If you are his male descendant then you may be the head of the O Maddens.

The leading line of the family had descended from late sixteenth century chieftains in east Galway to the position of minor landed gentry in Connemara in the early nineteenth century. Almost all of the leading branch of the name immigrated to America in the late 1840s.

Until now the fate of the leading line of the O Maddens in the United States has not been traced beyond 1902. Now I believe we may be in a position to discern what became of this family and identify the head of the name in the late twentieth century.

Donal O Madden, the last Gaelic chieftain of the name rose to power in his ancestral territory after killing the then chieftain Hugh O Madden, of a rival line to that of Donal, in 1567. (Donal himself was the son and nephew of earlier chieftains who had also been killed by internal rivals.) By the time of Donal the English administration had gradually begun to reassert its authority west of the River Shannon and, like many chieftains, Donal aligned himself with the Crown in an effort to secure his precarious position. He was charged under English law with the murder but the Bishop of Clonfert and the diocesan clergy declared him not guilty and the Crown recognised him as ‘Captain of his Nation’ (ie. of the O Maddens) in that same year. Some time thereafter he came to occupy Longford Castle in the parish of Tiranascragh in east Galway, the principal castle attached to the office of chieftain.

Longford Castle in the parish of Tiranascragh, the principal castle attached to the office of chieftain and, from its architectural features, the earliest of surviving castles associated with the O Maddens.

Under Gaelic law a wide number of members of the ruling house, including brothers, nephews and cousins of a recent chieftain, were eligible to attain the chieftaincy and could do so if they had sufficient support. On becoming chieftain they had use of the castles and estates attached to that office. Under Gaelic law Donal was in possession only for the duration of his time in office of the extensive lands attached to the chieftaincy and when he would be succeeded by another chieftain, that property would support the next chieftain. However, in Donal’s time he and many of the leading landholders signed up to an agreement whereby they recognised English law and its system of succession. In so doing they agreed that any lands they held were their personal property and would descend to their sons rather than be divided up among their wider family under Gaelic law. As Donal was then in possession of the lands attached to the chieftaincy, those lands were recognised as his and would be inherited by his eldest son and so on. The same agreement ensured that the Gaelic office of chieftain was abolished. A consequence of this agreement also ensured that, although Donal of Longford’s father would appear to have been a younger brother of another chieftain, the recognised head of the family over the next number of generations would be the eldest son of the eldest son and so forth of Donal of Longford Castle, the last officially recognised chieftain.

Síl Anmchadha, later known as the barony of Longford, (shown in yellow) the ancestral territory of the O Maddens in the east of County Galway, as it stood in the early modern period. Modern villages and towns shown in red.

Donal died in March 1605 and his eldest son Ambrose was his principal heir. He, in turn, was succeeded by his son John. The family resided at Longford castle until about the mid 1650s, at which time their lands were taken by the Cromwellians and they was allocated other lands elsewhere within east Galway. When the monarchy was restored John Madden was confirmed in possession of those lands while Longford castle and much of his ancestral lands were confirmed in the possession of others. (They may have continued to live for a short time thereafter at Longford, but if so, they were renting part of their former property from the new owners.)

John’s eldest son Daniel was regarded as the head of the O Maddens in the early eighteenth century. The descent from each succeeding generation to this Daniel O Madden was recorded by Roger O Ferrall in his 1708 genealogical work ‘Linea Antiqua.’ The generations from Daniel up to 1902 were recorded most fully by the noted antiquarian John O Donovan in his mid nineteenth century ‘Tribes and Customs of Hy Many’ and Dr. Thomas More Madden, whose article on the family was published posthumously in the 1902 edition of the Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society.

Select pedigree of the senior-most line of the O Maddens from the last chieftain to 1745. Female members and descendants of junior lines are omitted for clarity.

Over succeeding generations the leading line declined in wealth and position and by the early nineteenth century the head of the O Maddens was Ambrose Madden, eldest son of Brasil Madden. In 1810 Ambrose married Anne Coneys, the daughter of Walter Coneys of Streamstown, near the town of Clifden in Connemara in the west of County Galway. The Coneys had been transplanted by the Cromwellians to this area and have maintained a presence there to this day. As a result of his marriage Ambrose came to live at Streamstown House (also known at one time as Streamstown Lodge), a comfortable two-storey house overlooking Streamstown Bay in Connemara, rented from the Coneys. In addition to three daughters, John O Donovan, writing in the early 1840s, described Ambrose of Streamstown as having had five sons; Brasil, Ambrose, Thomas, Walter and John. His account of the family ended with the marriage of the eldest son Brasil with Juliet, daughter of Francis Lynch of Omey, first cousin of the largest landowner in that region, John D’Arcy of Clifden Castle.

Streamstown House, near Clifden in Connemara, still in the possession of members of the Coneys family.

View of Streamstown Bay from the front lawn of Streamstown House.

Streamstown Bay, viewed from the east on an overcast day.

Dr. Thomas More Madden, a descendant of a junior line descended from the last chieftain, took up the story thereafter in an article on the O Maddens published posthumously in 1902. He gave a brief outline of the sons of Ambrose of Streamstown in his time. Brasil, the eldest, he said died without sons, while both Thomas and John died young and also without sons. More Madden described Ambrose as ‘of Buffalo City, U.S.A.’ and as having had two sons; Ambrose, who had died by 1902 and Walter, who was living in that year. Of Walter, the only other then surviving brother of Ambrose of Buffalo City, More Madden gave him as having four sons; John P. Madden, who died in 1900 or 1901, Walter, Ambrose and Brazil.

Other than the brief details given by More Madden, who must have corresponded with at least one of the family, no research appears to have been undertaken to trace their descendants or to identify the present head of the Maddens until now.

Combining evidence from Irish provincial newspapers, U.S. graveyards, U.S. Federal and State census records and other sources, it is possible to follow the lives of the Maddens just before and after they immigrated to the United States.

Ambrose of Streamstown Lodge, father of Brasil, Ambrose, Thomas, Walter and John, appears to have remained in Ireland and died in 1872. The description in at least one modern source of Brasil, the eldest son of Ambrose, as ‘of Eyrecourt’ is incorrect. Brasil was in fact Brasil P. Madden who rented about two hundred and forty acres on the small windswept tidal island of Omey off the west coast of Connemara, near Clifden, in the 1840s and into at least the mid 1850s from the Eyre family, who replaced the D’Arcys at Clifden Castle. He and his wife lived in an isolated house on one side of the island, separated by a lake in the middle of the barren landscape from his tenantry who lived in a cluster of cottages on the far side of the island.

Map of County Galway (in yellow) showing the location of Omey Island and Streamstown House in Connemara in relation to that of Longford Castle in east Galway. The ancestral territory of the O Maddens in the east of the county, as it formerly stood in the late medieval and early modern period, is shown outlined by a dashed line.

Omey Island in the distance, accessible at low tide across a sandy strand in the foreground.

The family appear to have been Roman Catholic in the early nineteenth century. Brasil P. Madden of Omey contributed monies to the Association for the Propagation of the Faith in 1842 and in 1844 he was chairman of a committee who honoured the local Roman Catholic curate with a public dinner. (One of the Coneys served as secretary and Brasil’s brother Ambrose junior was also a member). Almost two years later, the local Roman Catholic Parish Priest officiated at the wedding ceremony at Streamstown of their eldest sister Mary, who married one of the Coneys of nearby Aughrus.

The family appear to have been in a poor financial position in the late 1840s, possibly as a result of the social and economic devastation caused by the Great Famine. Brasil’s father still lived at Streamstown Lodge in 1847 as his wife Anne died of typhus fever there in that year and he thereafter moved to a smaller house on the side of the road in the nearby townland of Letterdeen.

The location of Ambrose Madden’s residence by a narrow stream in the townland of Letterdeen following his departure from Streamstown.

The year after their mother’s death Walter and John appear to have immigrated to the United States and settled initially in the State of New York. John didn’t live long in his new country, dying two years later at the age of twenty-one years of inflammation of the lungs at Corning and their brother Ambrose junior appears to have emigrated that same year.

In the years after the Great Famine the population of Omey Island had almost halved and the coastal settlement of tenant’s cottages fell into ruin and disappeared. No trace of the settlement would appear on maps later in the century and the nearby ruins of a medieval church lay under sand until the early 1980s. Although More Madden made no mention of the fact, Brasil P. Madden appears to have emigrated or at least left Ireland at some stage after his younger brothers. He died in America in 1867 and was buried at St. Joseph’s Cemetery in the town of Scio, Alleghany county in New York State. (At least one of his brothers and a number of his brother’s family would be buried later in the same burial place.) As Dr. Thomas More Madden described Brasil as dying without issue, his brother Ambrose junior became the senior-most member of the family. Brasil’s house back on Omey Island appears to have become a ruinous shell by the end of the nineteenth century and no longer survives.

View of part of New York City in the 1850s © U.S. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Lithograph Collection. Artist; Theodore Muller.

Despite their social position among the minor gentry in Connemara prior to their departure, the family found themselves among the working class in America and Ambrose junior and Walter found employment on the railroad. Ambrose junior, born between 1817 and 1821, worked for many years as a railroad foreman and in 1871 married his wife Faith, an emigrant from England. Ambrose junior worked as a foreman for the railroad until about his mid sixties and thereafter in older age the head of the Maddens was occupied as a labourer, a flagman, a switchman and a watchman. His wife worked as a teacher.

Ambrose junior and Faith Madden rented part of a house on 515 Swan Street in Buffalo City, New York and had two sons. More Madden was correct in identifying them as Ambrose and Walter. Their eldest son was born in 1873 and the youngest in 1876. More Madden was also correct in stating that the eldest son died before 1902. In fact he died before 1900, in which year Walter, the only surviving son of Ambrose junior and Faith Madden was an invalid and was living with his parents on Swan Street. He appears to have died by 1905, about the same time as his father. Faith was living alone as a widower from 1905 until at least 1917 at Swan Street. Both of Ambrose and Faith’s sons were single into their twenties, living with their parents and died young and do not appear to have had children. Following their death and that of their father the headship of the name would have passed to the family of Ambrose junior’s brother Walter, settled in the town of Scio in Alleghany County.

Walter was about twenty-four years old when he arrived in the United States. He married Mary Brown, of Irish extraction, and the couple lived for a time in a number of New York counties before moving to the town of Scio. Mary’s father John Brown, who worked as a gardener, lived with them there for a time. Walter worked as a railroad overseer while in Scio but appears to have acquired a ninety seven acre farm there ‘at the mouth of Knight’s Creek’ by 1875. His occupation was given as a farmer thereafter.

More Madden was also correct in saying that Walter and Mary Madden had four sons. They had in fact four sons and four daughters. More Madden was only incorrect in the order of the sons. He gave John P. Madden as the eldest, explicable probably as he was the most prominent among his siblings, whereas he was in fact the second son. By 1880 Walter and Mary Madden were living on Knight’s Creek Road in Scio and were parents of eight children; Ambrose T. Madden, born about 1859 (the dates of birth vary over succeeding census records), John P., Basil F., Walter Joseph, Mary J., Anna, Margaret E. and Agnes, the youngest, born in 1874. Their eldest son was twenty-one years in 1880 but none of the children were married and all were at that time attending school. With the exception of the parents, all were born in New York.

All of the girls died relatively young and unmarried with the exception of Margaret, who never married and worked for many years as a stenographer for the City of New York. Of the boys, only John P. and Walter married and of the two only Walter had children.

Many of the boys worked as telegraph operators at some point, as did John P., the second son of Walter and Mary. He later found employment as a journalist, became involved in Democratic Party politics and eventually rose to the prominent position of Deputy Commissioner of Highways of the Borough of Queens, where a number of his surviving brothers and sisters were then living. He suffered ill health, however, and was forced to leave New York for a more beneficial climate further west. Before departing in 1899 he married Alice Kane of  Middletown, New York but died in El Paso in late February of 1901. His body was brought back to New York and he was buried with others of his family in the family burial plot in Scio.

John P. Madden, Deputy Commissioner of Highways, from his obituary in ‘The Brooklyn Daily Eagle’ of February 1901.

