thy fair cheek was pale,
_Erin Aroon_--
Too well it spake thy tale,
_Erin Aroon_--
Fondly nursed hopes betrayed,
Gallant sons lowly laid,
All anguish there portrayed,
_Erin Aroon._"
_Sliabh Cuilinn._
[Sidenote: ANNALS OF ARAN.]
A.D. 1308. The trade of Galway, which at the time of the Anglo-Norman
invasion in the twelfth century was at zero, rapidly rose to a
comparatively high figure in the fourteenth century. In 1300 the customs
receipts were £24 15_s._ 2_d._ at that port, and in 1392, £118 5_s._
10_d._ This augured well for the progressive improvement of the town;
but that improvement was blasted for a season by the appearance in the
bay of a fleet of pirates who swept the ships from the seas. The
merchants applied to their powerful neighbour,[8] Dermot More O'Brien,
lord of the isles of Aran, to succour them in their straits; and for
that succour and the protection which he agreed to give them they agreed
to pay him yearly twelve tuns of wine; the trade, commerce, and harbour
of the town to be protected, and otherwise by him and his successors
defended, from all and every attack of pirates and privateers
whatsoever, to which intent and purpose, and for the considerations
aforesaid, he covenanted and agreed to maintain a suitable maritime
force. This Dermot More O'Brien was descended from Brian [Boru]
Boroimhe, slain at the battle of Clontarf in 1014.
A.D. 1334. In this year the islands were plundered by Sir John Darcy,
who sailed with fifty-six ships around the Irish coasts.
[Sidenote: REVOLT OF ARAN.]
A.D. 1400. The rebellion of the Mayo and Clanrickarde Burkes in the
province of Connaught, consequent on the murder, in 1333, of William De
Burgh, Earl of Ulster and fifth Lord of Connaught, caused the overthrow
for nearly two hundred years, of the English power in that province. The
town of Galway, oscillating in its allegiance between the Crown and the
Clanricardes, joined that powerful family against Henry IV., and in
their revolt they were joined by the South Isles of Aran.
[Sidenote: ROYAL LICENSE.]
Thereupon the King did by royal license permit certain persons to attack
the rebels in the said island, which license is as follows:--
"The King to all and singular our admirals mayors and others in our
kingdom of England and lordship of Ireland greeting At the supplication
of John Roderic William Pound Edward White and Philip Taylor all of
Bristol and of Nicholas Kent burgess of Galway in Ireland In as much as
our aforesaid liege subjects have given to us security that they shall
not nor will presume to make war or afford cause for making war against
any of our faithful Irish subjects or attempt anything against the form
of the truces entered into between us Wherefore know ye that we have
granted and given license and do hereby grant and give licence to them
the said John Roderic William Pound Edward White Philip Taylor and
Nicholas Kent that they with as many men at arms as they choose to have
and provide at their own expenses may take their course for and pass
over to our said lordship of Ireland in four ships called by the divers
names of 'The Christopher' 'the Trusty' 'the Nicholas' and 'the May of
Bristol' and there make war against the rebels and enemies of us in the
said town of Galway and also in the islands of Arran which lie full of
gallies to ensnare capture and plunder our liege English and further
KNOW YE ALL MEN that if said John and William and Edward and Philip and
Nicholas shall be able by force and armed power to obtain and take the
town and islands aforesaid they may have hold and inhabit the same town
and islands taking to their own use and profit all and singular the
property of the aforesaid rebels and enemies of us and all that which
they shall be able so to obtain and take The right nevertheless and
other the rents revenues services and other moneys whatsumever to our
royal prerogative there pertaining always saved unto us saving also the
right of the son and heir of Roger de Mortimer late Earl of March
deceased being within age and within our wardship and the rights of all
other liege subjects whomsoever--given at our Palace at Westminster on
the 22nd day of May in the first year of our reign--A.D. 1400 'By the
King himself'"[9] The town however returning to its allegiance, the
above license was in the same year revoked.
[Sidenote: THE REFORMATION.]
A.D. 1485. A monastery was built in this year on the great island for
the Franciscans of the strict observance; but this community was doomed
to be short lived, for the word had gone forth from Henry VIII. to
suppress the monasteries and they were suppressed; and the annalists
thus, in the Annals of the Four Masters, A.D. 1537, chronicle not alone
their overthrow, but the spread of a new religion in England, "A new
heresy and error arose in England through pride, vain-glory, avarice,
sensuality, and many strange speculations, so that the people of England
went into opposition to the Pope and to Rome. They have demolished the
abbeys, sold their roofs and bells, and there is not one single
monastery from Aran of the Saints to the '_Straits of Dover_'[10] that
has not been completely destroyed."
[Sidenote: A STORM.]
A.D. 1560. A tragic occurrence occurred in this year when Teige O'Brien,
lord of the isles, was returning, loaded with booty if not with honours,
to Aran, from a plundering expedition which he had made into Munster;
from one of the seaports of which province he had the rashness with his
homeward bound barque to put to sea when a tempest was said by his
sailors to be impending. Deceived by the "calm before the storm" he
insisted on weighing anchor. It was weighed, and as the starless night
was closing and deepening around him, the gale freshened as he
advanced--his tempest-tossed vessel struggled amidst the waves, for the
wind was high against it--and when the morning rolled the clouds away, a
broken spar, an oarless boat, were all that remained to tell the ghastly
tale, that every hand on board was lost. At the entrance of the Great
Man's Bay, which was far out of their course, is even now shown the spot
where on that fatal night they perished.
A.D. 1570. Morchowe O'Brien, in consideration of a sum of money to him
in hand paid, conveyed these islands by way of mortgage to James Lynch
Fitz Ambrose and his heirs.
[Sidenote: THE O'BRIENS.]
A.D. 1575. In June of this year it was agreed between the mortgagor and
mortgagee of the islands "that in case the sept of clan Tiege O'Brien,
the said mortgagor, should decease and perish, then that James Lynch
Fitz Ambrose, the mortgagee, should be their sole heir, and possess,
Aran, and all other their lands, and that said O'Brien should not
alienate or mortgage any part or parcel of Aran to any person without
the mortgagee's consent and license." It appears, however, that Tieg
Eturgh, Morchowe Morowe, Conchor McMurchowe, Terrilagh Meeagh, Tieg
McTerrilagh, Dermot McMurchowe, Tieg McTerrilagh Oge, and Conchor
McMoriertagh, McBrene, gentlemen, all of Aran, and Dermot McCormick
McConnor, of the Castle of Trowmore, afterwards on July 14, 1575,
appointed Captain Morchowe McTerrilagh O'Brien their attorney for
ransoming the isles of Aran from James Lynch, that all such parts as he
should so ransom should belong to him (O'Brien) and his heirs for
ever.[11]
It would appear that this Captain Morchowe McTerrilagh O'Brien, of the
Clantiege of Aran, on July 14 of the same year, 1575, was in Galway; and
being there, was minded to claim the privilege his ancestors had, he
alleged, enjoyed of lodgings and meals for two days and two nights in
the town, and the "mayor calling before him auncient old credibel
witnesses, they declared upon their oaths that they never heard of their
parents or saw the said sept have no more than two meals in the town,
and it was thereupon ordered that said sept shall have no more than two
meals, they being always bound to serve attend and wait upon us and in
our service as their ancestors had been, and further that it was the
O'Brien sept that was bound to give lodging and entertainment to all the
commons of Galway, when they shall repair to the islands of Aran. And
the said mayor did grant and promise O'Brien to be aiders, helpers,
maintainers and assisters, of him against all persons that would lay
siege to spoil the islands or castle of Aran or otherwise wrong the said
Morchowe or his sept."[12]
[Sidenote: THE CLANRICARDES.]
A.D. 1579. Queen Elizabeth, by her charter to the town of Galway, having
recited that Richard III., late King of England, out of his abundant
grace and for the greater security and safeguard of the town of Galway,
willed and ordained that neither MacWilliam Burke, Lord of Clanricarde,
nor his heirs, should have any rule or power in the said town of Galway,
therein to act, exact, receive, ordain, or dispose of anything without
the special license, and by the assent and superintendence of the mayor,
bailiffs, and commonalty of the said town of Galway; appointed the
mayor of Galway to be admiral of her and her successors within the town
aforesaid and within and over the islands of Aran and from the said
islands to Galway.
A.D. 1580. There died in this year in the islands of Aran an islander
who had reached the extreme old age of two hundred and twenty years.
This patriarchal inhabitant killed a bullock in his own house every year
for one hundred and eighty years.
[Sidenote: THE FEROCIOUS O'FLAHERTIES.]
A.D. 1586. In this year the O'Briens, long the lords of the islands of
Aran, "were expulsed from their territory by ye ferocious O'Flaherties
of Iar Connaught." The matter was brought under the knowledge of the
Crown, who resolved to put an end to the lawless savagery which existed
in those parts, whereby one sept could, in times of peace, sail on a
plundering expedition against another and expel them, wasting the
country with fire and sword all the time; and accordingly a commission,
under the great seal, was issued for the purpose of examining the title,
if any, of the O'Flaherties to the islands. Having gone through the
mockery of an inquisition, the commissioners found that the islands
belonged not to the O'Briens, lords of the isles, nor yet to the
O'Flaherties, who had no title at all, but that they belonged to her
Majesty Queen Elizabeth in right of her crown and dignity; and
accordingly she, by her letters patent dated January 15th, A.D. 1587,
instead of restoring them to the ancient proprietors, granted them
entire to Sir John Rawson, of Athlone, gentleman, and his heirs, on
condition that he should retain constantly on the islands twenty
foot-soldiers of the English nation.[13]
[Sidenote: CLAN OF MAC TIEGE O'BRIEN.]
A.D. 1588. When the return of the inquisition and subsequent patent
granting the lands away from the O'Briens became known, the corporation
of Galway thus petitioned the Queen, in favour of Murrough McTurlogh
O'Brien: "That the Mac Tieges of Aran, his ancestors, were under her
Majesty and her predecessors the temporal captains or lords of the
islands of Aran, and held their territories and hereditaments elsewhere
under the name of Mac Tiege O'Brien of Aran, time out of man's memory,
and that they the said corporation, had seen the said Murrough McTurlogh
authorized by all his sept, as chief of that name, and in possession of
the premises as his own lawful inheritance, as more at large doth appear
in our books of record, wherein he continued until of late he was, by
the usurping power of the O'Flaherties expelled; and we say, moreover,
that the sept of the Mac Tiege O'Briens of Aran, since the foundation of
this city, were aiding and assisting ourselves and our predecessors
against the enemies of your majesty and your predecessors in all times
and places, whereunto they were called as true and faithful and liege
people to the crown of England, to maintain, succour, and assist the
town.
"(Signed), "JOHN BLAKE, Mayor of Galway,
"WALTER MARTIN, Bailiff,
"ANTHONY KIRWAN, Bailiff."
Queen Elizabeth heard the appeal, but her Majesty was inexorable. It is
more than probable that the O'Briens had caused, at least remotely, the
alienation of their inheritance by their own domestic feuds. At the
north extremity of Inishmore, the large island, not far from Port
Murvey, the islanders show a field where human bones are frequently dug
up, and for which reason it is called _Farran-na-Cann_, "the field of
the sculls." Here the O'Briens are said at some remote period to have
slaughtered each other almost to extermination. This sort of
self-destruction is the blackest blot on the page of Irish history. It
has always been, and alas! is Ireland's sad and unalienable inheritance.
[Sidenote: AN INDUSTRIOUS DISCOVERER.]
Of the patentee, John Rawson, little is remembered, save that in an
instrument enrolled in the Rolls Office, in 1594, he is called "an
industrious discoverer of lands for the Queen." The O'Flaherties had now
the gratification of seeing the O'Briens, also an Irish sept, turned out
of their inheritance, and the same granted to a stranger.
[Sidenote: LYNCHES.]