John P. Madden’s younger brother Walter J. Madden was the only one of his siblings to have children. Walter J. Madden married a woman named Anna Dolan, born in New Jersey but whose parents were both born in Ireland. His father Walter died in 1907 and three years later, while his siblings and mother were living in Queens, Walter J. was about thirty-eight years, working as a telegraph operator and living in the township of Marian Harbour in the Borough of Richmond, New York State, with his twenty-seven year old wife and their two children; Walter J. Madden, aged five years and Margaret, aged two years. The couple had another child who had not survived to 1910 and later that same year, on the 13^th August 1910, they had another child, a son, named John B. Madden.

Walter Madden and his wife Anna lived in the upper part of no. 5 Washington Place in the borough of Richmond, with their three children in 1925. Both husband and wife, however, died within a number of weeks of one another in the following year. Both were buried at St. Joseph’s cemetery in Scio.

With all the earlier generation of male Maddens deceased by the mid 1930s, the only surviving descendants of the Maddens who immigrated to the United States were the two young brothers Walter J. and John B. Madden. Both were living with their aunt Margaret in Queens in 1940. At that stage Margaret was in her sixties and the only surviving of her siblings. Her nephew Walter J. was then a thirty-three year old insurance salesman and the twenty-nine year old John B. Madden was working as a steamship steward.

In his mid and late twenties the youngest, John B., served as a ship steward or waiter on a number of vessels such as the ‘Calamares,’ ‘Antiqua,’ ‘Siboney,’ ‘Ancon’ and ‘Uruguay’ out of the Port of New York, sailing for the most part from ports in Jamaica, Honduras, Cuba, San Francisco, the Canal Zone, Mexico, Haiti to New York.

Both brothers were unmarried in 1940 and had no dependants.

Select pedigree of the senior-most line of the O Maddens from 1745 to the sons of Walter J. Madden, died 1926. Female members and descendants of junior lines are omitted for clarity.

The United States entered World War II in 1941 and both brothers enlisted as privates in the United States Army at Fort Jay, Governors Island in New York in 1942, the elder in May and the younger on the 6^th June. By the following year both held the rank of sergeant in the army.

The eldest brother, Walter J. Madden, served as a sergeant in the 4^th OMA (Operation and Maintenance of the Army) Regiment of the United States Army. He died in 1943 at the age of thirty-seven years at Camp Ellis in Indiana from injuries received after being struck by a car. He was unmarried at the time of his death as he was described in his obituary in ‘The Andover News’ as being survived by his brother, Sergeant John Madden and an aunt. He was buried at St. Joseph’s Cemetery.

His aunt Margaret died in 1954 at the age of about eighty-four years and was also buried at Scio with her family.

From a comparison of army records and social security number records it is clear that Sergeant John B. Madden survived the war. He was released from the army on 10^th October 1945.

And there I have come to the fate of the only surviving great-grandson of Ambrose Madden of Streamstown in Connemara. From his social security number of 714077292 it appears that John B. Madden may have worked for a time on the railroad after the war, at least prior to 1951. He also appears to have lived in the State of Florida at some stage, having a post office box number (no. 1334) address at Lake Worth, Palm Beach County in Florida.

John B. Madden died of natural causes, aged seventy-nine years, in Indian River County in the State of Florida on 27^th June 1990.

It is unclear if he was aware of his ancestry, an ancestry that could be traced back in an unbroken line to Maine mór, son of Eochaidh feardaghiall, chief of a tribe of people who established themselves as the dominant group in the south-eastern region of Connacht by about the end of the fifth century A.D. It is unclear if he was aware that he was the senior-most descendant of the last Gaelic chieftain of Síl Anmchadha, the ancestral territory of the O Maddens, later known as the barony of Longford in the east of County Galway and may have been in his time, in line of descent, the head of the O Maddens.

It is also unclear if he was the last of his line. If he had no male issue, then the next senior-most member of the name would be a descendant of an early eighteenth century Madden of a junior line. If, however, John B. Madden was married and had a son in the United States, then, although the office of the Chief Herald of Ireland no longer continues the practice of recognizing ‘Chiefs of the Name’, it is possible that that son or his son may have been, in line of descent, the current head of the O Maddens.

This article is a little like putting a message in a bottle and setting it out to sea. I’m sending it out to sea in the hope that some of my readers in the United States may have known John B. Madden or have further information relating to his family or his life.

Bon voyage.

The post In search of the head of the O Maddens appeared first on Burke's East Galway.

The solemn profession of Fra’ Paul Caffrey, made before His Most Eminent Highness The Prince and Grand Master Fra’ Matthew Festing, took place during High Mass in the Church of St. Kevin on Harrington Street in Dublin on Saturday 26^th July 2014, the Feast of St. Anne. As the celebrant the V. Rev. John Osman, Magistral Chaplain of the Grand Priory of England and the Irish Association of the Order reminded the congregation in his homily, it has been four hundred and seventy four years since the dissolution of the Order in Ireland and the country’s last Professed Knight of Malta.

St. Kevin’s Church, Harrington Street before the Solemn Profession.

The oldest surviving chivalric order in the world, the Knights Hospitallers were founded in the Holy Land in 1048 as a hospital to care for poor and sick pilgrims and in 1113 Pope Paschal II issued the Bull ‘Pie Postulatio Voluntatis’ whereby the hospitallers became a Religious order of knights. Throughout the medieval and into the modern period, the knight brethren of the Order were drawn from the nobility of Europe, vowed to poverty, chastity and obedience and lived a monastic life in accommodation as much akin to barracks as convents. A military as well as Religious Order, the knights were committed to defend the Faith with their swords while simultaneously serving God through prayer and service to the sick.

The monk-knights arrived in Ireland circa 1174 and established their largest Irish hospital at Kilmainham near Dublin. By 1558, during the Protestant Reformation under King Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, the Order was suppressed in Ireland and was only re-established here in 1934 as the Irish Association of the Order of Malta.

In keeping with the charism of the Order, ‘tuitio fidei’ (the nurturing, witnessing and protection of the Faith) and ‘obsequium pauperum’ (‘serving Our Lord’s the Sick and the Poor’) the Irish Association established the first Order of Malta Ambulance Corps to provide first aid, ambulance and casualty services across the country. The first Corps unit was established in 1938 in Galway and the Order now has units in over eighty locations with over four thousand volunteers across the island of Ireland.

In the modern world the vast majority of knights and dames of the Order are non-professed members and compose two of the three Classes into which the Order members are divided. Only the professed Knight of Justice constitutes the First Class of the Order. He takes three monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, but unlike other monks the Professed Knight is not obliged to live in community. All knights and dames of the various classes of the Order are full members of what is a religious order. However, the professed Knights of Justice and Chaplains are Religious in terms of Canon Law and as such are regarded as ‘the essential core or heart’ of the Order.

Fra’ Matthew Festing OBE, TD, DL, 79^th Prince and Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta. Elected for life in 2008 and the third Englishman to hold the office, his full title refers to the Grand Master as the ‘Most Humble Guardian of the Poor of Jesus Christ.’ His maternal ancestor Sir Adrian Fortescue, also an English Knight of Malta, was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1539 during the reign of King Henry VIII for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy. One of ten martyrs of the English priory executed as the Crown was suppressing and dissolving the priory, he was beatified in 1970. Sir Adrian was intimately connected with the Irish aristocracy, his daughter being the wife of ‘Silken Thomas’ Fitzgerald, 10^th Earl of Kildare, who had rebelled against King Henry VIII and been executed with his uncles in 1537.

To appreciate the uncommon privilege of witnessing at first hand a Knight of Malta’s profession of perpetual vows, it is worth considering that in the mid 1990s, at which time the Order was composed of approximately ten thousand Knights, Dames and Chaplains across the world there were little more than forty Professed Knights of Justice. Today the Order has approximately thirteen and a half thousand members and of that number there are approximately sixty Professed Knights of Justice worldwide. Given the rarity of the occasion, it is worth giving in brief detail a description of the ceremonial involved.

Solemn Profession of Fra’ Paul Caffrey

Mass was celebrated according to the Latin Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite and arriving early I found myself ushered by Ivan Healy, Knight of Magistral Grace of the Order and Director of Ceremonies to a fine vantage point from which to view the ceremony. To my right were various members of other chivalric orders. Across the aisle sat the main body of Knights of Malta in order of rank and office, identifiable from the piping and variations of the cross outlined in white upon their black mantles.

John McGrath KM ushering his fellow knights, dames and attending Religious and clergy to their assigned seating during the entrance procession.

The Prince and Grand Master, in the presence of Most Rev. Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, surrounded by Professed Knights of Justice on the sanctuary. Fra’ Paul Caffrey, wearing the distinctive red military uniform and surcoat of a knight, carries a lighted candle symbolising Charity for much of the Mass. An historian and lecturer at Dublin’s National College of Art and Design and a knight of the Order for many years, he underwent five years of preparation in advance of taking his final vows.

Rich symbolism and centuries-old tradition run through the ceremony of profession of perpetual vows. The ‘Giving of the Sword’ forms an early part of the ceremony. Following the lesson, the professing knight kneels before the Grand Master, asking ‘to be counted and enrolled in the Military Order of the Knights of the Religion of Saint John of Jerusalem.’ Promising to defend the Church and the Faith, he is counselled by the Grand Master to strive never to desert the colours under which he will stand, for should he do so, he will be expelled from the Order ‘in the greatest of disgrace and infamy.’ Mindful of the charism of the Order, he promises to have ‘particular care and concern for those who are poor, dispossessed, orphaned, sick or suffering’ and is presented with the unsheathed sword, with the attendant caution of the Grand Master never to harm any innocent person.

Fra’ Paul, flanked by two Professed Knights, kneels before the Prince and Grand Master before being presented with his sword.

Handing back the sheathed sword, he is next presented with his belt, with which he girds himself. Representing the virtue of chastity, the purpose of this belt he is told is to ‘put out the fires of passion.’ Advised that it is ‘not considered honourable among worthy Knights that they should always carry their sword in their hand,’ he is instructed to hang it at his left side, that with his right hand he may serve the Lord God, His Immaculate Mother and St. John the Baptist. Rising, he then hands the unsheathed sword to the Prince and Grand Master, who lightly gives the knight three symbolic blows on the shoulder with the flat of the blade ‘as a token of his final humiliation in death.’

In a dramatic flourish in keeping with tradition, the professing knight at this point stepped to the altar rail and, in the direction of the congregation, brandished the sword three times above his head as a symbolic threat to the enemies of the Faith. Kneeling again before the Grand Master, he wiped the blade upon his arm before sheathing. Even this seemingly minor gesture of cleaning the blade too forms an important part of the same symbolism, its purity and spotlessness signifying the duty of the knight to be pure and free from all vice and a lover of the four Cardinal Virtues; Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance, through which he should seek honour.

Shaking Fra’ Paul’s shoulder, the Grand Master urged him to rise and, while standing, two attendant knights touched his heels with golden spurs. With these he was reminded that he must keep a spur in his heart to urge him to the virtues and the service of God. Their touching of the heel, the lowest part of the body, serving as a reminder to hold gold and avarice always in contempt. This initial element of the ceremony concluded with the Grand Master handing him a lighted candle with the instruction to go with the Grace of the Holy Spirit to hear the word of God, the Gospel.

Following the homily, the Canon of the Mass and Holy Communion the congregation again sat for the Ceremony of Clothing, whereupon Fra’ Paul presented himself again to the Grand Master. Asking to be ‘counted worthy to enter the Order of Brothers of Holy Religion named after the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem’ he confirmed himself willing to obey his superiors in the Order, to live in chastity and that at no time previously was he a professed member of any other Religious Order. Finally, confirming himself free of any marital obligations or obligations to other men ‘either of personal security or of significant debt,’ the Grand Master formally admitted Fra’ Paul to the ranks of the Professed Knight of Justice. In keeping with the gravity of the undertaking and tradition, he was reminded that this was done with the proviso that if any part of his declaration should prove untrue, then, ‘with great shame’ he would be stripped of his habit and expelled from the Order.

A Missal was then presented to the Grand Master by an acolyte, opened at the beginning of the canon and, placing both hands on the Crucifix, Paul Edmond Matthew Caffrey thereupon made his Profession and became a full Religious member of the Order.