After this period the property and inheritance of the islands became
and were vested in Sir Roebuck Lynch, of Galway. How Sir Roebuck became
proprietor of the islands we have been unable, with certainty, to learn;
but we might hazard a plausible guess that Sir John Rawson was granted
whatever estate O'Brien had forfeited, and that what O'Brien did forfeit
as mortgagor was the equity of redemption in the islands; that
consequently Lynch, the mortgagee, remained in possession of the legal
estate, and he, on Rawson failing to perform the covenants in mortgage
deed contained, foreclosed the mortgage, and thus probably the fee and
the equity of redemption became united in one and the same person, Sir
Roebuck Lynch.
A.D. 1618. "Indenture of June 20th, between Henry Lynch, son and heir of
Roebuck Lynch, of Galway, deceased, of the one part, and William
Anderson, of Aran, in said county, of the other, whereby he, the said
Henry Lynch, for and in consideration of a sum of £50 of English
currency to him paid, did thereby demise and assign all that and those,
a moiety of the said three islands to him, the said William Anderson,
his executors, administrators, and assigns, for a long term of years,
excepting thereout" what must have then been in the islands, "_great
trees_, mines, and minerals, and hawks, at an annual rent of £3 Irish,
and a proportion of port corn, as therein is set forth."
A.D. 1641. The clan Tiege O'Briens still claimed the islands as their
legitimate inheritance, and, taking advantage of the troubles of this
troubled year, prepared to attack them with a considerable force, and
with the aid of a gentleman of extensive property and influence in the
county of Clare, Boetius Clancy the younger. This project, however, was
frustrated by the opposition of the Marquis of Clanricarde, then
governor of the county of Galway.[14]
[Sidenote: ARCHBISHOP O'QUEELY.]
A.D. 1645. The death of Malachy O'Queely, Catholic Archbishop of Tuam,
occurred in this year. To him John Colgan was indebted for a description
of the three islands of Aran and their churches.
A.D. 1651. When the royal authority was fast declining, the Marquis of
Clanricarde resolved to fortify these islands, wherein he placed 200
musketeers with officers and a gunner, under the command of Sir Robert
Lynch, owner of the islands. The fort of Ardkyn, in the large island,
was soon after repaired and furnished with cannon, and by this means
held out against the Parliamentary forces near a year after the
surrender of Galway. In December, 1650, the Irish, routed in every other
quarter, landed here 700 men. On the 9th of the following January, 1300
foot, with a battering piece, were shipped from the Bay of Galway to
attack them, and 600 men were marched to Iar Connaught, to be thence
sent, if necessary, to the assistance of the assailants.
[Sidenote: SURRENDER OF ARAN.]
On the 15th the islands surrendered on the following terms:--
"Articles concluded between Major James Harrisson and Captain William
Draper, on behalf of the Commissary-General Reynolds, Commander-in-Chief
of the Parliamentary forces in the isles of Aran, and Captain John
Blackwall and Captain Brien Kelly, commissioners appointed by Colonel
Oliver Synnot, commander of the Fort of Ardkyn, for the surrender of the
said Fort.
"(1) It is concluded and agreed that all the officers and soldiers both
belonging to sea and land shall have quarters, as also all others the
clergyman and other persons within the Fort. (2) That they shall have
six weeks for their transportation into Spain or any other place in
amity with the State of England, and that hostages shall be given by
Colonel Synnot for the punctual performance of these Articles. (3) That
Colonel Synnot shall deliver up, with all necessaries of war, by three
o'clock this 15th of January, 1652, before which time all officers and
soldiers belonging to the said Fort shall march with drums beating to
the Church near Ardkyn and there lay down their arms. (4) That Colonel
Synnot and the captains, eight in number, shall have liberty to carry
their swords, the other officers and soldiers to lay down their arms;
that Commissary Reynolds shall nominate four officers of the Fort
hostages. (5) That Colonel Synnot, with the rest of the officers and all
other persons in the Fort shall, upon delivering their arms and
delivering their hostages, be protected from the violence of the
soldiery, and with the first conveniency be sent to the county Galway,
there to remain for six weeks in quarters, in which time they are to be
transported as aforesaid, provided that no person whatsoever belonging
to the Fort of Ardkyn found guilty of murder be included in these
articles, or have any benefit thereby."
[Sidenote: ERASMUS SMITH.]
The Parliamentary forces, on taking possession of the fortifications,
found several large pieces of cannon, with a considerable quantity of
arms and ammunition; they seized also a French shallop with twenty-eight
oars and several large boats. The Fort was soon after repaired and
strongly reinforced. The late proprietor of the islands, Sir Robert
Lynch, was declared a forfeiting traitor, and his right made over to
Erasmus Smith, Esq., a London adventurer whose interest was afterwards
purchased by Richard Butler, created Earl of Aran in 1662.
A.D. 1653. The castle of Ardkyn was by order of the Lord Protector
pulled down, and a strong fort erected in its place. Thenceforth Aran
became the place of transportation for the Catholic clergy, whilst on
the mainland the most violent acts of oppression and injustice openly
took place. The King's arms and every other emblem of royalty were torn
down, and fifty priests were shipped for Aran[15] until they could be
transported to the West Indies, they being allowed sixpence a day each
for their support.
[Sidenote: QUIT RENT.]
A.D. 1670. On the 9th of September, Charles II., by patent under the Act
of Settlement, granted to Richard, Earl of Aran, the great island,
containing 2376 acres statute measure, all situate in the half barony of
Aran, county of Galway, at the annual rent of 18_s._ 5-1/2_d._ crown
rent, payable to the King and his successors. We may observe that the
"crown rent" payable to the Crown for lands is the same rent as that
which was formerly paid to the abbot or prior of the abbeys and priories
confiscated from them under the statute of Henry VIII.--consequently
lands held under the religious houses pay crown rent even to this day.
Quit rent (_Quietus Redditus_) in the province of Connaught, merely
three halfpence an acre, was for the first time imposed at the
Restoration, and amounts in the islands of Aran to £14 8_s._ 4_d._
A.D. 1687. A grant was made in this year by James II. of three-fourths
of the tithes of Aran islands to the Most Reverend John Vesey, D.D.,
Protestant Lord Archbishop of Tuam, and his successors in the See. One
could readily account for his Majesty's bestowing the tithes in question
on the Catholic archbishop, but why he bestowed them on the Protestant
line appears unaccountable; yet so it is stated in the appendix to the
report of the Royal Commission (1868) on the revenues and condition of
the Established Church, page 191.
A.D. 1691. On the surrender of Galway to the arms of William and Mary, a
garrison was sent to Aran, and a barrack therein built in which soldiers
were for many years stationed.
[Sidenote: THE FLORA OF ARAN.]
A.D. 1700. An excursion was made to the islands in this year by one
whose name is well known by those who prefer to contemplate the silent
life of vegetation to the saddening spectacle of man at variance with
his fellow-man. Edward Lnwyd spent many months inspecting the flora of
the islands, and having done so, made his report upon them, which is
said to be a marvel in its way.
The fee of the islands had become vested in Edmund Fitzpatrick of
Galway, Esquire; and he in 1717 demised the whole island of Inisheer to
Andrew French of Galway, merchant, for thirty-one years, at the yearly
rent of £100, with liberty to cut and carry away as much straw from
Straw Island as should be deemed necessary to thatch the houses on the
island of Inisheer.
[Sidenote: ROYAL FRANCHISE.]
A.D. 1746. The case of _The Mayor of Galway_ v. _Digby_, conversant as
it was with the royalties of the islands of Aran, caused great
excitement in the town during the summer assizes of the year. The action
was tried before Mr. Justice Caufield. Mr. Staunton, Mr. French, and
another, appeared as counsel for the plaintiff; Mr. John Bodkin and Mr.
Morgan for the defendant. The case as stated by the learned counsel for
the plaintiff was that from times of remote antiquity the O'Briens were
lords of the isles of Aran, or to use somewhat of legal phraseology,
were lords of the manor of Aran, and as such, and in their manorial
rights they were entitled to all the royal franchises, wrecks, and other
strays washed on the shores either of the islands or mainlands of the
bay. But the Crown had made a grant of the royal franchises away from
the lords of the manor, and had conferred the same on the Admiral of the
Bay of Galway, the office of Admiral of the Bay belonging to and being
held by the mayor of the town. Now, on the 1st of August, 1745, a great
whale, which appeared in the Aran waters, was stranded, and harpooned by
the defendant, who obtained from it no less than fifty gallons of oil.
The blubber and the whalebone were all there ready to be transported to
the Dublin market, and the defendant had actually converted to his own
use so much of this royal franchise as would realize a sum of £160.
Plaintiff's patent was full, ample, and large; so full, so ample, and so
large, that he, counsel, could not but wonder that any lawyer at the bar
would sign the pleadings in a case in which a verdict must be directed
on the spot for the plaintiff.
Counsel for the defendant did not feel so sure of the success of his
learned friend's case as his learned friend did--quite the reverse; he
must and at once ask the learned judge for a direction that the verdict
be entered for him. He, Mr. Bodkin, admitted that a sturgeon and a whale
were royal fish, but they were governed by widely different principles
of law. If a sturgeon had been washed on the shore, then the King or his
grantee could claim it and grant it to whomsoever they pleased, and the
grantee here would not be entitled to it at all; but the whale is not
the King's property to grant. Half of the whale is the perquisite of the
Queen consort, and that being so, the grant fails. The King is only
entitled to the head and the Queen to the tail. It was in old law laid
down to be for the Queen's convenience to have abundance of whalebone
for her boudoir, and so it is said in Bracton [l. 3. ch. 3], "of the
sturgeon let it be noted that the King shall have it entire, but it is
otherwise of the whale, for the King shall have the head and the queen
the tail, _sturgeone observetur quod rex illum habebit integrum: de
Balena vero sufficit si rex habeat caput et regina caudam_." A verdict
was directed against the plaintiff, but whether any after move was made
in the matter, or whether the Attorney-General intervened, we have been
unable to discover. Suffice it to say that the corporation of Galway
interfered no more in the matter.
A.D. 1754. John Digby demised the island of Inisheer to William
MacNamara of Doolin, county Clare, for thirty-one years, at an annual
rent of £90.
[Sidenote: ARCHBISHOP PHILLIPS.]
A.D. 1786. The Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, the most Rev. Philip
Phillips, D.D., partaking of the hospitality of the parish priest of
Aran, stopped a week in the islands: sleeping, however, on a bed of
rushes, to which he had been unused, he got an attack of bronchitis, of
which he shortly after died at Cloonmore, in the county of Mayo. One
would have thought that he could have outlived a discomfort of that
trivial kind, for he had been in early life a soldier--not a feather-bed
soldier, but a distinguished officer in the Austrian service, and
therefore it was that he was called Captain Phillips to the last hour of
his life. It is not unworthy of remark that this prelate had, previous
to his translation to Tuam, been Bishop of Killala, to which see he had
in 1760 [1 Geo. III.] been by James III., King _de jure sed non de
facto_ of Great Britain and Ireland, nominated as appears by the
apostolic letter of Clement XIII., dated Rome, November 24, 1760.
[Sidenote: EARL BUTLER OF ARAN.]
In the peerage we find that the earldom of Aran has been twice bestowed
on families bearing different names. First in 1662, when Richard Butler
(son of James, the twelfth Earl and first Duke of Ormonde) was created
Earl of Aran. The honours of this nobleman having expired on his death
without issue, the earldom was revived in 1693 in favour of Lord
Charles Butler, brother of James, the second Duke of Ormonde. The story
of the second Duke of Ormonde is a sad one. Having filled the highest
offices in the state in Ireland under Charles II., he forgot his
allegiance to his brother James II., and went over to the ranks of
William and Mary. In 1702 he was constituted by Queen Anne
Commander-in-Chief of the Forces of Great Britain, sent against France
and Spain, when he destroyed the French fleet and sunk the Spanish
galleons in the harbour of Vigo, for which important services he
received the thanks of both houses of Parliament. In 1715 (2 George I.),
his grace was attainted by the British but not by the Irish House of
Parliament of high treason, and £10,000 set upon his head should he land
in Ireland. His grace then retired to Avignon, and died in 1745, a
pensioner of the crown of Spain. Upon the duke's death the Earl of Aran
became entitled _de jure_ to the dukedom, but was not aware of his
rights, which he never claimed, being of opinion that the British
Parliament destroyed not only the English but the Irish titles of honour
of his deceased brother, the second duke. The Earl of Aran died without
issue male, December 17, 1758, when the title became and was extinct.
[Sidenote: GORE, EARL OF ARAN.]
After four years, in 1762, the earldom was bestowed on another noble
house, that of Gore, in the person of Sir Arthur Gore, and from him is
descended Sir Arthur Charles William Fox Gore, fifth Earl of Aran, born
on the night of storm, January 6, 1839.
A.D. 1857. The islands were visited by the British Association, under
the leadership of Sir William Wilde, M.D., and the results of the visit
were subsequently embodied in an interesting pamphlet by Martin Haverty,
Esq., long assistant librarian to the Honourable Society of the King's
Inns, Dublin. Subsequently the Earl of Dunraven, accompanied by a number
of scientific friends, proceeded to the islands, when a series of
magnificent photographs were executed, printed, and published under the
supervision and direction of the accomplished editor, Miss Stokes, who
has edited that ponderous work which throws so much light on the early
history of this country.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] O'Hart's "Landed Gentry," p. 124, edit. 1884.
[9] Pat. Rolls, 1 Hen. IV. 7. m.
[10] "The Straits of Dover" does not occur in the Annals, but the word
which does so occur is construed by the commentator to be those
"straits."
[11] Hardiman, "History of Galway," p. 208 note.
[12] Hardiman's History of Galway, p. 207.
[13] Pat. Rolls, 31 Eliz.
[14] Clanricarde Memoirs, p. 71.
[15] Froude's English in Ireland, vol. i., p. 134.
CHAPTER IV.
"Where the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky,
In colour though varied, in beauty may vie,
And the purple of ocean is deepest in dye."
_Bride of Abydos._
[Sidenote: THE ARAN ISLANDERS.]
We have thus far spoken of the scenery of the islands, and of their
natural history, of their antiquities, Pagan and Christian, and of their
annals; let us now turn to speak of their people and of what others
think of them. Doctor Petrie thus, in 1841, writes:
"I had heard so much of the Aran islanders, of their primitive
simplicity, and singular hospitality, that I could not help doubting the
truth of a picture so pleasing and romantic, and felt anxious to
ascertain by personal observation how far it might be real.
Collectively, the inhabitants may be said to exhibit the virtues of the
Irish character with as little intermixture of vices as the lot of
humanity will permit.
[Sidenote: A POLITE PEOPLE.]
"They are a brave and hardy race, industrious and enterprising, as is
sufficiently evidenced, not only by the daily increasing number of their
fishing vessels, the barren rocks which they are covering with soil and
making productive, but still more by the frequency of their emigration
from their beloved homes and friends to a distant country, led solely by
the hope that their indefatigable labour may be employed there to the
greater ultimate benefit of their families.
"They are simple and innocent, but also thoughtful and intelligent,
credulous, and, in matters of faith, what persons of a different creed
would call superstitious. Lying and drinking, the vices which Arthur
Young considers as appertaining to the Irish character, form at least no
part of it in Aran, for happily their common poverty holds out less
temptation to the vices of lying and drinking.
"I do not mean to say they are rigidly temperate, or that instances of
excess, followed by the usual Irish consequences of broken heads, do not
occasionally occur--such could not be expected, when their convivial
temperament and dangerous and laborious occupations are remembered. They
never swear, and they have a high sense of decency and propriety, honour
and justice. In appearance they are healthy, comely, and prepossessing;
in their dress (with few exceptions) clean and comfortable; in manner
serious yet cheerful, and easily excited to gaiety; frank and familiar
in conversation, and to strangers polite and respectful, but at the same
time free from servile adulation. They are communicative, but not too
loquacious; inquisitive after information, but delicate in seeking it,
and grateful for its communication.
"If the inhabitants of the Aran islands could be considered as a fair
specimen of the ancient, and present wild Irish, the veriest savages in
the globe, as the learned Pinkerton calls them--those whom chance has
led to their hospitable shores to admire their simple virtues would be
likely to regret that the blessings of civilization had ever been
extended to any portion of this very wretched country."[16]
[Sidenote: RESIGNATION OF THE ARANITES.]
The devotional expressions of the Aranites and the meekness and
resignation with which they bear misfortunes or afflictions is the most
striking feature in their character. "I had a beautiful girl for a
daughter," said an Aranite peasant, "and I laid her in her grave
yesterday, praise be to His holy Name that took her to Himself." A poor
woman asking for charity tells you that "she hasn't eaten a bit this
day, thanks be to God." Another says, "In troth I have been suffering
for a long time from poverty and sickness, glory be to God." Their mode
of salutation, too, is worthy of remembrance. The visitor on entering a
house says, "God save all here." Meet a man on the road, greet him with
a "God save you, sir;" instantly he'll remove his hat and reply, "God
save you kindly, your honour." If you pass by men working in a field,
always address them with a "God bless the work, boys;" they will
answer, "And you too, sir," and if you speak in Irish so much the
better, and how their eyes will brighten up at hearing their
mother-tongue spoken by "a gentleman's honour!"
[Sidenote: THEIR PURITY OF MORALS.]
To the purity of the morals of the Aran women there are many
testimonies. Births of illegitimate children are of rare occurrence
indeed. Sir Francis Head, in 1852, made a tour through Ireland, looking
into every police barrack as he passed, and when all that was done he
published a work entitled "A Fortnight in Ireland." Unsparing in his
vilifications of the Catholic clergy, he is compelled to compare the
people to whom they minister favourably with those of other countries in
the world. Arriving in Galway his first visit was to the police barrack,
where he inquired of the officer as to the morals of the Claddagh
people, when the south isles of Aran thus came to be mentioned.
Sir F. Head. "How long have you been on duty in Galway?"
The officer replies, "Only six months."
_Question._ "During that time have you known of many instances of
illegitimate children being born in the Claddagh?"
_Answer._ "Not a single case--not one; and not only have I never known
of such a case, but I never heard any person attribute immorality to the
fishwomen. I was on duty in the three islands of Aran, inhabited almost
exclusively by fishermen, who also farm potatoes, and I never heard of
any one of their women (who are remarkable for their beauty) having had
an illegitimate child, nor did I ever hear it attributed to them. Indeed
I have been informed by a magistrate who lived in Galway for eight
years, and has been on temporary duty in the isles of Aran, that he has
never heard there of a case of that nature. These people, however, when
required to pay poor-rates, having no native poor of their own in the
workhouse, resisted the payment of what they considered a very unjust
tax. In fact they closed their doors when the rate was only partially
collected."
Three and twenty years after Sir Francis Head wrote the above we read in
the writings of Frank Thorpe Porter, Esq., a member of the Irish Bar,
long a divisional magistrate for the city of Dublin, and some time
acting chief justice for Gibraltar, a further testimony of the worth of
the islanders. On his return from Spain, he visited his son, Mr. Frank
Porter, M.D., medical officer of the islands,[17] and whilst he was
there several cases of typhus fever of a malignant type occurred.
[Sidenote: THEIR KINDNESS.]
The cottages are, with three or four exceptions, thatched and without
any upper storey. The invariable course adopted during the prevalence of
the epidemic was to nail up the door of the patient's apartment, to
take out the sashes of the window, and render it the sole means of
external communication. The medical attendant, priests, and nurse
tenders had no other means of ingress and egress, and no objection
appears to have ever been made to the system. Doctor Porter was stricken
down by the disease, and although ten days had elapsed before a medical
gentleman arrived from Galway, the doctor surmounted the fearful malady.
"I spent," writes Mr. Porter, "each night in my son's apartment, and
during the day he was attended by a nurse. Almost every night I heard
some gentle taps outside the vacant window, and on going over to it, I
would be told 'My wife is afther making a pitcher of whey for the poor
docthor, you'll find it on the windy-stool;' or 'I brought you two jugs
of milk to make whey for your son.' When the crisis had passed, and
nutriment and stimulants were required, I would be told, 'We biled down
two chickens into broth for the docthor, I hope it will sarve him.'
Rabbits, chickens, and joints of kid were tendered for his use, and a
bottle of 'rale Connemara Puttyeen,' was deposited on the window-stool.
The people were all kind and anxious, and when he became able to walk
out he was constantly saluted and congratulated; but no person would
approach him if they could avoid it. They were all dreadfully
apprehensive that he might impart the dreadful contagion. I brought him
home as soon as possible, but he and I will always remember most
gratefully the unvarying kindness and sympathy we experienced in Aran
where they refused to take a farthing either for gratuity or
compensation."
[Sidenote: THEIR HOSPITALITY.]
On September 3, 1886, Mr. R.F. Mullery, clerk of the Galway Union, thus,
in answer to my letter to him, writes:--
"The present poundage-rate, one shilling in the pound, is
exceptionally low, owing to a grant of £440, under the 'relief of
the distressed Unions Act,' having been made to the islands. The
average rate for the last ten years was three shillings in the
pound. We never have islanders. There is no hospital, though there
ought to be one, on the islands, as the sick poor are deterred from
coming thirty miles by boat to the workhouse. The general health is
exceptionally good, and very many live to a very old age. I have an
opportunity of knowing this, as I have to examine the registry of
deaths at the end of each quarter. The islanders as a rule are very
intelligent, and quick at picking up anything they can either hear
or see; and, best of all, they are a moral people, a case of
illegitimacy scarcely ever occurring in the islands, and then it is
looked on as a crime of the blackest dye.
"I have the honour, etc.,
"ROBERT F. MULLERY."
The following extract from a letter written by my learned friend,
Philip Lyster, Esq., barrister-at-law, resident magistrate of the
district in which Aran is situated, bears testimony to the peaceful and
law-abiding character of the islanders:--
"Belfast, September 26, 1886.
"MY DEAR BURKE,
"My absence from Galway upon special duty in the north has prevented
my replying to your note of the 18th inst. until now.
[Sidenote: THEIR INDUSTRY.]
"The Aran islanders as a body are an extremely well-behaved and
industrious people. There are sometimes assaults on each other,
which invariably arise out of some dispute in connection with the
land, and are generally between members of the same family. There
are very few cases of drunkenness. I have known two months to elapse
without a single case being brought up. I should say that for four
years, speaking from memory, I have not sent more than six or seven
persons to jail without the option of a fine. There is no jail on
the islands. We hardly ever have a case of petty larceny. I remember
only one case of potato stealing, when the defendant was sent for
trial and punished. There are often cases of alleged stealing of
seaweed in some _bona-fide_ dispute as to the ownership, which we
then leave to arbitration by mutual consent. I know very little of
the history of the islands. In the last century justice used to be
administered by one of the O'Flaherty family, the father of the
late James O'Flaherty, of Kilmurvy House, Esq., J.P. He was the only
magistrate in the islands, but ruled as a king. He issued his
summons for 'the first fine day,' and presided at a table in the
open air. If any case deserved punishment he would say to the
defendant, speaking in Irish, 'I must transport you to Galway jail
for a month.' The defendant would beg hard not to be transported to
Galway, promising good behaviour in future. If, however, his worship
thought the case serious, he would draw his committal warrant, hand
it to the defendant, who would, without the intervention of police
or any one else, take the warrant, travel at his own expense to
Galway, and deliver himself up, warrant in hand, at the county jail.
I am afraid things are very much changed since those days. Excuse my
not going more fully into the subject-matter of your letter. Duties
here are heavy. Believe me,
"Sincerely yours,
"PHILIP LYSTER."
[Sidenote: THEIR DRESS.]