As his first act of obedience, in accordance with tradition, the new monk-knight is presented with the missal and instructed by the Grand Master to take it to the Altar and return again with the same. As his second act of obedience, he was charged with reciting daily the Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or the Office of the Dead or five Decades of the Holy Rosary.

Fra’ Paul executing his first act of obedience as a Professed Knight.

The clothing aspect of the ceremony is completed when the Professed Knight is presented with his habit and stola. The habit, he is told, is to remind him of the garment of camel-hair worn in the desert by Saint John the Baptist for his penance. Henceforth Fra’ Paul was to wear this habit as a penance for his sins. Again elements of the habit have in themselves symbolic meaning. Its sleeves, he is also informed, are not only to bind him but to remind him of his obedience to the Order and the defence of the poor and sick.

Similarly, the eight-pointed Maltese cross upon his habit should remind him of the eight Beatitudes and is worn over the left side, over the heart, so that the knight may defend it with his right hand. The habit was then placed upon Fra’ Paul by the Magistral Chaplain and Master of Ceremonies alongside the Grand Master.

Finally the stola was presented and placed about Fra’ Paul’s neck by the Grand Master, its embroidered imagery calling to mind the suffering and Passion of Our Lord.

Fra’ Paul escorted by two other professed knights returning to their places at the conclusion of the clothing ceremony, the stola draped over his left arm.

Following the Last Gospel, the singing of the Inviolata to the Blessed Virgin and a simple prayer for the Grand Master ‘Domine, salvum fac Magistrum et exaudi nos in die qua invocaverimus Te’ the members of the Order recessed out of church, the Prince and Grand Master preceded by the Sword-bearer and Director of Ceremonies. Fittingly, throughout the ceremony was heard the strains of William Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices, composed about 1592 during a period of intense Catholic persecution in England.

The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Diarmuid Martin followed by the banner of the Langue of England.

The newly Professed Knight in Perpetual Vows leaving the sanctuary, still carrying his lighted candle.

For more than nine hundred years the mission of the Order has been ‘the promotion of the glory of God through the sanctification of its Members, service to the faith and to the Holy Father and assistance to one’s neighbour‘ and the Professed Knight of Justice has always been the beating heart of that mission. Despite often violent upheavals in its past the Order today continues its historic mission across more than one hundred and twenty countries, caring for people of all religious faiths and of none with the help of its members, volunteers and employees.

Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta

Following the loss of the Christian controlled lands in the Holy Land the Order came to be based on the island of Rhodes from the early fourteenth century as a bulwark against the advancing Turks. Following the loss of the island in 1523 the Holy Roman Emperor granted the islands of Malta (and the fortress of Tripoli) to the Order in 1530. The then Grand Master reluctantly took possession of the arid islands and from there continued to serve the sick while defending Christendom from the Ottoman Empire and Barbary pirates. Having successfully defeated an overwhelmingly larger Turkish force during the Great Siege of Malta of 1565 and the Battle of Lepanto seven years later, the Ottomans were deprived of what would have been a strategically vital naval base whence to push further into Europe.

When one thinks of the numerous memorable episodes from the Order’s long history it is difficult not to admire the doomed defenders of the small fort of St. Elmo during the Great Siege who refused to leave the battered fort for fear of dishonour and those badly wounded knights who, of the remaining sixty left, facing certain death and too weak to stand, sat propped on chairs and a log on the beach with weapons in hand ready to face the final onslaught of the entire Turkish army. Their stubborn defence bought valuable time for their brethren defending the rest of the islands. Or the seventy-one year old Grand Master Fra’ Jean de la Valette, seriously wounded but still refusing to leave the battlefield at Fort St. Michel. Their successful defence of Malta against the overwhelming numbers of the Turks proved a significant upset to the Turkish advance into Europe and, although not a decisive defeat, such was its significance to Christendom at that time that thanksgiving services were ordered not only in Catholic realms but in Protestant England.

Caravaggio’s portrait of the seventy-four year old Fra’ Antonio Martelli, a distinguished veteran of the Great Siege. Among the most famous of portraits of a Knight of Malta, it was painted by the artist about 1607 during his time on the islands and for some time erroneously believed to have been a study of Fra’ Alof de Wignacourt, 54th Grand Master of the Order. The subject’s left hand rests upon his sword while in his right he holds his rosary beads.

The Knights were eventually expelled from Malta in the last years of the eighteenth century by a French force under Bonaparte. Retaining its sovereignty under International law the headquarters of the Order is now based in Rome at the Palazzo Malta on the elegant and highly fashionable Via Condotti.

The Palazzo Malta on Via Condotti, not far from the Spanish Steps. Both the Palazzo Malta and the Order’s villa on the Aventine Hill in Rome are extra-territorial and constitute the world’s smallest sovereign state.

The Knights and East Galway

With regard to East Galway, if one excludes the role of various Priors of St. John of Ireland or Priors of Kilmainham in the governance of Ireland in the medieval period or the membership over succeeding generations of such prominent families as the Counts O Kelly of Gallagh and Tycooly in the modern period, the Order has a distant connection with the region and specifically with the parish of Ballinakill in the diocese of Clonfert in South East Galway. That parish is believed to equate to the district once known as Kineleghen or Kilnalahan, where the Carthusians founded a small monastery in the early fourteenth century that was acquired by the Franciscans later in that century after it fell vacant. Despite the presence of these Religious Orders locally, it was the Knights Hospitallers who acquired the rectory of that parish and its revenues at some stage in the fourteenth century. They established a preceptory there under the immediate authority of the Prior of St. John’s of Ireland. The preceptory was located at a significant remove from the Knight’s parent house at Kilmainham and from that region about Dublin known as the Pale to which the immediate power of the Crown was restricted in the late fourteenth and fifteenth century. It is believed unlikely that they ever maintained a presence at Kilnalahan for any significant length of time and may have allowed the Franciscans to carry out their parochial duties there in their stead.

The ruins of the Franciscan friary of Kilnalahan in the village of Abbey in South East Galway.

Despite the decline in the Anglo-Norman colony the Knights retained legal ownership of this remote living into the sixteenth century and as late as 1529 Sir John Rawson, Prior of the Hospital of Kilmainham and of St. John of Jerusalem in Ireland gave power of attorney to the Galway merchant Stephen fitzJames Lynch to grant leases of all the lands and tithes held by the Hospital in Connacht. Included in the grant, in addition to various lands in the Archdiocese of Tuam, were the tithes of Kilnalahan in the diocese of Clonfert. Not long thereafter, however, in common with other Religious Orders in Ireland, the Order was suppressed in the mid sixteenth century by the English Crown.

Unlike the present Prince and Grand Master’s maternal ancestor Blessed Adrian Fortescue and his martyred brethren, Sir John Rawson negotiated with King Henry VIII and surrendered the Priory of Kilmainham and the Order’s property to the Crown in 1541 for a significant sum of money and a title, facilitating the dissolution of the Order in Ireland. It would be more than four and a half centuries later before Ireland would produce a Professed Knight of Malta in Fra’ Paul Caffrey.

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Founded originally as a Franciscan friary, the last remaining Franciscan friar bid farewell to the decaying Meelick friary and sailed upriver to his Order’s house at Athlone in the aftermath of the Great Famine. His departure brought to an end the almost continuous association of the Franciscan Order with Meelick since the Antipope John XXIII wrote to the then Bishop of Clonfert granting permission for the friary’s foundation in July of 1414. The site subsequently became the property of the diocese of Clonfert and was restored as a diocesan church. Today it is one of the oldest Roman Catholic churches still in use in Ireland.

On Saturday 5th July 2014, over one hundred and sixty years since the departure of the last friar, a small crowd gathered in the afternoon sunshine at the quayside at Meelick to greet the two boats carrying the Apostolic Nuncio, the Bishop of Clonfert and a small group of Franciscans led by their Minister-Provincial.

Only a short distance further up the road, the ancient St. Francis’s Church at Meelick was packed to capacity as the congregation awaited the arrival of the visitors to commemorate the six hundred year anniversary of the old church.

Three o’ clock Mass would be only slightly delayed as the visitors and welcoming party walked the fifteen-minute distance along the narrow winding country road from quayside to church.

Sisters of the Ballinasloe-based Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood waiting for the boats

Donnacha, Richard and Rory Campbell with James Scully among those waiting by the riverside for the arrival of the visitors.

Two boats, piloted by Mattie Ryan and his son Mark from Clonfert, brought the visitors from Banagher to Meelick. The morning showers gave way to humid summer sunshine as the boats came into view of the quay.

The author extending an official welcome to the visitors at the quayside as Chairperson of the Parish Pastoral Council.

From left to right; Donal Burke, Fr. Brian Allen OFM, based at the Franciscan Convent at Athlone and who played an early role in the organisation of the Franciscan involvement in the celebrations, Fr. John Naughton PP, Archbishop Charles Brown, Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland, Fr. Kelly and Fr. Hugh McKenna OFM, Minister Provincial of the Franciscans in Ireland.

The author chatting with Fr. McMahon OFM of the Franciscan friary at Merchant’s Quay in Dublin. Fr. McMahon carried in a green box a seventeenth century chalice presented to the friary at Meelick in 1640 and now held in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. The chalice was given on loan by the Museum for the day of celebrations and entrusted to the care of Fr. McMahon. I was delighted when Fr. McMahon informed me he was a reader of this website.

The short walk from quayside to church.

Mikey Horan and Stephen Kenny from Meelick waiting near the church for the walkers.

Volunteers attending to traffic management relaxing as they wait for the walkers outside the local public house known as ‘The Shop.’

The six Altar servers, lined up to greet the visitors inside the church gates.

The church bell rang out in the distance as the group wound its way and the slated roof of the church came into view across the fields. Lined up inside the church gates, young altar servers, boys and girls, waved their yellow and white flags as the first of the group climbed over the old narrow bridge at the entrance to the church grounds. The Papal Nuncio, leading the walkers, paused to say a few words with each before making his way to the sacristy in the company of the Bishop and the Master of Ceremonies Monsignor Cathal Geraghty, Vicar General of the diocese, to vest.

Arrival at Meelick church

In the sacristy before Mass, Ciaran Coughlan ringing the bell

I visited Meelick earlier that morning and I remember seeing a couple of men seated fishing at the quayside and thought to myself that they were in for some surprise in an hour or two when the normally tranquil quay would be inundated with vessels and people. At that time the church was beautifully appointed and almost empty, many of the volunteers and Pastoral Council having stayed until after midnight the previous night preparing the grounds.

The church as it lay ready that morning for the later celebrations.

The view from the sacristy door towards the twentieth century rood screen and nave. Below seating for the clergy and choir behind the altar.

The processional tau cross specially carved for the occasion and donated by the Franciscans at Killarney. Pat Kelly, a noted local carpenter living on the nearby Redmount Hill near Eyrecourt, produced the cross stand and four matching timber chairs for the celebrant and principal concelebrants.

Refreshments were laid out in what was at one time the small chapel of the friars while the church proper lay in ruins. For the celebrations a temporary canopy was erected to protect the refreshment tables from the elements.

Tents were erected, one in the former cloister area and one at lower level, the former to house the additional congregation on the day and the latter to provide a vesting area for clergy.

Fergus and Mrs. Madden from Eyrecourt selling copies of a new history of Meelick friary in aid of the church restoration fund.

Some of the waiting diocesan clergy and Franciscans preparing to join the entrance procession.

Fr. John Naughton preparing for the entrance procession.

The Papal Nuncio, preceded by Bishop Kirby, at the rear of the entrance procession.

The Papal Nuncio incensing the altar at the beginning of mass.

Father Naughton, Parish Priest of Eyrecourt, Clonfert and Meelick, welcomed everyone in his opening remarks. He described the day’s celebrations as ‘a kind of pilgrimage, as we walk in solidarity with people past and present renewing our faith in the place where our ancestors gathered in faith and suffered for it in the fifteenth century.’…’As Irish people it is in remembering our past that we draw energy and imagination to create a new tomorrow.’ ‘Today, remembering our Christian ancestors, we walk with pride in their footsteps and with gratitude for the rich legacy that have left us.’

Bishop Kirby reminded us that the church was founded several decades prior to the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.

Readings were read by Sister Kathleen of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood based at the Portiuncula convent in Ballinasloe and Mrs. Mary Killeen from Meelick, while the Gospel was read by Monsignor Alan Malone and members of the local community were involved in reciting the Prayers of the Faithful.

For his part the Papal Nuncio said he was delighted to be in Meelick on this historic occasion. His far-reaching sermon touched upon the importance of faith and among other themes the fact that, while the building, Meelick church, is the house of God, it is called the church because it is in this building that we, the Church, come to pray. He reminded the congregation that ‘for six hundred years in this church people have worshipped. Most of those people are now in Heaven waiting for us. They inspired us by their example. This is now our time to live our faith, to strengthen our faith.’

This area of Ireland he said was very special to him given the proximity of the burial place at Clonfert of St. Brendan the Navigator. When sent in May of 1989 as a newly ordained priest in New York to his first and only parish; St. Brendans in the Bronx, he little imagined that one day, twenty-five years later, he would visit ‘the place where St. Brendan finished his days on this earth.’ This year he celebrated twenty-five years of priesthood, by coincidence as does Fr. Hugh McKenna OFM. Both paled he noted in comparison with Fr. Naughton, who this year is celebrating fifty years of priesthood, the acknowledgement of which the congregation greeted with applause.

It was difficult not to be moved in some slight degree, sitting there in this ancient church, surrounded by the Franciscans, diocesan clergy and choir intoning the gloria, its walls lined with memorial tablets to long dead benefactors from the seventeenth century and later. It had seen many changes down the centuries, some more dramatic than others.

In 1557 the English Lord Deputy, in a move to unseat the rebel O Connors and O Maddens from the now vanished Meelick Castle, had ordnance sailed down the Shannon on boats and had a cannon installed at the friary to fire upon the castle. (A soldier named Barrett standing in the friary on that occasion was shot by a handgun firing from the castle. ) The friars survived the religious persecution from the Elizabethan era, the intolerance of her nephew James I, the Crowmwellian years and the Penal Laws of the early eighteenth century. While extensive written records survive in relation to Meelick, little survived from the early 1600s. However, their continued presence at Meelick was attested by chalices such as that procured for the friary in 1616 by Brother James Coghlan.

On occasion the friars found refuge in a nearby wood in the townland of Muckanagh, while the church itself spent a great deal of that time in ruin. On the accession to the throne of the Catholic King James II, many friaries anticipated a period of relief and the friars at Meelick undertook re-building works in the 1680s. The works were still incomplete by the time King James II was deposed in favour of his son-in-law and daughter the Protestant King William and Queen Mary. In the ensuing Jacobite Williamite War the English Jacobite officer Captain John Stevens camped with his regiment for more than a week at Meelick in June of 1691 on route from Limerick to Athlone, prior to the battle of Aughrim. His diary recorded the incomplete nature of the works by that time;

‘Here is also the residence of a few Franciscan friars, only remarkable for the poverty of their house and chapel, which are nothing but long thatched cabins. The walls of a handsome chapel designed by these friars are standing, but never roofed or further finished than the raising of them to their full height.’

Two side chapels were added to the south wall but, like the church itself, were in ruin, overgrown with vegetation and used as a burial place into the nineteenth century. The friars continued to use a smaller domestic building on site adjacent to the church as their chapel and was still used as such in the mid nineteenth century.

Meelick church seen from the graveyard to the south, showing the traces on its south elevation of the two former side chapels.

The friars, despite their trials under a repressive government, maintained a strong connection with the remnants of the old local Catholic gentry who served as benefactors until many of the senior-branches of these families converted to Protestantism over the eighteenth century, in many cases to acquire secure title to their estates. In the early days leading up to the Penal Laws the friars entrusted their valuables to ten trusted locals of good standing while they prepared to be banished. Many were forced to study and live abroad on the Continent but maintained contact by letter with one of their number who maintained a presence around Meelick. Their correspondence survived due to the confiscation in the 1730s of several of these letters by the authorities.

In the mid eighteenth century there were about five friars attached to Meelick but this had dwindled to three by the early nineteenth. Dr. Petrie, when he visited the site about 1832, found that the few friars ‘inhabited a small dwelling-house annexed to the old abbey, adjoining to which they had a chapel, where they performed divine service. They had a few acres of land on lease from the Marquis of Clanrickard…..The once rich library of the abbey was reduced to the few mutilated volumes of school divinity, perishing through damp and neglect, and at that time the roofless walls of this once sumptuous building were mouldering in decay, or falling prey to the ruthless band of modern vandals. The beautiful pillars that separated and supported the arches, on the north side (recte; south side), had been torn away to supply headstones for the humble occupants of the neighbouring graveyards.’

A contemporary print showed the friary church as a ruin, without a roof or east gable. Vegetation grew among assorted headstones and recumbent slabs in the same church wherein we all gathered today to pray. The west gable with its stone cross was intact, and most of the north and south walls of the nave were still standing up to wall-plate level, but there was no transept or side chapel to the south and the column between the twin transept arches was missing. The only roofed building in view was the low single-storey building adjoining the church, part of which then formed the chapel. (Part of this now forms the sacristy and that part that formed the small chapel now stands roofless).

Dr. Richard Robert Madden, who claimed descent from a senior member of the O Madden family and felt a certain affinity for this friary, reminisced more than fifty years later on a visit he paid in 1841 to Meelick. He recalled listening to the keening of local women in the friary graveyard and ‘while I was thus listening one of the Franciscan Fathers of the adjoining Convent, whom I had known before, approached and renewed acquaintance…I was then conducted into the adjoining convent occupied by himself and two other friars – last survivors of the once famous community of Meelick – where I received every possible kindness and hospitality during my brief stay in this most interesting locality.’

At that time, he said, ‘there was little left of the ancient abbey but the roofless walls, ruined aisles and beautiful pillars mouldering in dust to attest to its former splendour.’ Madden went on; ‘more than once have I knelt in the little Friary chapel at vesper hour and listened to the strain of the hymns echoed from the lonely aisles of the adjoining ruined abbey….At length my visit to Meelick came to a close on a bright Sunday morning and I can never forget the scene of my departure. The friary gates were still crowded with a group of kindly peasants coming forth from the little chapel, as their good pastor, my hospitable host, an aged friar, of venerable aspect and splendid physique, clasped my hand’ and gave to Dr. Madden his parting blessing. Madden thereafter had to press on to meet the mail coach at the nearby village of Eyrecourt. (I often think of this melancholy image when I’m at Meelick and looking down from the church towards its arched bridge and old gates. Melancholy because when Madden would return thirteen years later his old friend, the aged friar, would lie dead and buried at Meelick and the church deserted.)

There were only two friars here in 1846. In the following year the antiquarian John D’Alton romantically described the friary ‘in beautiful seclusion’….‘where the Shannon, flowing through these fertile lowlands, here called callows, or by some caucesses, encircles a number of little islands, and winds and brawls over a ledge of shallow rapids.’ Of the old church he wrote ‘its serrated walls are beautifully wreathed with ivy; elder trees, thickly fenced with fern and nettle, fill the interior; and through the windows and arches, which on the southern side are nearly perfect, the little plantation of the graveyard, a sodded fort, the Shannon and its islands in front and the Munster hills in the distance, presented a scene of lulling repose that was scarcely disturbed by the murmer of the fretted river, the lash of the anglers rod, the rustling of the small birds through the ivy or the gliding of the two inmates of the adjoining friary, who, with peculiar propriety, here read their breviaries and offices amid the tombs.’

The friars were, by 1850, in rental arrears to the Marquis of Clanricarde, who displayed little sympathy for their plight. The Franciscan friars finally abandoned Meelick in 1852. When Dr. R. R. Madden visited Meelick again in February 1854, he found the friary closed and deserted. ‘At Meelick churchyard at rest forever’ he said ‘was my old friend the Franciscan friar.’ ‘The abbey had ceased to be tenanted, and of the remains of the library nothing was left save some odd and mutilated volumes that had not been thought worth the trouble of removal.’ ‘Adjoining the ruined abbey…the Franciscan convent, which never ceased since the abbey was erected to be tenanted by members of the Order, except at brief intervals during the wars of Elizabeth and Cromwell, until the past couple of years, when one of the community…having died, the survivor, Mr. Fannin, found it impossible any longer to procure a living here, as the neighbouring country had become so depopulated and impoverished during the famine year.’

The church became a diocesan church in the diocese of Clonfert and was restored in the last years of the nineteenth century, its walls plastered internally and its east gable rebuilt, but in a slightly different position to take account of an early nineteenth century tomb built on its original position. It subsequently went through various other restoration and refurbishment works in the mid twentieth century, the last major project undertaken in the 1980s.

Fr. McMahon OFM with the chalice known by some as the Meelick Chalice. The chalice is more correctly the ‘Paul Mulgeehy’ or ‘Paul O Mulgaoihe’ chalice, named after the donor ‘Fr. P. Paul O Mulgaoihe’ who procured the chalice for the Meelick friary in 1640. The chalice was in the care of the Franciscan friary in Drogheda in the mid twentieth century and is now held in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.

It fell to me, on behalf of the Parish Pastoral Council and local community, to thank the distinguished visitors and all of the Franciscans, First Order, Third Order and the sisters of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood for their presence and to thank all of those who participated in making the day such a success.

Following Mass and before enjoying the ample refreshments laid out under a temporary covering in what was formerly the nineteenth century chapel the Papal Nuncio planted a young yew tree on the lawn beside the church to commemorate the historic occasion.

Fr. Hugh McKenna OFM, Minister Provincial of the Franciscans, Bishop John Kirby and Archbishop Brown with Fr. Naughton, a number of the Franciscans and members of the Eyrecourt, Clonfert and Meelick Parish Pastoral Council on the lawn with the newly planted yew tree.

When one considers the dramatic history of this site and the considerable written records that have survived detailing the lives of the friars and their benefactors, it cannot escape notice that this day was a significant day in the life of this particular church. As significant as the day in June of 1643 when, two years after the Catholic Irish rose out following a period of oppression, the friars recorded that ‘the graveyard of the church of the brothers minor of Meelick was reconciled by the Venerable Father and Brother John Madden,’ then President of the Meelick community, and ‘the honour that was proper was shown to the feast of Corpus Christi.’ It was as significant as the day in 1985 when Most Rev. Joseph Cassidy D.D., Bishop of Clonfert, celebrated Mass to mark the official re-opening of the church after renovation work at that time and certainly as significant as that sad day when the last remaining friar left Meelick after the Great Famine.

For myself the image that I carried with me as I left the church that day was the sight of the friars in their brown habits walking again the narrow winding country roads of Meelick returning if only for one day to their old home and welcomed enthusiastically by the local population to whose ancestors the friar’s predecessors ministered for centuries.

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Among the first images he conjured up, as he gazed across the treetops and the undulating stone-walled fields, was that of the gift of a pair of ears, bestowed upon one Mrs. French, the lady of a nearby Big House.

‘Beyond that ridge lived Mrs. French, and once
When every silver candlestick or sconce
Lit up the dark mahogany and the wine,
A serving-man, that could divine
That most respected lady’s every wish,
Ran and with the garden shears
Clipped an insolent farmer’s ears
And brought them in a little covered dish.’

The folklore, people and places of County Galway and in particular of the area about Thoor Ballylee, Yeats’ late medieval tower-house near Gort in the south west of the county, provided the poet with a large repository of imagery and symbolism for his work. His reference here to Mrs. French and her serving man’s unusual gift derived, not from fiction but from a true story that resulted in a celebrated eighteenth century court case.

The poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), who first visited the area about Ballylee, Peterswell and Gort in 1896 on a walking tour of the West of Ireland.

Ballylee Castle, given the name ‘Thoor Ballylee’ by Yeats, who purchased the tower and its associated buildings over the winter of 1916 and came to take possession in the summer of 1917. Over time he restored the tower house to the design of Professor William A. Scott and his family resided there throughout much of the 1920s, departing in 1929.