The dress of the islanders is said, by those who understand such things,
to be picturesque; but beyond all doubt their shoes, or rather slippers,
made of untanned cow-hide with the hairy side out, and without heels and
without soles, are the most unpicturesque foot-dress in Europe. These
they call Pampoodies.
[Sidenote: THEIR PAMPOODIES.]
The raw cow-hide, which is cut to fit the foot, is stitched down the
instep to the toe and also on the back of the heel. Soft as a glove, the
wearer soon acquires an elasticity of step and an erect and noble
bearing in his walk, to which the wearer of the more picturesque boot
can never attain. There are two things, it is said, not to be found in
Aran--corns on the foot and frogs in the fens. The young women on
Sundays have their hair trimmed and bound up very tastily; but what
ornament can these young people put on equal to the virtuous characters
they bear? On Sundays and holy days the churches are well filled, and
the altars well served by priests as zealous as the Catholic Church can
in Ireland lay claim to--the Rev. Father O'Donohoe, P.P., and the Rev.
Father Waters, C.C.
The extreme politeness of the islanders, and their desire to impart any
knowledge they possess of antiquarian lore or of the legends or fairy
tales with which the islands abound, must strike with force the mind of
the observing tourist. Their reverence for the dead, and their affection
for their loved and departed friends, impel them to erect, sometimes in
long lines on the roadside, square stone pillars about ten feet in
height by three feet each side, all of the same measurements, surmounted
each with a well-cut stone cross and with inscriptions such as the
following: "_Sta viator._ Stay, traveller. O Lord have mercy on the soul
of Mac Dara Ternan, who departed this life 26th June, 1842." These
monuments of the dead, who are generally interred in far-distant
churchyards, have by moonlight a ghastly appearance.
[Sidenote: THEIR HOLY WELLS.]
The reverence of the Aranite for holy wells is great, nor will he suffer
in silence his faith in them to be ridiculed. "Can you," said a
stranger, "be so silly as to believe that that well gushing out of the
hillside was placed there by a saint, in dim and remote ages?" The
peasant replied that a well on a mountain side or on a mountain top
appeared to him to be miraculous. "And isn't it, sir, wonderful to see
water on the top of a hill? And it must flow up the hill inside before
it can flow down the hill outside;" and water flowing up the hill inside
or outside was to his mind miraculous. The stranger answered that, "the
water may have been forced up from some far-off lake on a higher level."
The peasant's answer was, "that may be so and it may not be so, but your
honour does not give us any proof that it is so." Wells in all ages and
in all places are associated with the marvellous, even from the well of
Zem-zem to that on the Aran rocks, and we are not so sure that the
geological stranger was quite satisfactory as to his theory of wells on
a mountain summit.
[Sidenote: THE ISLE OF O'BRAZIL.]
Speaking of the wonders by which the native of Aran is surrounded, what
wonder can be greater than that of the mirage, an island that is said to
rise after sunset from the Atlantic? A phantom island which the people
call "O'Brazil, the Isle of the Blest," upon which a city like the New
Jerusalem is built, and the old men say that that city hath no need of
the sun nor of the moon to shine in it, neither does it need the light
of the lamp any more at all. That island with that city has, they say,
over and over again appeared far away on the Atlantic. Alison, we
remember, somewhere in his charming account of the French in Egypt,
gives a note on the mirage of the desert, where the parched-up soldiers
of the French republic, in 1798, used to see far-distant lakes into
which tumbled the waters of mighty waterfalls. On, on the French
soldiers rushed. Alas! the phantom vanished; and so vanishes the phantom
city seen on a summer evening from the lofty cliffs of the Aran islands.
To follow in search of this "Isle of the Blest" an Aranite peasant once
resolved. He had heard of St. Brendan and of Christopher Columbus, and
of those mariners who, sailing over the seas in search of fame and of
gold, were fortunate enough to find both. The peasant, in spite of all
persuasion, set sail.
[Sidenote: A PHANTOM-ISLAND.]
The phantom receded; he followed. Still following, he never returned to
Aran again, and his mournful fate is thus sung by Gerald Griffin:--
1.
"On the ocean that hollows the rocks where ye dwell,
A shadowy land has appeared, as they tell;
Men thought it a region of sunshine and rest,
And they called it O'Brazil, the Isle of the Blest.
From year unto year on the ocean's blue rim,
The beautiful spectre showed lovely and dim;
The golden clouds curtained the deep where it lay,
And it looked like an Eden away--far away.
2.
"A peasant who heard of the wonderful tale,
In the breeze of the Orient loosened his sail;
From Aran, the holy, he turned to the west,
For though Aran was holy, O'Brazil was blest.
He heard not the voice that called from the shore,
He heard not the rising wind's menacing roar:
Home, kindred, and safety, he left on that day,
And he sped to O'Brazil away--far away.
3.
"Morn rose on the deep, and that shadowy isle,
O'er the faint rim and distant reflected its smile;
Noon burned on the wave, and that shadowy shore
Seemed lovely, distant, and faint as before.
Lone evening came down on the wanderer's track,
And to Aran again he looked timidly back;
Oh! far on the verge of the ocean it lay,
Yet the isle of the blest was away--far away!
4.
"Rash dreamer, return! oh, ye winds of the main,
Bear him back to his own peaceful Aran again;
Rash fool! for a vision of fanciful bliss
To barter thy calm life of labour and peace.
The warning of reason was spoken in vain,
He never revisited Aran again.
Night fell on the deep, amidst tempest and spray,
And he died on the waters away--far away."
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Stokes' "Life of Dr. Petrie," pp. 49, 50.
[17] "Reminiscences of Frank Thorpe Porter, Esq.," 1875, p. 489.
CHAPTER V.
"Never Boreas' hoary path,
Never Eurus' poisonous breath,
Never baleful stellar lights
Taint _Aran_ with untimely blights."
BURNS.
[Sidenote: OLD AGE IN ARAN.]
The extreme old age to which the inhabitants live in Aran proves the
excellence of the air and of the food. Neither asthma, nor gout, nor
rheumatism are known in portions of the islands. Formerly there were
forests of oak and of pine in Inishmore, which must have been peculiarly
suited to those who suffered from diseases of the chest.
The fishery here begins in the spring, and great quantities of spillard,
cod, ling, haddock, turbot, gurnet, and mackerel are caught. The natives
look much to the herring fishery, which seldom disappoints their
expectations. In May the pursuit of the sun-fish gives employment to
many, and it appears, from evidence given before the Irish House of
Commons in 1762, that sun-fish of average size were worth from £5 to £6
each. Then all manner of shellfish are in abundance in those
waters--multivalves, bivalves, and univalves--lobsters, oysters,
periwinkles. The Aranite may be said to be an amphibious animal--a
fisherman and a farmer, but as a fisherman he is powerless to cope with
them whose ships are built for the deep sea fishery.
[Sidenote: LAND COMMISSION IN ARAN.]
It was as a farmer we had the pleasure of seeing him, and in the court
of the Land Commission, which sat in Kilronan on the 20th of July, 1886.
The Land Court presented an animated appearance on that day, the
islanders crowding in to hear their cases. Unlike any Europeans that we
know of, the men sat or squatted on the floor in manner as the
Mahometans would in the mosques of Bussorah. Remarkably intelligent,
they gave their evidence in court with an ease and precision, especially
when examined in Irish, which it was refreshing to hear. Many of the
cases stood over from the Land Commission sittings in the islands on
June 25, 1885, on which occasion there were ninety-five listed for a
hearing, and of these the following, the first heard, is a fair specimen
of all the rest, the Commission being composed of Mr. Crean, B.L.,
Professor Baldwin, and Mr. Barry.
IRISH LAND COMMISSION.
Michael O'Donel, tenant.
Miss Digby, Landenstown, county Kildare, and the Hon. Thomas Kenelm
Digby St. Lawrence (second son of Thomas, twenty-ninth baron, third Earl
of Howth--by his second wife, Henrietta Digby, only child of Peter
Barfoot, Esq., of Landenstown, county Kildare), landlords.
Mr. Concannon appeared as solicitor for the tenants; Mr. Stephens,
solicitor, for the landlords.
Michael O'Donel sworn.
Mr. Concannon. O'Donel, are you tenant of this holding?
I am, your honour.
How long are you tenant?
Since I was born--and that's fifty years ago.
Do you swear that, that you were tenant since you were born? How long
are you paying rent?
Since my father's death, about eight years ago last
Pathrickmuss,--that's the time I'm the rale tenant. My father and his
father were tenants on that holding since the Deluge at all
events--couldn't swear longer than that.
Do you swear that?
Well, of coorse I couldn't swear it out and out.
What quantity of land have you in your holding?
Well, twenty-two acres exactly, be the same more or less. [Mr. Stephens,
for the landlords, said that twenty-two acres was the true area of his
farm.] Five of the twenty-two acres were nothing but rocks and stones,
without one blade of grass in them, so that it was seventeen acres of
productive land he had, at an annual rental of £3 18_s._ 6_d._, and it
was not worth that.
To the court. The last change of rent was thirty years ago.
What buildings have you?
The house is my own, and the barn. Both are thatched. [Mr. Stephens did
not claim the houses.] Improvements?--Well, there are walls, but did not
measure them, and small gardens.
In answer to Mr. Concannon: We claim to be entitled to take the seaweed
for manure. We have no turf, nor timber to burn, and have to pay £3 a
year for two boat loads of turf. The stock on his farm was a cow and a
veal calf, a horse, five sheep, and eight lambs. Shears them every year,
but the wool he never sells as he keeps it for his family. As for
tillage, he had about eighty stone of potatoes last year, and by his
stock he realized £12; that includes £6 7_s._ 6_d._ that he received for
a couple of veal calves. He had no grain crops. He had a couple of pigs
too. As for his stock, maybe it's little he'd have out of them coming
home to his wife and childher, and his was a nice wife, thanks be to
God. His sheep he brings by boat to the county of Clare, sells them at
the fair of Ennistymon. Has to pay freight 3_d._ a head for sheep and
lambs. His cattle and pigs he puts on the mail boat and sails them to
Galway--the freight being 2_s._ 6_d._ for calves, and a shilling a head
for pigs. And wasn't he sixteen days weatherbound in Galway last
February, after the fair-day?
Mr. Concannon would produce no valuer, he felt perfect confidence in the
commissioners.
This closed the tenant's case.
Mr. Thompson, of Clonskea Castle, county Dublin, sworn. Is the agent on
the estate; succeeded his father, who had been agent for many years.
Witness has in his custody all the rentals and leases of the estate from
1794. "The rental in 1800 was £2143, as fixed by valuation in that year.
In 1812 the rental was £2668; in 1827, £2145 10_s._ 4_d._; in 1846,
£1937 17_s._ 7_d._; in 1881, £2067; in 1885, £2067; the acreage of the
islands being 11,288 acres. The lands are in the hands of tenants, with
the exception of two croggeries which are in my occupation."
The learned chairman, Mr. Crean, B.L., inquired what a croggery meant.
Witness said that "croggery" was a very ancient name for fourths. The
entire islands were divided into townlands, which townlands contained 4
or 6 quarters each, every quarter containing 16 croggeries, and every
croggery containing 16 acres. Inishmore thus contained 4 townlands and
4t. × 6qrs. × 16crog. × 16ac. = 6144 acres. On Inishmaan there are two
townlands, which contain 6 quarters each. On Inisheer there is only one
townland containing 4 quarters. The tenants have manure and seaweed from
the sea shore free of charge. The seaweed was very valuable in 1866,
when the kelp made on the islands realized £2577, being £5 a ton. There
is no kelp made now, owing to the fall in prices. For twenty years the
value of a tenant's interest in a croggery varied from £30 to £90.
This closed the landlord's evidence, and the lay sub-commissioners in
due time inspected the farms. The case came on for judgment, and the
court reduced the rent from £3 18_s._ 6_d._ to £2 7_s._ 6_d._, being
39.75 per cent. reduction.