Before Yeats’ time the story of Mrs. French and the farmer’s ears was included in a publication entitled ‘Anecdotes of the Connaught Circuit,’ written in 1885 by Oliver Joseph Burke, scion of an ancient branch of the Burkes seated at Ower, near Headford in County Galway, Papal Knight, Barrister-at-Law, author and, one would assume from his store of stories, a proficient raconteur. In recounting the details of this story Burke drew heavily upon the recollections of Sir Jonah Barrington, M.P., whose memoir ‘Personal Sketches in his own times’ was first published in 1827. Barrington not only lived closer to the time of these events but was in fact the grandson of this Mrs. French.

Sir Jonah Barrington M.P., grandson of Mrs. French (left) and Oliver J. Burke KSG of Ower, Headford, County Galway (right)

Born in 1760, Barrington was the fourth of sixteen children of John Barrington of Knapton, County Laois (then called Queen’s County). His mother, however, was the daughter of Patrick French of Peterswell in County Galway, Barrister-at-Law, where, his grandson related, he held ‘large estates.’ French’s wife, Catherine, the subject of Yeats’ poem, was described by her grandson Barrington as ‘one of the last remaining of the first house of the ancient O Briens.’ The fourth daughter of Henry O Brien of Stonehall in County Clare and granddaughter of Sir Donatus of Dromoland, she married Patrick French in 1727. Her brother Donatus O Brien, who succeeded to the O Brien family estates, had emigrated to England and died at his house in that country, ‘leaving his great hereditary estates in both countries to the enjoyment of his mistress, excluding his family’ Barrington noted with disdain ‘from all claims upon the manors and demesnes of their ancestors.’

Barrington cited the story of his grandmother and the insolent farmer’s ears, to which Yeats referred, as evidence of what he regarded as the ‘extraordinary devotion of the lower to the higher orders in Ireland in former times,’ although he did add somewhat bitterly that, by his own time, this had changed and this change could be evidenced he claimed, in his own words ‘by the propensity servants now have to rob (and, if convenient, murder) the families from whom they derive their daily bread.’

It’s worth giving Barrington’s own account of this story and so I quote below directly from his ‘Personal Sketches,’ written for his amusement to while away the cold winter evenings.

‘My grandfather, Mr. French of County Galway, was a remarkably small, nice little man, but of an extremely irritable temperament, an excellent swordsman, and, like all Galway gentlemen, proud to excess.’

‘My grandfather had conceived a contempt for, and antipathy to, a sturdy half-mounted gentleman, one Mr. Dennis Bodkin, who entertained an equal aversion to the arrogance of my grandfather, and took every possible opportunity of irritating and opposing him.’

‘My grandmother, an O Brien, was high and proud, steady and sensible, but disposed to be rather violent at times in her contempts and animosities, and entirely agreed with her husband in his detestation of Mr. Dennis Bodkin.’

‘On some occasion or other Mr. Dennis had chagrined the squire and his lady most outrageously. A large company dined at my grandfather’s, and my grandmother concluded her abuse of Dennis with an energetic expression that could not have been literally meant, in these words, – “I wish the fellow’s ears were cut off! That might quiet him.”

‘This passed over as usual: the subject was changed and all went on comfortably till supper; at which time, when everybody was in full glee, the old butler, Ned Regan, who had drunk enough, came in – joy was in his eye – and whispering something to his mistress which she did not comprehend, he put a large snuff box into her hand. Fancying it was some whim of her old domestic, she opened the box and shook out its contents; when, lo! a considerable portion of a pair of bloody ears dropped on the table! Nothing could surpass the horror and surprise of the company. Old Ned exclaimed, – “Sure, my lady, you wished that Dennis Bodkin’s ears were cut off; so I told old Gahagan (the gamekeeper), and he took a few boys with him, and brought back Dennis Bodkin’s ears – and there they are; and I hope you are plazed my lady!”

In the words of Barrington, ‘the sportsman (ie. the gamekeeper) and the boys were ordered to get off as fast as they could; but my grandfather and grandmother were held to heavy bail and were tried at the ensuing assizes at Galway. The evidence of the entire company, however, united in proving that my grandmother never had any idea of any such order, and that it was a mistake on the part of the servants. They were, of course, acquitted. The sportsman never reappeared in the county till after the death of Dennis Bodkin, which took place three years subsequently.’

This court case appears to have taken place about 1778, which would place the year of Bodkin’s death about 1781.

It would appear to have had all the hallmarks of a local cause célèbre in the late eighteenth century. As generations passed it provided the makings of a warm fireside tale on a cold winter’s evening among the diminishing few in the locality who would recall the story. Barrington’s and Burke’s books ensured its survival in print but Yeats’ inclusion of the butler’s gift to Mrs. French as a part of his rich poetic imagery elevated the story from an obscure local eccentricity to become, in some small way, a miniature part of the rich poetic treasury of the country.

‘An ancient bridge, and a more ancient tower, / A farmhouse that is sheltered by its wall, / An acre of stony ground, / Where the symbolic rose can break in flower, / Old ragged elms, old thorns innumerable.’

Thoor Ballylee, ‘under the day’s declining beam.’

The tower and cottage fell into disuse and ruin after the departure of the Yeats family. Described in the early 1950s as ‘a barn for cattle and a rallying place for crows,’ it was restored and opened to the public as a museum, tea room and shop in 1965, the centenary year of the poet’s birth. Closed after it was extensively damaged as a result of severe flooding in the winter of 2009, negotiations were still on-going in November of 2013 with a view to having Yeat’s tower re-opened to the public. 

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It is a sad sight now to see this tomb in such an advanced state of neglect. When built in 1637, during the reign of King Charles I, it was the epitome of fashionable local funerary architecture, a fitting monument to the leading family of the name Hannon, major landholders of Gaelic origin in the region about the parish of Abbeygormacan in east Galway.

Hidden away from public view, the tomb languishes out of sight in the ruins of a small side chapel, the only stone walls remaining fully intact of the medieval Augustinian monastery of St. Mary or Via Nova at Abbeygormacan.

The peace and tranquility one experiences here renders the ruins of Abbeygormacan an appropriate resting place for a man who not only lived through the turbulent and uncertain early decades of the seventeenth century but played a prominent role in the affairs of his county as one of twelve Galway men, now largely forgotten, whose resolution prevented for a time the confiscation of much of County Galway and its plantation with English or Scottish settlers.

Nicholas Hannon and the Plantation of Connacht

Sir Thomas Wentworth, later Earl of Stafford, the King’s powerful and devoted favourite, arrived in Ireland in 1633 as Lord Deputy. The plantation of Ulster in the north of Ireland, involving the confiscation of lands and their reallocation to new settlers regarded as potentially more loyal to the Crown, had already begun.

Wentworth’s plans as Lord Deputy caused panic among the landholders of County Galway, whose legal title to their lands was in danger of being called into question. The Lord Deputy’s scheme involved establishing a jury in each county in Connacht and bullying them into admitting that the legal title to their lands was properly the King’s as the rightful heir in line of descent from William, the last de Burgh Earl of Ulster and Lord of Connacht, who had been murdered in 1333. If he could succeed in having all the county juries admit the King’s title he could thereafter, in the King’s name, begin confiscations and allocate large tracts of lands to new settlers. The juries in each county were composed of some of the most prominent landholders of that county and one by one, the juries in Roscommon, Sligo and Mayo caved in to Wentworth’s intimidation and deceptions.

Sir Thomas Wentworth (c. 1633) after Sir Anthony Van Dyck. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Wentworth met with continued success until he came up against the Galway landholders. There he was vigorously opposed by the most influential peer in the county; Richard Burke, 4th Earl of Clanricarde, who worked ceaselessly through his connections at Court and his influence among the landed proprietors of Galway. Nicholas Hannon was chosen as one of the twelve jurors empanelled for County Galway. (Given the high social standing of the majority of the jurors, it would appear likely that this was that same Nicholas who had the tomb erected at Abbeygormacan in 1637.)

While Clanricarde was in England, Wentworth established himself, his officials and troops at Clanricarde’s new castle at Portumna in 1635, reputedly treating the place with little respect. There, he had the jury meet and used every means at his disposal to pressurise them into finding in favour of the King. The Galway jurors, to Wentworth’s seething anger, remained steadfast and refused to find for the king.

Wentworth had Nicholas Hannon and all the jurors handed over to the Court of Castle Chamber, thrown into prison, their estates confiscated and each fined the then colossal sum of £4,000. The jurors later petitioned to be released but, when informed that they would only be released upon the condition that they admit that they had made an error and committed perjury, they rejected the condition. Their steadfastness and sacrifice proved a significant setback for Wentworth, whose plans to plant Connacht were thereby temporarily stalled.

The delay caused by the juror’s decision proved decisive. In 1637 Wentworth had another jury convened at the Franciscan Abbey outside the town of Galway to deal with the matter again and, intimidated by the ill treatment of the previous jury, they found in favour of the Crown’s title to the county. Wentworth proceeded to survey the entire province as a preliminary to plantation but political distractions on the Continent and in Scotland delayed and thereby prevented the actual implementation of the proposed plantation prior to Wentworth’s fall from power.

For many of the actors involved the cost was high. Ulick, 1st Marquis and 5th Earl of Clanricarde blamed Wentworth’s plans and harrying of his father Richard for hastening his death in 1635. Martin Darcy, the Sheriff of Galway who chose the Portumna jurors, died in prison in 1636, while Wentworth himself would later be recalled to England in 1639 where he continued to serve his king until he fell foul of his enemies in Ireland and England, was declared guilty of high treason and beheaded, to the great dismay of the king, who reluctantly signed his death warrant. King Charles I would himself be beheaded eight years later.

With regard to Nicholas Hannon and the other Portumna jurors, despite Wentworth’s execution, their eventual release and the reduction of the crippling fines achieved through the influence of the Earl of Clanricarde, the jurors or their heirs were still required to pay their fine until King Charles later remitted the outstanding amounts. An attempt was later made, under the reign of his son, King Charles II, to have the juror’s heirs pay the remaining amount but in 1662 the king finally decreed that the remaining sums should remain remitted.

Those lands that the principal members of the Hannon family held about Abbeygormacan later passed from their hands. The O Hannons were long associated with Abbeygormacan, with individuals of that name serving the Church in the diocese of Clonfert and as Religious at the abbey over succeeding centuries. Nicholas Hannon held the castle of ‘Castleheyny’ about Abbeygormacan in the early decades of the seventeenth century but there now remains little physical reminder of the Hannon presence thereabout with the exception of this tomb.

The Hannon tomb today

A fine late example of high-status altar tombs constructed across Ireland from the medieval period in abbey churches, the tomb at Abbeygormacan is of sufficient architectural and historical worth to merit an intervention to ensure its preservation. As a protected structure any unauthorised works to save the tomb are prohibited but it would reflect poorly upon the country and county should the State, through its Local Authority or another authorised body, fail to act before ivy and neglect bring about the collapse of this fine memorial.

Map showing the location of that part of the parish of Abbeygormacan (in green) that lies within the mid nineteenth century barony of Longford (in yellow) in the east of County Galway. Modern towns and villages shown in red.

The tomb lies within the ivy-covered side chapel or transept, to the right of this photograph, the substantial wall in the foreground the remains of the southern wall of the nave and chancel of the monastery church, dotted now with numerous modern graves.

The late medieval gated doorway leading into the roofless ruins of the side chapel, with the Hannon tomb, set into the gable wall, in the background.

A dislodged stone from the ‘altar slab’ that once formed part of the coverlid of the tomb now lies on the ground among the rubble and debris before the tomb. Inscribed with the words ‘Orimuret mori mur hoc monumentum erigi fecerunt D: Nicholaus Hanyn et Ranyneta Maddyn ipsius uxor pro se: suis que prosteris Anno Domini Jan 1637,’ the tomb was apparently designed as the resting place of the most prominent member of the family. This Nicholas would appear therefore to be Nicholas of Castleheyny, gentleman, whose lands lay across the parishes of Abbeygormacan, Kiltormer, Killimor and Tynagh in the barony of Longford in east Galway in the early to mid decades of that century.

The classically-detailed keystone, above the tomb’s arch, dropped from its original position, displaced by the encroaching vegetation.

The Hannon tomb bears certain architectural similarities to the even later tomb of Thomas Burke, the senior-most representative of the Burkes of Pallas, a significant landholder in south-east Galway, erected in 1649 in a side chapel at Kilnalahan Abbey, in the village of Abbey, in the south-east of the county. The Burke tomb, however, is in a much better state of preservation, having the advantage of being located beneath an intact roof.

The better preserved near contemporary tomb erected at Kilnalahan Abbey by Thomas Burke of Pallas, commemorating his parents, wives and posterity about twelve years after the construction of the Hannon tomb.

Michael Glynn from Abbeygormacan with his dog ‘Rex’ in front of the side chapel doorway. Michael was cycling by as I arrived at the ruins of Abbeygormacan. On his journey back home later he stopped for a chat and we both left the abbey at the same time, closing its gate behind us.

For further details on the Hannon family, refer to ‘Hannon’ under ‘Families’ in the main body of the website.

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The Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St. Nicholas, better known as Galway Cathedral, with the Salmon Weir Bridge in the foreground.

The relics of St. Anthony are being put on display for veneration in six locations about Ireland this month, in a tour of Ireland and the United Kingdom to commemorate the 750^th anniversary of the discovery by St. Bonaventure of St. Anthony’s incorrupt tongue among his remains when his body was exhumed. I had the privilege of serving as one of the stewards at the reception of the relics into Galway Cathedral and I have to say I enjoyed myself immensely.

Rev. Martin Whelan C.C. leading the procession of the relics  and clergy from the sacristy at the beginning of morning mass.

The relics, a small piece of petrified flesh and layers of skin of the saint’s cheek, were displayed in two reliquaries, brought out in procession after eleven o clock mass over which Most Rev. Martin Drennan DD, Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh presided. Fr. Mario Conte OFM, a Conventual Friar of the Basilica of St. Anthony at Padua, who travels with the relics, delivered the sermon.

I’m not always the best to recall the details of a sermon but one brief anecdote in particular stayed with me.

Fr. Conte was in Carlow with the relics a number of years ago, where an elderly lady with a deep devotion to St. Anthony, after venerating the relics, was interviewed by a journalist on leaving the church. The reporter asked her why she came and she responded that she was visiting her dear friend St. Anthony. The reporter retorted that surely the saint had been dead for several hundred years at this stage. The lady paused. ‘Yes’ she replied, ‘but love lives on.’

Applying the anecdote to the occasion, Fr. Conte went on to explain that the veneration of relics is not about superstition or the adoration of objects but rather the relic is regarded as ‘a connection of love, between the venerating person and the saint.’ He added that he carries with him his own mother’s wedding ring, too small for him to wear, but, in a similar way, it too serves as a connection of love between him and his departed mother, who is made more present to him upon his contemplating the ring. His sermon was simple, direct and effective, in the true tradition of the preaching St. Anthony.

The statue of St. Anthony of Padua, surrounded on the sanctuary by lilies. The lily, a symbol of purity, has a long association with Saint Anthony. One story relates that a cut lily placed in the hand of a statue of the saint in Austria in 1680 remained alive and fragrant for a year and in the following year grew more blooms, while in the 1780s, in a church in Corsica, cut lilies were reputed to have remained in bloom for months.

The patron saint of the lost and an object of popular devotion, St. Anthony was born of noble parents in 1195 in Lisbon and baptised Fernando de Bulhoes. In his youth he entered religious life as an Augustinian and was ordained a priest. Inspired by the selfless sacrifice of five early Franciscan martyrs, he later joined the Franciscans, took the name of Anthony and became an early follower of St. Francis of Assisi. He proved an effective and tireless preacher, with an extensive knowledge of the gospels. Crowds of 30,000 were said to have attended his last sermons in Padua in Italy prior to his death as a result of dropsy in 1231. About eleven months after his death he was canonised, the swiftest canonisation process in the Catholic Church. In 1946 he was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XII.

I also only discovered for the first time tonight, that it was not unusual until very recently for people to write the initials ‘S.A.G.’ (Saint Anthony Guide) on envelopes in the hope of the letter reaching its destination. At once a pious gesture and a damning indictment of the postal service but the touching story behind this, involving an eighteenth century Spanish merchant and his wife, too long to relate here, is worth reading.

Stewarding on an occasion such as this gives one a unique insight into the sheer weight of numbers of those who travelled to venerate the relics. The Cathedral was full to capacity for the morning mass, with quite a few standing in the aisles. The weight of numbers was such that stewarding proved initially difficult in the early stages but order prevailed under the guidance of Fr. Martin Whelan, curate at the Cathedral and Diocesan Secretary.

Stewards Bernard and Bartley on duty with the reliquary of the saint in the main aisle of the Cathedral.

The queues for both relics were both dignified and constant throughout the day, interrupted only for the celebration of mass at six o clock in the evening.

For much of the afternoon I found myself supporting the reliquary before the altar as the faithful queued patiently down the main aisle. The queue was unceasing. I stayed with the relic until six o clock mass, when Bernard Finan, one of the most experienced of the stewards, came and suggested that we take the reliquary back to the sacristy for the duration of evening mass, whereafter it would be brought back out in procession again. Only then, as we went to lift the reliquary, did I realise that I had been standing in the one spot for so long and my legs had become so stiff, that they almost buckled under the weight of the reliquary.

Always in good humour and gracious, Rev. Michael Byrne JCL, priest of the diocese of Clonfert and Judical Vicar with the Marriage Tribunal in Galway, with the relics of St. Anthony prior to his celebration of six o clock evening mass.

The author with both reliquaries in the sacristy prior to six o clock mass.

While the relics would remain on display until ten o clock at night, I had to leave at six. As I sat impatiently in the car on the way home, stuck in heavy traffic in the dark and pouring rain, it struck me that, unusually, the traffic was as heavy entering the city as leaving, a result, no doubt, of the additional numbers making their way after work to the Cathedral and St. Anthony.

Sitting there, motionless, I realised two things. Firstly, there is no shortage of devotion to popular relics among the Catholics of Ireland, with all ages represented in the endless queues and secondly, that the least stewardable of people in a crowd have to be certain determined little elderly ladies, intently focussed on reaching their destination, by hook or by crook, by the shortest route possible.

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The scenery about Kilronan and the surrounding towns of Keadue, Ballyfarnon and Boyle is unrivalled, nestled among a proliferation of hills, lakes and forests, but not so long ago this hotel was a roofless ruinous shell. Formerly the residence of the Tenison (later King-Tenison) family, a house had existed here in the early 1800s and was replaced in the late nineteenth century with a neo-gothic mansion called Castle Tennison, which, by the late twentieth century had fallen into a serious state of disrepair.

Few modern purpose-built hotels, with their clean lines and often clinical surroundings, can boast the ‘lived-in’ comfortable ‘easy-chair’ atmosphere of a restored or converted ‘big house’ or castle with its centuries-old history as a family home. The owners who restored this castle did a wonderful job in achieving that atmosphere in the original structure. The attention to detail in the old building is remarkable, with finely carved timberwork and panelling throughout and no expense spared. Photographs about the hotel show the forlorn shell as it stood for years before it was brought back to life about 2006 and 2007.

The former hall, now the reception area of the hotel, beautifully re-built and refurbished.

New stained glass windows inserted into the entrance porch. The porch as it originally stood sported a crenellated parapet that was altered to a pitched gable as part of the new early twenty-first century work.

The timber panelled ceiling with finely carved coat rack and mirror in the entrance porch

The drawing room, one of the most pleasant rooms in the hotel, with its newly inserted timber chimney surround and carved figures.

Overall, we had a wonderful time at Kilronan but in the interest of giving a balanced assessment, I should list a few minor grumbles. On reaching the estate, an unfortunate incomplete gateway of false stonework that belongs more to a Disney set than an Irish landed estate is followed by a bulky modern extension with ill-proportioned fenestration that doesn’t do justice to the original and whose interior sported awful mock medieval weaponry on its walls that may have been borrowed from the same film set.

Despite these minor criticisms, we thoroughly enjoyed our stay. The service was friendly and helpful, the food good and the setting, amid a deeply wooded demesne on the verge of the lake, was stunning. We stayed in the old building so I couldn’t comment on the new rooms but our room was comfortable with beautiful views over parkland and mist and tree-covered hills in the distance.

Sitting in the drawing room on our first night we spotted a brochure advertising the attractions of nearby Carrick-on-Shannon in County Leitrim, this year celebrating four hundred years since the granting of its charter by King James I. I could see Alison’s delight turning to concern when I noticed an exhibition on heraldry advertised in the St. George Heritage and Visitor Centre in the town. Concern turned to delight when it dawned on Alison that this could mean at least an hour husband-free shopping about the town while I absorbed all on show.

Next morning, after speeding Alison through her breakfast, we drove to Carrick-on-Shannon, by way of the beautifully maintained small town of Keadue, not far from where the celebrated blind Irish harper and composer Turlough O Carolan spent his final days.

A mural of Turlough O Carolan on the wall of the Credit Union building in Keadue, commemorating the blind composer’s connection with the town.

To say I was a little disappointed on reaching the exhibition was an understatement. The exhibition consisted of eight free-standing posters or banners, on loan from the National Library of Ireland, placed about the room, but with no original or even reproduction material on show. Alison found it interesting as an introduction to the subject, so it wasn’t without value, but I don’t know if I would have classed it as an ‘exhibition.’ It would have been very useful, however, as a compliment or background information to an exhibition. To be fair, however, in retrospect, Alison put the issue in perspective for me in identifying my dissatisfaction with scanty heraldry exhibitions as really a ‘First World problem.’

Introductory banners on the subject of heraldry at St. George’s Heritage and Visitor Centre.

That being said, I also enjoyed Carrick-on-Shannon and in particular the little gem that is the Costello Chapel, book-ended between taller buildings in the middle of the town.

The Costello Chapel on Bridge Street, Carrick-on-Shannon, dedicated in 1879. At approximately 4.8m long and 3.6m wide, the chapel is given as the smallest Roman Catholic Chapel in Ireland and reputed to be the second smallest in the world.

Having lost his beloved wife in 1877, a disconsolate Edward Costello had this small chapel erected in the town, wherein, to the left of the tabernacle, her coffin was placed beneath a solid layer of glass at the chapel’s dedication in 1879. On the right hand side of the tabernacle, a space was left empty to receive his own coffin when his time came, but in the meantime, up to his death in 1891, mass was celebrated in the chapel on the first Friday of every month for the happy repose of his wife’s soul. The chalice commissioned by Edward Costello for the solemn mass at the dedication of the chapel was used at each First Friday mass and is now on display at the St. George’s Heritage and Visitor Centre.

A portrait, placed in the wall of the chapel, of Mary Josephine Costello, who died at the age of forty-seven years in October 1877, in whose memory her grieving husband Edward had the chapel erected. 

The coffins of Mary Josephine Costello (left) and her husband Edward (right), each set beneath a layer of glass in the floor of the chapel before the tabernacle.

My favourable impression of the town may also have been coloured by the extra large slice of coffee cake I consumed in ‘Lena’s Tea Room.’ Despite promising Alison that I wouldn’t eat it all, it somehow disappeared and proved a tasty appetiser to my dinner back at Kilronan later.

The disappearing slice of coffee cake served at ‘Lena’s Tea Room’ in Carrick-on-Shannon.

Before we left I couldn’t fail to visit the nearby ruins of the church at Kilronan, wherein rest the mortal remains of Turlough O Carolan, feted by some romantically as ‘the last of the Irish bards.’ Born in 1670 in County Meath, he died in 1738 and lies in the ruins of the MacDermott Roe family side chapel but the remnants upon his headstone of candles long since quenched and the annual O Carolan Harp Festival and Summer School in the nearby town of Keadue testify to his continued presence in the minds of the people.

The ruins of Kilronan church and the final resting place of Turlough O Carolan (in the foreground) in the side chapel of the MacDermott Roe family. In the background is the tomb of the MacDermott Roe family of Alderford House, Kilronan, with whom O Carolan’s father found employment. The MacDermott Roe family served as initial patrons of the young O Carolan, with Mrs. Mary Fitzgerald MacDermott Roe placing him under the tutelage of a reputable harper at a young age. Although blind from his youth as a result of smallpox, O Carolan thereafter spent much of his life travelling about Ireland playing and composing music, deriving patronage from various families of the landed gentry such as the O Conors of Belanagare. At the age of fifty years he married, had a family and settled in County Leitrim but, after the death of his wife and nearing the end of his own life, he returned to his early patron and friend Mary MacDermott Roe and he died at Alderford House in 1738. Following a wake of four days, members of the MacDermott Roe family served among his pall bearers and approximately sixty members of the clergy were reputed to have attended his burial at Kilronan.