All the other cases were similar to the last.
On Tuesday, July 20, 1886, her Majesty's gunboat was moored at the New
Docks, Galway, for the purpose of taking the Land Commission composed of
Mr. Crean, Lieut.-Colonel Bayley, Mr. Rice and myself, to Aran. The
voyage was one to be remembered. The wind, from the S.S.W., rose to a
tempest, not a sail in sight. Nevertheless the vessel held on her
course, though the wind was high against her, and she let drop her
anchor in due time in the Bay of Kilronan. No mail boat from "Europe"
arrived in the islands during the greater part of that week. To fix a
fair rent was the object of fifty-four originating notices which now
came on for hearing. Of this number two were dismissed on points of law,
and forty-nine had their rents fixed, the sum of the old rents being
£384, which was now reduced to the new or judicial rent of £231, being a
reduction in favour of the tenants of £153, say forty per cent. This
reduction, as a matter of course, was well received by the islanders;
but the questions that are irresistibly forced on the mind are, can any
reduction of rent improve their condition? And can any tenure of their
farms, or any estate therein, however large, raise them from their
condition of comparative poverty to that of wealth? And would it be of
material benefit to them to sweep from the landlord the last farthing of
his rent, and to grant the same to them? And would it not be for their
weal rather that they had schools to instruct the young in the natural
history of the fish, and in the ways of science connected with the deep
sea fisheries, and in navigation and all its kindred branches, such as
mathematics, spherical trigonometry, the use of the compass, magnetic
needle, the constellations, and nautical tables, etc., together with all
the trades incident to fishing such as carpentering, ship building, nail
making, sail, net, rope, and line making?
[Sidenote: BARONESS BURDETT-COUTTS.]
And ought not the young and the old to be familiarized with the name of
the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, and with her wonderful works in the cause
of the Baltimore Fishery? And would it not be for the weal of the
islanders, and of the nation, the Irish nation, that the islanders
should be supplied, not for charity, with deep sea fishing appliances,
as the Baltimore fishermen have been?
[Sidenote: THE ARAN FISHERIES.]
The ignorance of our fishing population is thus deplored in the report
of "the inspectors of the sea and inland fisheries of Ireland," 1887:--
"It is melancholy to find how deficient our coast population is in all
these matters, and that the rising generation are left untaught in arts,
from the exercise of which, wealth would be brought into our land, and
industry, self-reliance, and temperance inculcated, while the seas
around our island teem with fish; so much so that often, when a great
capture occurs, quantities of fish are lost from the want of scientific
knowledge as to the best means of curing; and, at the same time, Ireland
is _importing_ about 10,000 tons of cured fish _annually_, when she
might be _exporting_ double, or even treble that quantity.
"Thousands of pounds are also sent annually from Ireland to England,
Scotland, and the Isle of Man, for nets and lines alone, the great bulk,
if not all, of which might be kept at home, and our people profitably
employed."[18]
The following letter, from Sir Thomas F. Brady, Inspector of Irish
Fisheries, Dublin Castle, on the Aran fishery, is worthy of note:--
"11, Percy Place, Dublin, Dec. 5, 1886.
"MY DEAR BURKE,
"I have your note here. There is a large number of open row boats
and curraghs on the three islands of Aran, but that is their only
mode of fishing; and they can only fish at short distances from the
land, and cannot fish except in suitable weather. There is not a
single first-class fishing vessel attached to the islands. The
people are too poor to provide themselves with such, or obtain
security for loans for such. There is one drawback to such vessels
being kept, the want of proper harbour accommodation. There is a
pier at the north island, but vessels cannot approach it unless near
high water, and there is no means of improving it by extension. To
make a good harbour it would be necessary to build a new pier into
deep water; then, if any quantity of fish is taken, the vessels must
lose their time and bring them to Galway, thirty miles. If there
were telegraphic communication between the island and mainland, the
Galway steamer might be sent out when there was a large quantity of
fish, or if there were a number of first-class vessels there, it
might pay a steamer to attend them regularly as they do in the North
Sea.
"The Manx, Cornish, and French vessels, only go there in the early
part of the year when the mackerel sets in. The Frenchmen slightly
salt the fish on board, and take them to France and come back again
for another cargo.
"Sincerely yours,
"THOMAS F. BRADY."
That a step, however small, in the right direction has been taken,
appears from the following letter from Christopher Talbot Redington,
Esq., J.P., D.L., of Kilcornan, in the county of Galway:--
"Poor Relief (Ireland) Inquiry Commission,
"Dec. 10, 1886.
"DEAR MR. BURKE,
"I have been engaged all the summer, in conjunction with Colonel
Fraser and Mr. Mahony, in expending a grant of £20,000 in the
scheduled unions under the provisions of the Poor Relief Ireland
Act, 1886. We have carried out several works in North and South
Aran. The Board of Works are building a pier in the middle island.
"Yours truly,
"C.T. REDINGTON."
The absence of first-class fishing boats accounts for the absence of
wealth in the islands. The Aran fisherman sees the French fisherman
fishing whilst he becomes a farmer and a labourer at wages not worth
working for. The Rev. William Killride, rector of Aran, thus writes:--
"Aran, Dec. 11, 1886.
"DEAR SIR,
"Men's wages vary. There is no constant work whatever. Spring and
the seaweed gathering for kelp are the chief harvests for the
labourer. A labourer has seldom more than four months' labour in
the year; so that it is a necessity on his part to get gardens on
hire. Until last year or the year before he got from 1_s._ to 1_s._
6_d._ in spring, with his diet; at harvest, about 1_s._ with his
diet, three meals in the day, bread and tea for breakfast, etc. When
there is a hurry in seaweeding time he used to get 2_s._ 6_d._ and
diet, but this lasts only a week twice in the year."
[Sidenote: TREES IN ARAN.]
The writer then speaks of several other matters connected with the
island and about the possibility of growing timber there. "My little
grove was planted by myself. I find the greatest difficulty in
preserving it, seven trees being destroyed this year. Then I planted
every nook and cranny with evergreens; but they were plucked up
three several times. I got sick of this thing. Many places in the
island were covered with trees. In fact, fifty years ago or so, I
have been informed that a large portion of the island grew trees,
especially hazel, from 20 to 26 feet in height.
"What kept the poor rate down both last year and this was the amount
of relief given out. Mr. Thompson, the agent, laid out £140 on a
road, and £136 on seed potatoes. Sir John Barrington has given me
upwards of £100 for this object, and this year he gave me £80 or £90
for seed potatoes and £120 for relief and also money to assist
emigration and to buy turf. The people will suffer terribly this
year for want of fuel. The potato crop is all gone. No fish
whatever taken. Any further information you may want I will freely
give.
"I am, dear Sir,
"Yours, very sincerely,
"WILLIAM KILLRIDE."
[Sidenote: BARONESS BURDETT-COUTTS.]
The poverty of the Aran fishermen was equalled until lately by that of
the Baltimore fishermen in the south of Ireland. Their altered state of
circumstances appears by a report of the inspectors of Irish fisheries
on the sea fisheries of Ireland, presented to his Excellency the Lord
Lieutenant in the autumn of 1886. The Baltimore fishing boats had been
mere curraghs worth about £6 each. Owing to the liberality of Baroness
Burdett-Coutts, of imperishable fame, a number of deep sea fishing boats
were built at a cost of £600 each, which was lent to the Baltimore men
on easy rates of repayment. The report states that at Baltimore, in the
year 1885, there were 41,610 boxes of fish caught by fishermen
previously unemployed, and these boxes of fish realized a sum of
£34,585. Mostly every tradesman in the town was employed; the carpenters
in making boxes, the smiths in strapping them round with hoop iron.
"Three vessels arrived in Baltimore loaded with ice, and eight hulks
were used for storing it, two at a cost of £20 a month, the others were
owned by a company of fish buyers, at a cost of £1 5_s._ a week each.
This for ten would amount to £3080, besides a large expenditure on
packers." Fancy the like sums scattered in Aran!
[Sidenote: THE ARAN FISHERIES.]
At Baltimore in 1886, sixteen steamers were employed in carrying the
fish to England, at an estimated cost of £400 each per month.
Over 100 men were employed in the boats used by the buyers; and at a
rate of wages which, for twelve weeks, would amount to about £1500,
besides a large expenditure upon packers, etc.
In 1886 three vessels arrived with ice, containing 1423 tons, all of
which were imported, and eight hulks were used for storing it, owned by
a company of fish buyers.
The following instructions to persons applying for loans under the Irish
Reproductive Loan Fund, and Sea Fisheries Fund Acts, 37 and 38 Vict.
chap. 86; 45 Vict. chap. 16; and 47 and 48 Vict. chap. 21, would be read
with delight and acted upon with avidity were it not for the nasty note
that appears at the foot of so flaring an advertisement.
[Sidenote: LOANS FOR FISHERY PURPOSES.]
"I. Loans will be made as heretofore for the purchase or repairs of
boats, vessels, or fishing gear, on the security of borrowers and
persons to be joined with them as sureties in a joint and several
bond and promissory notes.
"II. In _special cases_, where the Inspectors of Irish Fisheries
shall deem it expedient that a new fishing vessel should be supplied
to a borrower instead of money, they may, with the consent of the
Lord Lieutenant, recommend loans on the security of the borrowers,
and on the security of the fishing vessel to be supplied. In such
cases the borrowers must give to the Commissioners of Public Works a
joint and several bond or promissory note as the case may be, for
the amount of the loan, and also execute a deed providing that the
vessel shall be registered in the name of the Commissioners of
Public Works, and so continue registered until the loan with
interest, and any expense incurred, shall be repaid, and also
providing that in default of payment of any of the instalments, by
which such loan shall be made repayable, or in default of the
borrowers preserving the same in proper order and condition, or in
case the said vessel should become in the opinion of the said
Commissioners a deficient security for the amount of the loan for
the time being unpaid, the said Commissioners may cause such boat or
vessel to be sold.
"III. Time for repaying any loan not exceeding ten years.
"IV. Repayment by half yearly instalments with interest at the rate
of 2.5 per cent. per annum.
[Sidenote: THE ARAN FISHERIES.]
"NOTE.--It must be observed that loans under rule No. 2. can only be
recommended _under very_ _exceptional circumstances, and to a very
limited extent_, as the funds available for loans for new vessels
are quite insufficient to meet large demands. It will, therefore, be
impossible for the inspectors to do more in carrying out this rule
than to recommend loans on the security of vessels in a few cases
only, where very exceptional circumstances exist, and only in cases
of new first-class fishing vessels being provided for with
thoroughly experienced fishermen of good character.
"No loans for the purchase of gear will be made without personal
security, as laid down by the rules already in force, see No. 1.
"By order,
"GEORGE COFFEY,
"Secretary.
"Fisheries Office, Dublin Castle, February, 1886."
[Sidenote: IRISH FISHERIES--IRISH PARLIAMENT.]
Of the immensity of the fisheries we can form no estimate. But to the
islanders the fisheries are worthless without boats, and without the
means of obtaining boats; without funds, and without the means of
obtaining funds. Except "under very exceptional circumstances, and to a
very limited extent," they are unable to launch out into the deep and
let down their nets for a draught. It is said by one party that a
different state of things would prevail had the Irish people an Irish
Parliament. That may be so and it may not be so; but one thing is
certain, that whilst in 1887 no bonus of any kind can be obtained, in
1787 bonuses of many kinds could be obtained, and were obtained. In the
27th year of George III., A.D. 1787, an Irish Act was passed "for the
encouragement of the fishery usually called the deep sea fishery." The
marginal note of that section, a section too long to repeat, states that
"bounties will be given, 80 guineas for the greatest quantity of
herrings caught by the crew of any one vessel, and imported between the
1st of June and the 31st of December in any one year; 60 guineas for the
next greatest quantity, 40 guineas for the next, and 20 guineas for the
next, to be paid on the 1st of January following." By the same Act
bounties of four shillings a barrel were authorized to be given for
herrings; and by another section, the fourteenth, three shillings and
threepence by the hundredweight was allowed for all dried cod, ling, and
other fish mentioned therein. Bounties, however, have long since been
discouraged by political economists, and loans have long since been
discouraged by other economists, and between those scientists money for
the improvement of the Aran fishery was never so hard to be got at as at
this present time.
[Sidenote: THE ARAN FISHERIES--TRAWLING.]
From the coastguard return it would appear that the Galway coastguard
division is guarded by five coastguard stations, two of them being on
the Aran islands, in which there has been an increase in 1886 of two
second class and sixteen third class boats solely engaged in fishing.
The trawlers work from Barna to the islands of Aran. That trawling
injures the supply of fish is insisted upon by the one party and denied
by the other. A court of public inquiry was held in Galway, where the
entire question was investigated; the result of which investigation will
form the subject of a special report. We shall only observe that the
Scotch Fishery Board has prohibited trawling in some places in Scotland.
"In the Galway Bay trawling was prohibited for a number of years in
about half the bay. For about four years it was not followed at all,
and, so far as the evidence at public inquiries could be relied on,
there was no improvement in the fisheries during the cessation of this
mode of fishing in either the whole, or part of the bay. In the case of
Dublin Bay trawling has been prohibited for nearly forty-four years; and
the question arises whether the fisheries of that bay have increased in
that period.
"In other bays no trawling has ever been carried on; and the present
state of the fisheries in such places will have to be carefully inquired
into."[19]
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Report of Inspectors of Irish Fisheries for 1887, p. 10.
[19] Report of Inspectors of Fisheries, 1887, p. 8.
CHAPTER VI.
"The darksome pines on yonder rocks reclined
Wave high and murmur to the hollow wind."
POPE.
Having thus far spoken of the wealth that might be realized by the
islanders from the waters that surround their islands, let us turn to
speak of the wealth that might be realized by the islanders from the
islands themselves--wealth produceable neither by patches of potatoes,
nor by tillage, nor by minerals, nor by pasturage. On the islands are
vast terraces of naked rocks, and there are vast terraces of rocks not
naked on which grew those forests of oak, of yew, and of fir of which we
have already spoken, when treating of Druidism.
[Sidenote: RE-AFFORESTING ARAN.]
To re-afforest the disafforested wilderness has of late occupied the
thoughts of the thoughtful in our country. Dr. Lyons, for some time M.P.
for the city of Dublin, gave to it much of his attention. He has been
taken away, but his mantle has fallen upon another. Dermot O'Conor
Donelan, Esq., J.P., of Sylane, near Tuam, teaches us how the people of
other countries are enriched by their forests. Having made a tour
through the unwooded mountains of Connemara, he subsequently in the
present year made a tour through the wooded mountains of the Grand Duchy
of Baden. His inquiries and the result of his inquiries in that
prosperous country he published in a series of letters in the _Irish
Times_ and _Freeman's Journal_. To give those letters _in extenso_,
however instructive, would fill too many of our over-filled pages, but
we may be permitted to make a few quotations from them.
[Sidenote: FORESTS IN BADEN.]
"It is a noteworthy fact," writes Mr. Donelan, "that from the class of
lands similar to those that lie waste in Ireland, the recent progress of
Germany is generally believed to proceed. Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony,
Wurtemburg, Baden, and Alsace-Lorraine have a combined population of
40,644,000. The labour connected with the forests of those countries and
their products have been estimated to be worth £9,450,000; and those
earnings suffice for the maintenance of about 300,000 families." He then
forms a painful contrast between Baden and Ireland--between the German
mountain districts, and the mountain districts of the same kind in
Ireland where there is a similarity of soil; but there the similarity
ends.
[Sidenote: FOREST INDUSTRIES.]
"The mountains and bogs of Connemara, with the roots and remains of
trees scattered everywhere amongst them, are lying there in their bare
and melancholy desolation, and but for the presence of some miserable
hovels, the whole scene might be inside the Arctic circle. The mountains
of Schwartzwald, however, are covered with forests of silver fir, and by
their vast supplies of timber are creating vast industries. In a tour
which I made through it some months ago, I observed that almost every
branch of wood-work was in active operation, and for miles together the
rattle of machinery was hardly ever silent. The manufacture of paper
from wood, which is comparatively new, has already assumed very large
proportions in South-Western Germany. Second class wood-ends, etc., for
paper-making, can be had for about eight shillings a ton; while straw
must always cost from 30_s._ to £2 10_s._ This difference will gradually
transfer the manufacture of paper and papier-maché to this and similar
forest districts. Within the last few years several mills have been
established for the manufacture of cellulose from wood. They have been
found successful, and it is expected that this will soon be among the
most important of the forest industries. A list of the objects of which
cellulose is the basis would form a curious example of recent invention.
In the American Patent Office no less than one hundred and twenty
patents have been taken out in connection with cellulose since 1870.
Gun-cotton, collodion, celluloid, artificial ivory, handles for knives,
etc; dental plates, cuffs, collars, shoe-tips and in-soles, billiard
balls, are a few names taken from a long list, and which will give an
idea of the number of trades this one material is establishing in many
cities and towns of Germany. Celluloid can be made as hard as ivory or
be spread on like paint; it is water proof, air proof, and acid proof.
It can be pressed or stamped, planed as wood, turned in a lathe, and it
can be transparent or opaque.
"I am not able to state the quantity of basket and wicker-work used in
the United Kingdom, but at the lowest computation it must be several
millions worth a year, the imports alone being very large.
[Sidenote: RE-AFFORESTING ARAN.]
"It would not be possible to enumerate," he writes, "the number of
industries which supplies of timber are capable of developing. Some of
those would spring up within twelve or fourteen years, and which are
further capable of enormous development. Poplar grows rapidly in
Ireland; in twelve years the thinnings are of considerable size, and,
according to Mr. Herbert's report on the forestry of Russia (Blue Book,
commercial, 31, 1883), it appears that from poplar most of the paper
exported from Russia is manufactured. The consumption of paper in the
United Kingdom must be over £30,000,000 a year, and if it be probable
that mountain forests are likely to be the scene of a considerable
portion of its production in the future, what an opportunity is there
then of utilizing by means of forestry the waste lands and the cheap
labour of Donegal and Connemara. Ever since 1800 the question of the
waste lands has been before the public. It was reported on in 1812, and
again by the Devon Commission of 1840. Every writer on the industrial
resources of Ireland had paid it particular attention. It was mentioned
by Sir Richard Griffith, by Munns, by Dutton, and even before 1800 by
Arthur Young. There is hardly a Government in Europe which has not
undertaken the work of reclaiming and afforesting waste lands."
[Sidenote: FORESTS FORMERLY IN ARAN.]
So writes the author of those interesting letters, and he dissipates an
illusion which is prevalent amongst us, namely, that to turn planting
into profit requires long years and gross timber. On the contrary, as
his observations prove, in their earlier years of growth forests will
supply many industries for which old timber is unsuited. A great
objection to re-afforesting mountains and rocky districts is the length
of time that is generally supposed must elapse before so gigantic a work
could become remunerative; but Mr. O'Conor Donelan shows that no great
length of time is necessary, and that after a very few years timber
would be suitable for the works of which he speaks. Would that the
Government would take his words to heart, and do in Ireland what German
statesmen have done in Germany! There are men amongst us who would fain
believe that Aran is too much exposed to the westerly winds to admit of
timber being grown on the islands; but the great roots old in the earth
tell of the great trees that grew in Aran many centuries ago.
CHAPTER VII.
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE GROVE.
"Oh the Oak, and the Ash, and the bonnie Ivy tree
Flourish best at hame in the North Countrie."
[Sidenote: SUN-WORSHIP IN ARAN.]
In the present chapter we propose to give a few of the legends with
which groves were enriched when the worship of the sun (Baal) was the
religion of the world--legends yet remembered in Aran. In the groves
they offered sacrifices, and "burnt," writes the Prophet Hosea, "incense
under the oak and the poplar and the turpentine tree [the pine], because
the shadow thereof was good."[20] And we are told that "Abraham planted
a grove in Bersabee, and there called upon the Name of the everlasting
God."[21]
[Sidenote: WORSHIP OF BAAL IN ARAN.]
The selection of such places originated, no doubt, in the fact that the
gloom of the forest was calculated to excite awe, and because they
considered that the spirits of the departed hovered over the places
where the bodies were buried; and it was common to bury the dead under
trees, as appears from the eighth verse of the thirty-fifth chapter of
the Book of Genesis, where it is stated that when Deborah, the nurse of
Rebecca, died, she was buried at the foot of Bethel under an oak tree,
and the name of that place was called "The Oak of Weeping;" and when
Saul, the first King of Israel, fell at the battle of Gilboe, his bones
were buried under an oak tree at Jabesh.[22] Amongst the Hebrews it was
common, before the time of Moses, to plant groves. But the idolatrous
nations planted them also; and groves and the places of idol-worship
soon became convertible terms. For the purpose, therefore, of
extirpating idolatry, the Lord thus spoke through Moses: "Thou shalt
plant no grove, nor any tree near the altar of the Lord thy God."[23]
And in after-centuries, when Josias abolished the worship of Baal in
Judah, and destroyed them that offered incense to the sun, and the moon,
and to the twelve signs, he caused the grove to be burnt there.[24]
Whether the groves of Aran were destroyed at the time of the destruction
of the religion of Baal and of the introduction of Christianity, or in
after-ages, it is impossible now to state. That great trees had
existence in the islands in 1618 is certain, as appears by a partly
hereinbefore recited indenture of that date, when Henry Lynch did demise
a moiety of the three islands to William Anderson, his executors, etc.,
for a long term of years, excepting thereout _great trees_.
[Sidenote: NYMPHS OF TREES.]
_The Oak._--The chief object of worship was the oak, which has not
inaptly been called "the king of the forest." With its life was bound up
the life of a nymph, for the nymphs of trees, called in classics
_Hamadryades_, were believed to die together with the trees which had
been their abode, and with which they had come into existence. Those
that presided over woods in general were called _Dryades_, as the
divinities of particular trees were Hamadryades. Not unfrequently has
the axe of the woodman been stayed by the voice of the nymph breaking
from the groaning oak.
[Sidenote: THE OAK.]
That misfortune was believed to follow in the footsteps of those who
wantonly felled an oak is abundantly proved by the soothsayers in the
olden time. Often have oaks become attached to the lords of the house
with whose existence they were bound for hundreds of years. If the
leaves in a living state have prophesied touching the affairs of men, so
did the dried timbers, as in the case of the _Argo_, when they warned
the Argonauts of the misfortunes that awaited them. Not unfrequently has
the falling of a branch of the oak tree warned the protecting family of
coming disasters. The idols in idolatrous times were manufactured from
its wood, though more frequently from that of the ash, and from it was
cut the yule-log which served to maintain the perpetual fire. Once a
year all fires and lights but one were extinguished, and that was the
oaken log, from which every other fire in the islands was with much
ceremony relighted.
The medicinal qualities of the tree, and the charmed life it bore,
prophetic, as we have said, and causing diseases to depart by its spells
and incantations, must have made its existence, if it knew anything at
all about it, a happy one. The Irish of the "oak" is _Dara_, and many an
Aranite bears that name.
Now, there was a blessed Saint, "Mac Dara," who lived in those islands
long ages ago, and there was a renowned statue of him made of oak, which
the people venerated with an idolatrous veneration. It was in vain that
the Catholic clergy called on them to desist from kneeling before the
graven image, and from swearing on it rather than on the Book of the
Gospels, on which all men swore. Malachy O'Queely, Roman Catholic
Archbishop of Tuam, was, however, resolved to put down an exhibition
which he considered a scandal to the Catholic Church, and so, coming to
the islands in 1645, he tore down the statue and flung it into the sea;
but ill luck awaited him. In the same year he was sent by the Supreme
Council of Kilkenny to accompany the confederate troops to Sligo, which
had been lately taken by the Parliamentary forces. He did so, and the
warrior archbishop rushed to the relief of the town, and for a season
dislodged the enemy; but the tide of victory turned, the Irish were
routed, and the body of the prelate was literally cut to pieces. Upon
him was found that treaty with Charles I. which afterwards helped to
bring the unhappy king to the scaffold.