The developers who purchased Kilronan Castle and restored the ruin did a wonderful job, saving for the region an architectural treasure that, had it been left for much longer, would have fallen beyond repair. Alison and I are proof of the fact that buildings like this are an invaluable addition to the economic life of the region. It was Kilronan that brought us to North Roscommon and we were only two of the many tourists staying there, all spending locally and supporting the local economy.

We both agreed as we drove away from Kilronan Castle that it wouldn’t be our last time and that we would be back to spend more time in the castle itself and the surrounding region.

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I missed the show jumping on the first day of the Ballinasloe Fair as our team was fencing in the Épée Team Nationals in Galway. I fenced so poorly I think the team would have been better off if I had gone to the show jumping.

Much of the sale activity at the Great Fair is now centred on the Fair Green, a six acre green area located in the centre of the town but in earlier centuries it was held within the Garbally demesne lands of the le Poer Trench family who rose to prominence about Ballinasloe in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century and who acquired the Earldom of Clancarty in the early years of the nineteenth.

Billed as one of the oldest Horse Fairs in Europe, its origins are lost in time but it was in operation in the eighteenth century and had grown to such proportions that it was described by ‘The Times’ newspaper in the early decades of the nineteenth century as ‘the largest of its kind in Europe’ and ‘the greatest in the British Empire.’

Traders in St. Michael’s Square on the last Saturday, known as ‘Country Fair Day,’ one of the busiest days of the Fair and Festival. In the background is St. Michael’s Church, initially designed by the architect James J. MacCarthy and re-designed by Augustus Welby Pugin in the mid nineteenth century.

Of the stories associated with the Fair, perhaps the most repeated is that of Marengo, Napoleon’s favoured small grey Arab stallion, named from his victory in 1800 over the Austrian Empire and captured after his defeat in 1815 at Waterloo. Various but unsubstantiated accounts relate that Marengo was purchased by the French at the Great Fair of Ballinasloe.

Jill, Duchess of Hamilton wrote an interesting account of Napoleon’s horses about thirteen years ago, entitled ‘Marengo: the Myth of Napoleon’s horse,’ exploring the facts and fiction surrounding the Emperor’s relationship with his favourite horses.

A competent and an adventurous but ungraceful rider, one German aristocrat once contemptuously said of Napoleon I that he ‘rode like a butcher,’ his body swaying back and forth and side to side with the motion and speed of the horse. Napoleon kept about eighty saddle horses but favoured only about ten. A lack of clear references in the official Imperial records to a horse named ‘Marengo,’ Napoleon’s habit of applying nicknames to the proper names of his horses and his penchant for small grey Arabs combined to make it difficult to say much with any certainty about this horse, claimed as one its own by Ballinasloe.

Purchasing agents for many of the European armies attended at Ballinasloe to add to their stock of horses and it is difficult to state categorically whether Marengo was purchased here. A similar claim was made relating to at least one other fair in Ireland and a stone in a field in County Wexford is also supposed to commemorate the birth there of this horse. Others, including the British National Army Museum, believe it more likely that he was acquired by Napoleon in Egypt in 1799 as a six-year old horse rather than Ireland.

Whatever the truth regarding Ballinasloe and Napoleon’s horse, the horse known later as ‘Marengo’ was captured following the battle of Waterloo by William, 11^th Baron Petre. He was later sold and unsuccessfully put to stud. On his death in 1831 the remaining parts of his skeleton, minus a hoof, was preserved and put on display before crowds as a celebrated curiosity in a well-lit glass case in the Waterloo Gallery at the National Army Museum in Chelsea where it may still be seen today.

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Reports came in of a ‘black cloud’ arriving out of nowhere and spinning towards the cathedral of Clonfert shortly after 6.30pm, its funnel uprooting trees, gravestones and destroying buildings as it moved across the countryside. Homes in the area had been left without electricity in its wake.

I should explain that my family home is situated within a few miles of the Cathedral in the same parish and, like many of the local population, generations of my family lie buried within its grounds. Once the site of a religious settlement founded in the middle of the sixth century by St. Brendan the Navigator, the centre of a medieval town and the site of a wealthy Augustinian monastery, all that remained above ground by the mid nineteenth century was the Cathedral with its celebrated Hiberno-Romanesque doorway, a constabulary station across the way and behind the Cathedral the former residence of the Bishop of Clonfert.

This morning, the Local Authority, Galway County Council, had cordoned off sections about the Cathedral, advising people to avoid the area given the amount of asbestos roofing material cast about the area by the winds of the previous night.

The Cathedral grounds were busy nonetheless with local people, newspaper photographers and cameramen surveying the damage. Remarkably, nobody appeared to have sustained serious injury during the incident. Equally remarkable was the fact that while considerable damage was done to the mature trees and several of the headstones immediately about the Cathedral, as the wind swept in front of the building and made its way around the side and rear, the building itself had escaped unscathed without a pane of glass or slate touched.

The Cathedral of Clonfert, the earliest sections of which date from at least the late twelfth century. The tornado swept among the stones and trees about the building, leaving its fabric unscathed.

The shattered remains of a headstone to the McEvoy and Killeen families, which stood immediately inside the entrance gate to the graveyard.

The remains of another nearby headstone, dedicated to the memory of members of the Larkin family of Banagher, County Offaly and Kilmacshane in Clonfert parish.

The remains of the Nevin burial plot, its nineteenth century celtic style cross broken and cast aside by the cloud’s funnel. Many of those crosses damaged in these winds date from about the nineteenth century.

Local people gather on the public road before the former Constabulary Barracks at Clonfert, now the house of a family named McEvoy, directly across the road from the cathedral at Clonfert. Profiled metal roof panels and timber rafters were torn from the roof of a shed behind this house and blown across the road by the winds. Behind, part of the wood through which the funnel travelled as it wound about the cathedral.

Behind the Cathedral lies a cluster of religious buildings that compose the ‘Emmanuel House of Providence’, a collection of new and older buildings on the former site of the farmyard once attached to the old ‘Bishops Palace’ at Clonfert. The winds cut a swath through a small wood of mature trees between the church and the religious buildings behind, uprooting and felling large trees and blocking the avenue to the ‘House of Providence’. ‘The trees were dancing’ was the memorable phrase used by Mrs. Lucy Stones, who resides at ’Emmanuel House’, to describe the ferocious shaking of the stout old trees as the winds approached through the woods. Emerging from the trees, but not before knocking a number of yew trees that formed part of an old and knarled arboreal walkway known locally as ’the Nuns Walk,’ the black cloud’s funnel avoided the residential buildings at the House of Prayer, shifting to the west to tear part of the roof panels from its tea rooms before disappearing across the flat callow-land to the north in the direction of Roscommon.

Map showing the approximate route of the ‘Black Cloud’ or tornado as it travelled north about the vicinity of Clonfert Cathedral.

Clonfert Cathedral and a number of large yew and other trees uprooted by the winds and fallen across the stone boundary walls of the graveyard, viewed from the avenue behind, leading to the ruins of the Bishop’s Palace and the collection of religious buildings known as the ’Emmanuel House of Providence’  These trees along the eastern boundary of the graveyard fell upon a number of modern headstones and various burial plots within the graveyard and appear to have been the only trees that fell within the graveyard proper on this occasion, the remaining damage done to headstones inflicted by the wind itself.

One of the mature trees uprooted and felled by the tornado as it made its way through the small wood between the Cathedral and the ‘Emmanuel House of Providence’ behind.

The ruins of the former Bishop’s Palace at Clonfert, much of which dates from the early seventeenth century. Lying between the Cathedral and the modern ‘Emmanuel House of Providence’, the house was, for a short period, the residence in the 1950s of Sir Oswald Mosley and his wife Diana Guinness prior to its accidental burning at Christmas 1954. The winds appear to have swirled about the building but not inflicted any significant additional damage.

Mature tree-trunks split and trees uprooted along the avenue leading to the ruins of the Bishop’s Palace and the ‘House of Providence.’ This avenue was blocked with fallen trees and branches, cut and cleared from the road by early the following morning.

The grounds of the ‘Emmanuel House of Providence’, behind the Cathedral, with the residential buildings on the right.

The oratory at the ‘Emmanuel House of Providence’ which escaped unscathed as the tornado destroyed trees in its immediate vicinity.

The profiled metal roof panels of the ‘Emmanuel House of Providence’ tearooms, torn by the tornado.

The ‘Holy Tree’ in the woods before the Cathedral at Clonfert. Despite losing a number of branches at high level, it emerged relatively undamaged from the localised storm funnel. Continuing an ancient pagan tradition whereby people leave votive offerings or momentos of cures or tokens towards difficulties yet to be overcome.

The route taken by the ‘Black Cloud’ across the parish of Clonfert

After talking to numerous locals and hearing eyewitness accounts detailing the damage done to various farms and buildings, it became possible to piece together the route taken by the tornado from its initial appearance to its disappearance.

By all accounts it rose nearby in the south, in the vicinity of the River Shannon. My good friend Richard Campbell reported a torrential downpour there in the parish of Meelick that evening about the time of the tornado but their sky was dead calm though not three minutes drive from where the tornado first appeared.

It was first recorded in the townland of Rooaun (on the borders of the parishes of Clonfert and Meelick) near the Shannon, crossing the Eyrecourt to Banagher road (known locally as ‘the High Road’) after knocking several trees and damaging some agricultural buildings, and proceeded north across an expanse of bog known variously as the Ballynakill or Killnaborris bog. It emerged from the bog to damage farm buildings in the townland of Cankilly that once formed part of a farm belonging to a family named Mehern, then Burke and now Morris. Continuing on its northerly path, it felled trees on the edge of the townland of Kilmacshane, about the farmhouse and adjacent mobile house of Noel Kelly. Two of his children narrowly escaped with their lives before the latter structure was crushed. It continued northwards tearing up trees along a hedge in front of that house until its crossed the Clonfert to Banagher road and made its way towards the old cathedral at Clonfert in the distance.

Map showing the approximate route of the ‘Black Cloud’ or tornado, as it travelled north across the parish of Clonfert in east Galway.

Several people recalled witnessing the ‘black cloud’ at a distance from the nearby sportsfield at Clonfert. Another local man, reputed to have fortuitously left the graveyard only minutes earlier, was said to have pulled his vehicle to the side of the road along a treeless stretch of road for safety. Of the numerous persons with whom I spoke today, the nearest eye-witness was Niall Bleahen of Clontuskert. I met Niall when I stopped on the side of the road to inspect the hedges on either side of the Lawrencetown to Banagher road at the point where the tornado crossed the previous night. Niall stopped his jeep and horsebox behind my car and we both got out to chat.

Niall and his brother John had been returning from Tipperary that evening and about 6.45pm spotted the black cloud and the funnel of the tornado approaching across the fields from their left hand side (about Noel Kelly’s house in Kilmacshane). He stopped in time to see the tornado, after tearing along a line of trees, cross the road immediately in front of him and continue on its way towards the Cathedral. He confirmed other reports that the funnel was full of helpless clamouring crows being tossed and flung violently around its centre.

Although difficult to gauge as it moved, Niall estimated the width of the funnel at its base as being about the width of the road at that point, about 4.8m, confirming that it was in fact a focussed element at that stage rather than a loose collection of wind channels. He did however think that it appeared more concentrated before it approached the road and was under the impression that it appeared to fade somewhat after crossing. It had yet, however, to hit the graveyard minutes later.

Another witness, living locally, was of the opinion that a small offshoot may have separated from the principal funnel as it appeared to have damaged his brother’s shed in the vicinity and shook his mother’s house nearby, both of which buildings lay slightly to the east and alongside, but not immediately upon, the path taken by the whirlwind moving towards the Cathedral.