[Sidenote: OAK--ASH.]
Another of the superstitions that attaches to the king of the forest is
that, if his majesty leafs before the ash, the coming season will be
dry; if, however, the ash leafs before the oak, then the coming season
will be wet.
"If the oak's before the ash,
Then you'll only get a splash;
If the ash precedes the oak,
Then you may expect a soak."
Of the Irish oak and of the horror that insects have of that tree, we
may form an estimate from Hall, who, in his Chronicles, says that
"William Rufus builded Westminster Hall, and the oaks with which the
said Hall was roof'd were felled in Oxmanstown Green, near Dublin, and
no spider webbeth and breedeth in that roof of oak even to this day." Of
the remote pedigree of the oak we need not speak further than to remind
those who are curious about such matters that the oak all over the world
is said to be the first created of all trees, and next to it comes the
ash.
The _Ash_ is "the Venus of the forest." On ashen sticks (dreadful in
matters of witchcraft, as appears from the evidence given in the case
of "the Dame Alice Kettler," tried for witchcraft in Kilkenny, in 1324)
witches were wont at night to ride "through the fog and filthy air." To
love-sick maidens the even ash leaf--that is, where the leaflets of the
leaf are even in number--is of priceless value, "and note that if a
youngster meeteth and plucketh an even ash leaffe and a four leaffed
clover [shamrock], they are most certaine to meet their husband or wyfe,
as the case may be, before the day passeth over;" and so runs the old
saw--
"And if you find
An even-leaved ash and a four-leaved clover,
You'll see your true love 'fore the day is over."
[Sidenote: ASH--ROWAN TREE.]
Strange that the mountain ash, the _rowan tree_, should be held in
horror by witches. "Of it whip-handles are made, for the bewitched and
stumbling horses thereby become unbewitched and unstumblers." So also
the housewife should, before turning the cows out to grass for the
summer, tie a switch of mountain ash with a red worsted thread around
the cow's tail. The churn, so often bewitched of its butter, is certain
to withstand the evil eye when the churn-staff is manufactured of the
rowan tree. The roots of the ash or the mountain ash, in Aran, are of
rare occurrence; we shall, therefore, pass on to the _aspen_, of which
it is said that it alone refused to bow, as the other trees did, to the
Redeemer, and that for such conduct the aspen leaf all over the world
trembleth even to this hour.
[Sidenote: ELDER--PINE.]
_The Elder._--The most unlucky of all trees is the elder, now a mere
bush; for out of it was made the cross of Christ, and from one of its
boughs Judas hanged himself. In Scotland this tree is known as the
bourtree, and hence the rhyme--
"Bourtree, bourtree, crooked wrung,
Never straight and never strong;
Ever bush and never tree,
Since our Lord was nailed to thee."
The mushrooms growing in or near the elder are known as Judas's ears, of
wondrous virtue in curing coughs.
"For a cough take Judas' ear,
With the parings of the pear;
And drink this without fear."
The superstitions attached to this tree are many, and to tell them would
fill a volume.
Stumps of _Pine_ and _Fir_ are numerous in the Aran islands. The fir
tree has been ever highly esteemed. It was amongst the materials
employed in the building of Solomon's temple. Together with the pine it
was held in such veneration in France, that St. Martin met with the
strongest possible opposition when he proposed the destruction of the
holy fir groves. The fir grew luxuriantly in Palestine; and the Prophet
Hosea saith that the Lord will make Ephraim flourish "like a green fir
tree."[25] And another prophet, Ezechiel, informs us, in the fifth verse
of the twenty-seventh chapter of his prophecy, that the navy of Tyre was
constructed of this tree, whilst the masts were from the cedars (pines)
of Libanus. It was the timber, too, used for the manufacture of musical
instruments in Israel; for in the Second Book of Samuel (ch. vi. 5) it
is written that "David and all the house of Israel played before the
Lord on all manner of instruments made of _fir wood_, even on harps, and
lutes, and timbrels, and cornets, and cymbals." And when Hiram, King of
Tyre, sent timber to Solomon for the building of the temple, it was the
cedar and the fir[26] he sent, for which he was allowed twenty thousand
measures of wheat. It was, in Palestine, a tall tree, on the tops of
which, we are informed somewhere in the Psalms, the storks built their
nests.
[Sidenote: HOLLY--IVY.]
The _Holly_, or _Holy_, and the _Ivy_ are indigenous in the soil of
Aran. In idolatrous times holly was planted, according to Pliny, in the
neighbourhood of dwelling-houses, to keep away spirits and all manner of
enchantments. There can be no doubt that those who believe dreams to be
other than the wanderings of the fancy can on any night have steady
sensible dreams of a reliable nature if they bring home in their
handkerchief (observing the strictest silence all the time) nine leaves
of thornless holly and place the same under their pillow. Amongst the
conversions of the trees of the forest from the pagan to the Christian
faith, that of the ivy was the most remarkable; it no longer adorns the
brow of a drunken Bacchus, but is now entwined in wreaths over the altar
at the midnight Mass on Christmas night. Nevertheless, they that would
look into futurity can still read in the ivy leaf of what is coming to
pass in after-times. Place a leaf, on New Year's Eve, in a basin of
water, and take it out on the eve of Twelfth Night; if it come out
fresh, health is on the house; but if it come out spotted, sickness and
death are sure to follow.
[Sidenote: HAWTHORN--BLACKTHORN.]
The _Hawthorn_ and _Blackthorn_ grow freely in the islands. Need it be
told that the antipathy between these shrubs is so great that the one is
never found to be growing naturally near the other? Of course, if
planted together, they will struggle on for a time; but one or other
generally sickens and dies; for there is a controversy between them as
to which had the misfortune to supply the crown of thorns to Christ on
the night of the Passion. The peasantry in England, Scotland, and France
believe it was the hawthorn, and they look on it as an outrage to bring
in flowering hawthorn in May to their houses, it being unlucky and
accursed ever since that dreadful night preceding the Crucifixion. So
also the blackthorn in Austria and the south of Europe is considered
unlucky; as it is there insisted on that _it_ supplied the thorns,
wherefore it is doomed to blossom when no other tree of the forest
dares, in the teeth of the poisonous Eurus, so to do. On which side the
truth lies we shall not venture to speculate; but our astonishment is
great when we learn that the walking-stick of Joseph of Arimathæa was of
hawthorn, that in Glastonbury he stuck it accidentally in the ground,
and that ever since it and its descendants bud, blossom, and fade on
Christmas Day!
[Sidenote: THE ROSE--SILENCE.]
_The Rose._--"I am the Rose of Sharon." In the East it is the pride of
flowers for fragrance and elegance. It was used amongst the ancients in
crowns and chaplets at festive meetings and religious sacrifices. A
traveller in Persia describes two rose trees fully fourteen feet high,
laden with thousands of flowers, and of a bloom and delicacy of scent
that imbued the whole atmosphere with the most exquisite perfume.
Originally it was white, and the white moss-rose was suspended over the
door of the Temple of Silence; whence it is that secrets are said to be
told "under the rose." At convivial banquets in Greece the guests not
unfrequently wore chaplets of roses, and anything said by them whilst
wearing the emblem of silence was not to be repeated. The white rose was
the emblem of purity, and the term "Mystical Rose" is applied by the
Catholic Church to the Virgin Mary. Under the cross there grew, amongst
the wild flowers of Calvary, a multitude of white roses, some of which
were reddened with the blood of Christ. From these comes the red rose,
emblematic, not alone of purity, but of martyrdom.
[Sidenote: THE ROSARY--FERNS.]
The tomb of the Virgin (the Rose that never fades) was found by the
apostles to be filled with roses after the Assumption. Her altars ever
after have been decorated with roses, and it was a high privilege in the
Middle Ages to have a garden where no other flower was admitted. These
gardens, called rosaries, may have suggested to St. Dominic the name
given to that collection of prayers which he arranged, and which he
called the Rosary.
The love of the nightingale for this flower is proverbial in the East.
It is unnecessary, of course, for us to remind our readers that the
white and red roses were the badges of the rival houses of York and
Lancaster.
As for the elm and the beech, countless superstitions are attached to
these trees, but as we fail to find that they existed in Aran, so we
shall not prosecute further our inquiries on this head.
_Ferns._--Not the least interesting amongst the botanical curiosities of
Aran are the ferns, that carry their seed on their backs--a seed that
has, it is said, the extraordinary property of making the person in
whose shoes it is placed instantly invisible to all but himself. So
Shakespeare has it, too, in his play of "1 Henry IV.," act ii. scene 1:
"We have the receipt of fern seed, we walk invisible."
[Sidenote: FERNS--INVISIBILITY.]
A painful illustration of this property occurred, it is told, when once
upon a time a man was looking for a foal that had strayed from his
stable. He happened to pass through a meadow just as the fern was
ripened, some of the seeds of which were shaken into his shoes. After a
wearisome and fruitless search during the night he returned all
travel-soiled in the morning, and sat down in his house to join the
family at breakfast. He was amazed to see that neither wife nor children
welcomed him home, nor showed the slightest concern at the night he had
spent, nor even inquired about the result of his search. At length,
breaking silence, he said, "I haven't found the foal." All were
startled, and they looked everywhere to see where he was hiding.
Believing that his family were treating him with contempt, he repeated,
in a towering passion, "I have not found the foal!" They all sprang to
their feet, and his wife called him by name to give over that nonsense,
and to come out from his hiding-place. The creaking of his shoes was
distinctly heard, though the wearer thereof could not be seen. At
length, in a voice of anger, he repeated, as he planted himself opposite
his wife at the foot of the table, "I say, I have not found the foal!"
Need we tell the terrors of the family? But just then he remembered that
he had, on the previous night, crossed a meadow loaded with ferns, and
that some of the seed might have got into his shoes, and that he was
therefore invisible. Flinging them off, he at once became visible to
everybody.
Fern seed has also the valuable property of doubling a man's power in
the working field, several examples of which are given by writers on
this interesting subject.
[Sidenote: FAIRY FLAX--FAIRIES.]
The _Fairy Flax_ of Aran we have frequently spoken of in the preceding
pages, and that flax may be spun from year's end to year's end, and
little realized thereby, unless, indeed, "the good people," as the
fairies are called,[27] take the spinner under their protection. Now,
there was once a man in humble circumstances, who had an only daughter,
the most beautiful creature that ever was seen. She spent much of her
time spinning, but to no purpose. At length a hideous dwarf, lame and
blind of an eye, came to her one day as she was spinning, and presented
her with a distaff full of flax, upon which, he said, there was enough
for her whole life, if she lived a hundred years, provided she did not
spin it quite off. On she went spinning, but never spinning to the end,
and her loom produced the choicest of stuffs, for which she received
prices almost fabulous! Day by day her wealth increased, and after a
time she felt assured that the produce of her labour had now secured so
sure a market that it made little difference whether she spun the fairy
flax right off or not; so, to try what would be the effect, in her
curiosity she spun it to the end. In a moment the wheel stopped, and she
had ever after to repent the curiosity that stripped her of immense
wealth.
[Sidenote: SATURDAY'S SPINNING--HEMP.]
The spinning-wheel in Aran, the old crones say, should never spin on
Saturday. Whence this keeping holy the Saturday I know not; but it does
look as if they who kept the Saturday holy, were of Israelitish
descent--were, perhaps, of the lost tribes carried into Nineveh at the
time of the Captivity by Salamanassar, 730 B.C.![28] Now, there were two
old women indefatigable spinners, whose wheels never stood still, though
they were by the wise men warned not to spin on Saturdays. At length one
of them died, and on the Saturday night following she appeared to the
other, who was as usual busy at the wheel, and showed her her burning
hand, saying--
"See what in hell at last I've won,
Because on Saturdays I've spun."
_Hemp._--I don't remember seeing hemp growing in Aran to any great
extent. Sowing the seed of hemp on All Hallows' Eve in some parts of
the country, and on St. John's Night in others, is described in the
following lines from Gay's "Pastorals":--
"At eve last midsummer no sleep I sought,
But to the field a bag of hemp seed brought:
I scattered round the seed on every side,
And three times in a trembling accent cried,
'This hemp seed with my virgin hand I sow,
Who shall my true love be the crop shall mow.'
I straight looked back, and, if my eyes speak truth,
With his keen scythe behind me came the youth.
'With my sharp heel I three times mark the ground,
And turn me thrice around, around, around!"
[Sidenote: HAZEL--DIVINING-RODS.]
The _Hazel_, one of Thor's trees, is generally used as a divining-rod to
discover mines and lost treasures supposed to be hidden underground. The
person who seeks for the treasure takes a hazel rod with an end in each
hand, and then slowly walks over the ground, keeping the rod in a
horizontal position before him; when passing over the spot it bends down
like a bow in the middle, towards the place as if it were magnetized, as
the needle turns to the pole. Beyond a doubt the hazel is known to
miners, and to those who look for minerals underground, as the
divining-rod.
[Sidenote: FAREWELL INISHMORE.]
And now, bringing our legends to a close, we shall bid farewell to these
lonely and lovely isles, and in bidding them farewell we shall merely
ask how it is that the travelling English public travel not into these
islands, where frosts never wither, where snows never rest? And so
farewell to Inishmore, the island-home of St. Enda--Inishmore--once
"Notissima famâ
Insula dives opum, _Hiberniæ_ dum regna manebant
Nunc tantum sinus, et statio mala fida carinis."
FOOTNOTES:
[20] Hos. iv. 13.
[21] Gen. xxi. 33.
[22] 1 Chron. x. 12.
[23] Deut. xvi. 21.
[24] 2 Kings xxiii. 5, 6.
[25] Hos. xiv. 9.
[26] 1 Kings v. 10, 11.
[27] Numbers of books treat of the superstitious belief in fairies. The
Irish fancy that they are the "fallen angels" mentioned in Jude 6, and
that on the day of judgment they will be released from their hapless
condition (2 Peter ii. 4). The belief in fairies is universal in
Mahomedan countries.--_Vide_ "Lalla-Rookh," "Paradise and the Peri."
[28] 2 Kings xvii. 6.
APPENDIX A.
"Adorned with honours on their native shore,
Silent they sleep and dream of wars no more."
POPE'S _Iliad_.
[Sidenote: O'BRIENS LORDS OF ARAN.]
We have spoken so much in the foregoing pages of the O'Briens, lords of
Aran, that we feel inclined to say a word as to, who those O'Briens
were, whence they came, and whither they went; and first, let us state
that their pedigree is traced by Irish genealogists to a date earlier
than the Christian era. The O'Briens, lords of Aran, were descended from
Bryan Boroimhe, King of Thomond and monarch of all Ireland, who
conquered and fell at the battle of Clontarf on April 23, 1014, when the
Danish power, all over Ireland, was scattered to the four winds of
heaven. In the third generation after the death of Bryan, his descendant
Dermod sat on the throne of Thomond, and this Dermod had sons and
daughters, and the eldest of the sons was called Turlough, who in 1118
became, on his father's death, King of Thomond, whilst his younger
brother was Mahon, and his youngest brother was Teige; and the clan
MacTeige for 470 years ruled those islands, we have no doubt, with a
very equitable and a very paternal rule, and wholly unhampered with
legislative bodies such as a Witenagemot, or with the parliamentary
institutions of the Normans, where the members then, as now, had the
liberty of speaking, sometimes very plainly, their minds--as, indeed,
the Norman name of our legislative assembly imports: _parler-les-mens_,
a place for "speaking their minds." That the Corporation of Galway
recognized the power of the O'Briens, lords of the isles, is plainly
told in the foregoing pages, where we remember that twelve tuns of wine
were annually paid to the lord for sweeping the sea, as it were with a
broom, clean of the Algerine pirates that then infested the high seas;
and there can be little if any doubt that the O'Briens were ready, from
time to time and at all times, to massacre the foe wherever they met
him, and to convert his ships to their own use and behoof in manner and
form as by their indenture of treaty was provided. It is not for us to
criticize with critical pen the policy of the respected lord of the
isles, who, in 1560, was swallowed up in the deep, near the Great Man's
Bay, when he was returning from Thomond loaded with the booty which, at
the point of the sword, he had won from the subjects of his cousin
O'Brien of Thomond; for it does not appear that ties of blood preserved
his Majesty of Thomond from the vengeance of his lordship the lord of
the isles, or, _mutatis mutandis_, the lord of the isles from the
vengeance of his Majesty. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,"
was their maxim, and it may have been good law where the antagonists had
each two eyes and two teeth; but the vengeance was dreadful when the
punished party had only one eye and one tooth. He was then blinded and
untoothed out and out; and frequently such dreadful vengeance did await
the conquered. Let us not, however, be too hard on the conquerors when
we remember that David sawed his prisoners in two, and drove harrows
over them in a harrowed field.[29] The O'Flaherties, an equally warlike
race, dispossessed the lords of the isles, and in 1588, the very year of
the Spanish Armada, Queen Elizabeth finally confiscated their
territories, and now the name of O'Brien is forgotten in Aran. Not so on
the mainland; the O'Briens are still in Thomond and elsewhere, as, it is
to be hoped, they will be for centuries yet to come. The lords of the
Isles of Aran are extinct. The last of the male line was John O'Brien of
Moyvanine and Clounties, whose daughter Sarah was married to Stephen
Roche, from whom is descended the present Thomas Redington Roche, of
Ryehill, Esq., J.P., Co. Galway. Amongst the families of this house
still existing in Thomond, are the noble house of Inchiquin and the
O'Briens of Ballynalacken, both of whom trace up, in an unbroken
succession, to Bryan Boroimhe, who, like Leonidas at Thermopylæ, fell
fighting the foreign foe for the liberties of his country.
[Sidenote: O'BRIENS LORDS INCHIQUIN.]
The title of Inchiquin dates from the year 1543, but no title was
required to ennoble those who were of the blood of kings, and were
"nobler than the royalty that first ennobled them." The untitled
aristocracy in England are often superior to the titled aristocracy, who
cannot trace back farther than the Wars of the Roses. Now, the last King
of Thomond resigned his royalty to Henry VIII., who in return, by patent
A.D. 1543, bestowed upon Murrough O'Brien, and upon the heirs male of
his body, the title of Baron of Inchiquin. This Murrough had two sons,
the elder Dermot, and the younger Donough, and Dermot on his father's
death became Baron of Inchiquin; and so the title descended from father
to son until the year 1855, when James, the twelfth baron, who was also
seventh Earl of Inchiquin (creation A.D. 1654) and third Marquis of
Thomond (A.D. 1800), died without issue male, when the earldom and
marquisate expired. Thereupon the father of the present baron, who was
also a baronet, and brother to William Smith O'Brien, celebrated as
Member of Parliament and leader of the Irish people, knowing his descent
from Donough, second son of the first baron, instructed his counsel to
bring his case before the Committee of Privileges of the House of Lords,
to whose satisfaction he proved that he was heir male of the body of the
first baron, and thereupon he was confirmed in said barony, and became
thirteenth baron.
[Sidenote: MARSHAL MACMAHON.]
Let us now go back to Dermod, the third generation from Bryan Boroimhe,
which Dermod died, as we said, in 1118, leaving three sons, the eldest
Turlough, King of Thomond, the younger Mahon, and the youngest Teige,
lord of the isles; from Mahon is sprung Marshal MacMahon, whose acts and
deeds are known of by all men.
[Sidenote: O'BRIENS OF BALLYNALACKEN.]
This Turlough, King of Thomond, was ancestor of Teige O'Brien, who
married Annabella, daughter of Ulick McWilliam Burke, of Clanrickarde,
known as "Ulick of the Wine," and by her had, with other sons, Turlough
Don, King of Thomond in 1498, and Donal. Turlough Don was ancestor of
the family of Inchiquin, of which we have spoken, and from Donal sprang
Turlough O'Brien, who was married to a grandniece of Sir Toby Butler,
better known as the jovial Sir Toby, the great luminary of the Connaught
Circuit, Solicitor-General for Ireland under James II., and the
celebrated lawyer who drafted that treaty which will be remembered by
all generations as the broken Treaty of Limerick. Turlough was the
grandfather of John O'Brien, of Ballynalacken, who died in 1855, and of
James O'Brien, Esq., Q.C., who was Member of Parliament for the city of
Limerick from 1854 to 1858, when he was raised to a judgeship in the
Queen's Bench. It is too near our own time to speak of that learned
lawyer further than to say that "he judged not according to appearance,
but judged just judgment;" that in him the prisoner at the bar found a
merciful judge, and at the same time one who held the scales so that
crime could not escape with impunity. Let us hope that when he went to a
higher court he reaped the rewards promised to a just judge; and let us
hope that those who come after him of his name and race may, when their
turn comes, follow in his footsteps, and thus show that the wisdom of
the wise still dwells in the brehons of the Celtic race.
The Ballynalacken O'Briens are now represented amongst the landed gentry
by James O'Brien, J.P., D.L., and they are also represented at the Bar
by his brother, my learned friend, Peter, late Sergeant O'Brien, now
Solicitor-General for Ireland.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] 2 Sam. xii. 31.
APPENDIX B.
STATISTICS OF ISLANDS OF ARAN.
Area, 11,288 acres.
Population--Census 1815, 2400
" " 1871, 3049; increase, 640
" " 1881, 3163 " 114
Inhabited houses, 1815 395
" " 1881 576 " 181
Petty Sessions District, Aran.
Religion of Aranites, 1871, 2993 Roman Catholics
" " " 55 Protestant Episcopalians
" " " 1 Presbyterian
----
Total 3049
Religion of Aranites, 1881, 3118 Roman Catholics; increase, 125
" " " 44 Protestant Episcopalians;
decrease, 11
" " " 1 Presbyterian
----
Total 3163
Number speaking Irish only in Aran, 1871 835
" " English and Irish " 1924
" " Irish only, 1881 889
" " English and Irish, 1881 1829
Constabulary barracks, 1871 1
" " 1881 3
Number of constabulary, 1871 6
" " 1881 18
Coastguard barracks, 1881 2
Quarter Sessions--Galway.
Petty Sessions--Held on the islands.
Roman Catholic churches in Aran 4
Protestant Episcopal church 1
Protestant church accommodation 180
Annual income of parish priest, 1801 £60[30]
" " Protestant incumbent £125[31]
National schools in islands 4
Average attendance, Sept., 1886, to June,
1887 524
Manager, Rev. M. O'Donoghoe, P.P.
Fishing boats on islands, 1st class, 1887 0
" " 2nd " " 34
" " 3rd " " 130
Poor-law valuation £1576
Rent, 1881 £2067
Average poor rate, last ten years 3_s._ in the £
Paupers in workhouse 0
Distance of workhouse from islands 30 miles
Numbers receiving outdoor relief 43
Grand jury works on island, Spring assizes, 1887 0
Grand jury cess " " " £34 12s. 2d.
Crown rent (_sup._, p. 45) 18s. 5-1/2d.
Quit rent (_sup._, p. 45) £14 8s. 4d.
Labourer's wages 1s. _per diem_
" " spring and harvest 1s. 6d., with diet
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Vide return made in 1801 by Most Rev. Edward Dillon, D.D., Roman
Catholic Archbishop of Tuam (Lord Castlereagh's Correspondence, vol. iv.
p. 126). I can find no subsequent return.
[31] Charles's "Irish Church Directory."
THE END.
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