As it entered the woods about the Cathedral, metal roofs were torn from sheds in the vicinity. As it tore through the woods, felling more trees, it cast one upon the roof of a nearby house and flung twisted and mangled metal roofing panels about the road.

Three local men, Kieran and Vincent McEvoy and their cousin Kieran Coughlan, among those on hand to assist where needed the morning after the tornado struck.

Workers removing the fallen tree from the roof of Coughlan’s house, near the Cathedral the morning following the tornado.

It left in its wake ruined sheds, at least two damaged houses and numerous trees but incredibly the most ancient of the buildings; the Cathedral and the ruins of the Bishop’s Palace, escaped untouched. Equally surprising was the lack of serious injuries to those families who lived in its path.

News accounts of the day record it as ‘a freak weather event.’ Had we lived in a less informed time, this would have had all the hallmarks of a sign or portent from the heavens.

The collection of historical records known as the ‘Annals of Connacht’ begin in the year 1224 with an account of a momentous shower that fell upon East Galway and South Roscommon that year, that led to disease and sickness among the people and livestock. The medieval annalists who compiled the account associated the incident and its subsequent afflictions with the death that year at Abbeyknockmoy of Cathal crobhdhearg O Connor, the King of Connacht, known to many Irish schoolchildren from the poem of James Clarence Mangan as ‘Cathal mór of the wine-red hand.’

We know such events today as an aberration in the local weather conditions brought about by specific conditions, in this event a rare case of the heavy showers in Meelick leading to the formation of a dark funnel cloud that generated the devastating winds.

One cannot help wonder what the mind of the medieval annalist would have construed from the phenomenon that appeared from nowhere out of the River Shannon, left a trail of destruction in its wake, swerved to avoid the old Cathedral and the oratory behind and went on its way to disappear across the flat lands to the north.

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In the case of Cairbre Crom, the reputed sixth century ancestor of the O Kellys, Maddens, Egans, Kennys, Treacys, Larkins and many of the Gaelic families of east Galway and south Roscommon, this was done by erecting a cross to mark the spot.

The late fourteenth century Irish manuscript called the ‘Book of Hy Many’ recounts that Cairbre was for nine years chieftain or king of Uí Maine, a wide area which at that time covered a large part of eastern and central Galway and southern Roscommon. About the beginning of autumn, after a particularly busy day ‘plundering and devastating’ he and his twenty-seven companions rested and slept at a place called Derryconny. There he was attacked and killed. His head was severed from his body and taken to the ‘tochar’ (a timber causeway across a bog) of Cloonburren and ‘left on a green flagstone in the middle of the tochar.’

St. Ciaran, on hearing word that Cairbre had been killed set out from his nearby religious settlement at Clonmacnoise and made his way west across the River Shannon with some of his fellow clergy to ‘Turloch Droma,’ carrying with them their bells. On reaching the body they rang their bells round the headless body and from that ceremony the place derived it’s future name ‘Ard na gclog’ or ‘the height of the bells.’

Taking the body with them they then proceeded to the spot on the bog path where the head lay, only to discover a demon keeping company with the head. St. Ciaran demanded the demon account for his presence to which he replied that the previous owner of the head had been a faithful servant of his and on that account he was keeping and accompanying the head. The saint challenged the demon and deprived him of Cairbre’s head, claiming that Cairbre, before his death, had submitted to the Christian saint and confessed his sins before God.

The meeting of St. Ciaran and the demon upon the tochar of Cloonburren, by the author.

The religious took leave of the demon, leaving him at the flagstone on the tochar where they had found him. Thereafter it was said that anyone who should tread upon that stone ‘does not do what is to his welfare that day.’

They brought both head and body across the Shannon to Clonmacnoise, placed the head on the body, placed St. Ciaran’s pillow beneath the head, whereupon at the saint’s command the head adhered to the body and Cairbre returned to life. Not everything worked out smoothly as there was a bend in Cairbre’s neck, from which, for the remainder of his life, he was known as Cairbre ‘crom’ or Cairbre ‘the bent’ or ‘stooped.’

Now that is a good story!

I could go on and relate Cairbre’s experience while departed, his soul contended over by angels and demons and the credit he ascribed to his confession and prayers in saving his soul, but that’s for another day. Also for another day, and a more detailed article on the origins of the O Kellys and the wider Uí Maine tribe in the main body of the website, is the story of all the lands in east Galway reputedly bestowed on St. Ciaran’s foundation at Clonmacnoise by Cairbre in return for the miracle and all the lands later bestowed by his descendant Ceallach (from whom the O Kellys are said to derive).

The Cross of Cairbre Crom

A cross was erected which tradition in the mid nineteenth century said marked the spot where St. Ciaran re-united Cairbre Crom’s head with his body. The antiquary John O Donovan stated in 1857 that the cross existed in his day but as modern maps dated 2005 show little evidence of its existence or precise location today, I and my good friend and colleague Richard Campbell, Engineer and Mayo-man now based in Ballinasloe, decided that we would launch a two-man six mile expedition to see if we could locate the remains of the cross.

Supporting references and evidence

Much of the evidence relating to its precise location is derived from the nineteenth century antiquarian John O Donovan and a reference in an old book called ‘The Registry of Clonmacnoise.’

O Donovan described the ‘mutilated’ remains of the cross in the mid nineteenth century as situated ‘near the old church of Cloonburren’ in the south Roscommon parish of Moore, between the town of Ballinasloe on the River Suck and the site of Clonmacnoise on the River Shannon. More specifically he described it as ‘standing almost in the middle of the tochar which leads from the old nunnery of Cloonburren in the parish of Moore to the townland of Faaltia.’ He had visited the site when compiling his ‘Ordnance Survey Letters’ and the site of the old nunnery at Cloonburren, from which he said he had a good view of Clonmacnoise in the distance.

Map showing Cloonburren graveyard and the site of the old nunnery, within the parish of Moore (shown in yellow).

We knew that the cross lay to the east of the modern townland of Faltia, from an account in a seventeenth century translation of the ‘Registry of Clonmacnoise.’ That story related that how a later O Kelly, a descendant of Cairbre Crom, killed a child and when the Church forgave him he bestowed further lands on the foundation at Clonmacnoise. Over time the Church’s interest in these lands was forgotten but when an even later descendant of Cairbre, Lochlann O Kelly (who, depending on which source one reads, flourished about the thirteenth or fourteenth century) disclosed them to the Bishop of Clonmacnoise, he rewarded Lochlann and his descendants with a lease of Church lands, the payment of which was six cows and six fat hogs on the feast of St. Martin and the obligation to repair the tochar or ‘causey (causeway) of Cluyn Buyrynn from the cross of Cairbre Crom westwards to the Cruaidh (‘hard ground’) of Failte.’

In O Donovan’s time the cross had already lost both of its arms and looked more akin to a pillar stone but was still called ‘the Cross of Cairbre Crom’ by the local population, who retained ‘a vivid tradition that it marks the spot where St. Ciaran put on the head of Cairbre Crom, King of Hy Many.’ (The ‘Book of Hy Many’ actually stated that this was the place where ‘they put the head along with the body’ and that Cairbre was not resuscitated until the head was attached to the body at Clonmacnoise).

The last item of information at our disposal was O Donovan’s description of a holy well at the foot of the cross that at one time took it upon itself to remove to the other side of the ‘tochar’ ‘in consequence of an insult offered it by an imprudent woman who washed her clothes in it.’ The holy well, O Donovan reported, had dried up by the time of his visit, ‘as a result of drains sunk on both sides of the causeway to keep it dry.’

Looking at the Ordnance Survey maps, the ‘old nunnery of Cloonburren’ visited by O Donovan was evidently that site identified on nineteenth century maps as ‘Cloonburren Grave Yard.’ Despite the fact that there was no record of any artefact resembling a cross or pillar-like stone on the mid nineteenth century maps, maps produced later in that century showed a ‘holy stone’ near the site of grave-yard, by the side of the narrow bog road in the townland of Hillsend, between Cloonburren and the townland of Faltia. This, we believed had to be the remains of the stone identified as part of the cross. The presence of a drain running for a short distance on either side of the road in the vicinity of the stone, as described by O Donovan, appeared to confirm its identity. This had to have been the site of Cairbre Crom’s cross, where St. Ciaran and his followers encountered the demon and Cairbre’s head was re-united with his body.

Map showing the position of the ‘holy stone’ (in red) as indicated on the 1890s Ordnance Survey maps, in relation to Cloonburren graveyard (in yellow) and to surrounding early twenty-first century features and buildings.

The intrepid Explorers

So earlier today, armed with these details, little map evidence, a copious amount of curiosity and a stern warning from Alison not to stand on any cursed flagstones, we boldly set out from the town of Ballinasloe to cross the river Suck and travel the six miles or so to explore the lower regions of County Roscommon in search of the remains of Cairbre’s cross.

The area over which these events were claimed to have taken place is still identifiable in the modern placenames within the parish of Moore. Ard na gClog, where the monks rang their bells about Cairbre’s headless body, is today the townland of Ardnaglug, much of it bogland in the parish of Moore and the memory of the tochar, the path over the bog, is still continued in the name of local townlands such as ‘Cappantoghar’ (the tillage plot of the tochar).

As we drew near the graveyard of Cloonburren, down narrow country roads, the topography of the area clearly matched the ancient legend. All about was bogland, much of it in use by the Semi-State body ‘Bord na Móna’ charged with the harvesting of peat from the bog for the production of fuel, with areas of grassy high ground and agricultural land.

Cloonburren graveyard, the site of the early Christian nunnery or convent, said to have been founded in the sixth century by the Virgin Saint Cairech Dairgean who died in 577, sister of St. Eanna of Aran. Within the graveyard lie the remains of several early Christian graveslabs bearing incised crosses.

The views over the surrounding bogs to the north from the height of Cloonburren graveyard.

We had the remarkable good fortune of asking directions from a local lady who pointed us in the direction of the graveyard at Cloonburren, only just around the corner. To our surprise, when I asked her if she knew of an historic stone by the side of the road in the area, she did. Not only that, but she informed us that the stone had been struck a number of years ago by a vehicle and knocked into the drain, where it had lain for some time out of view. The same stone had only been removed from the drain within the last two months or so and re-positioned.

We found the stone exactly as she described it and along the same stretch of roadside in the approximate position indicated on the 1890s O.S. map. On either side of the road lay the deep bog drains mentioned by O Donovan in the mid nineteenth century. Here, still standing by the narrow bog road after centuries, was what was said to have been the remains of the Cross of Cairbre Crom, set now in a small base of concrete.

The scarred and damaged stone with a raised and partially rounded central section upon which another element may have stood. Octagonal on plan, this remaining section may have formed part of the upper section of the shaft. No surviving stone base was evident on site. The shape would appear to suggest a possible late medieval or early modern (ie. 1600s) date and a basic structure possibly not dissimilar to a number of late wayside crosses such as the seventeenth century cross found at Kilconnell in east Galway.

The position of the stone as it stands today appears to be approximately 7.75 metres (to the north-west) from its position indicated on the 1890s Ordnance Survey maps. Its position on the 1890s map, on the boundary of three townlands, suggests that the cross may have also served as a ‘marker’ of those boundaries. Richard marks the position of the stone as indicated on the nineteenth century map in relation to the current location of the stone re-positioned earlier this year. The approximate line of the ancient tochar, now a tarmacadamed public road, across the bog to the ‘hard ground’ of Faltia in the background.

We hadn’t expected to find any remnant of the stone standing. Had we arrived three or four months earlier we would not have seen anything. It would have lain in the black water of the drain beneath a thick and impenetrable green blanket of algae. Had we not enquired for directions of a local lady out walking we would not have known of its recent history and repositioning.

In taking it upon themselves to rescue the stone, the members of the local community who did so have not only salvaged part of an ancient monument but a real and tangible link into the dim past of Irish myth and history with the semi-historical ancestor of so many of the Gaelic families of east Galway and south Roscommon.

And it’s only now, as I sit down to write this, that I realise how satisfying it is to think that our journey today adds in some small way to the previous accounts of the centuries old story of the head and cross of Cairbre Crom.

The author with Dennis, Mary and young Donnach Whyte of Cloonburren, whose family lands lie about the graveyard at Cloonburren.

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