Robinson - Connemara: a little Gaelic kingdom

By the same author

Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage

Stones of Aran: Labyrinth

Mementos of Mortality: The Cenotaphs and Funerary Cairns of rainn

Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara

My Time in Space

Tales and Imaginings

The View from the Horizon

Connemara: Listening to the Wind

Connemara: The Last Pool of Darkness

Oilein rann: A Map of the Aran Islands, with a Companion to the Map

The Burren: A Map of the Uplands of North-West County Clare

Connemara: A One-Inch Map, with Introduction and Gazetteer

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First published 2011

Copyright Tim Robinson, 2011

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Jacket image Peter McCabe / Alamy

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ISBN: 9780141962313

Although it is the last part to be written, A Little Gaelic Kingdom takes second place in the Connemara trilogy, between Listening to the Wind and The Last Pool of Darkness. It is concerned with the Irish-speaking areas, and in writing it I have been reminded again and again not only of the debt I owe to the experts I have consulted in various fields, but of the dozens of people in those hospitable realms who guided me round their own neighbourhoods and kept me going with food, drink and encouragement. In many cases an indication of their contributions will be found in the Sources at the end of the volume. In the following list their names occur roughly in the order they come to mind as I read through my manuscript: Brian Curnin, Arndt Wigger, Helen Spellman, Paul Mohr, Mary Keane, the late Michael OToole, Marie Reddon, the late John Barlow, Donncha hallaithe, Virginia Blankenhorn,Lills Laoire, Ronach U gin, Treasa U Chonaire, the late Anthony Betts, the late Dick Scott, Sgt P. Conghaile, Niall OCarroll, John McDonagh, Richard Fitzgerald, Kieran OHalloran, Angela Bourke, Dith hgin, Phyllis ODonoghue, Samas Concheanainn, Sen Guairim, Michel Conghaile, Michael Gibbons, Eoghan Nill, Josie Gorham, Michel Cuaig, Seosamh Cuaig, the late Pat Sullivan, Mirtn Cathin, Peter Flaherty, Paul Ryan, the late Mchel Bairad, Dnall Mac Giolla Easpaig, Padhraic Faherty, Sen Mainnn, Fr Audley, the late Johnny Chil Mhaidhc, John Donnelly, Fr M. Lang, Martin J. OConnor, Laill Lamb, amon de Buitlar, Derek and Liz Hawker, Pdraig Maoilchiarin, Pdraic de Bhaldraithe, Tom Folan, Toms Maolin, Paul Kerrigan.

Brendan Barrington has edited my text with his customary judicious incisiveness, for which I am truly grateful. I thank the following for permission to quote from various works, as detailed in the Sources: Cathal Luain, Michel Conghaile (Cl Iar-Chonnachta) and Anne Korff (Tr Eolas). I am also aware of how much I owe to people met on the road who gave me some priceless scraps of local knowledge and whose names, regrettably, I failed to note.

In everything to do with language and song Liam Mac Con Iomaire has been a constant and generous support as well as a steadfast friend, and I dedicate Connemara: A Little Gaelic Kingdom to him with gratitude and respect.

TR

One day a hundred years or more ago Patrick Pearse and a friend were contemplating the waters of Galway Bay glistening through a screen of trees. As was usual with him, wrote the friend later on, he seemed inclined to silence, but suddenly he spoke: We could have here a little Gaelic kingdom of our own. The scene was in Cois Fharraige, which means beside the sea, the arm of the Irish-speaking south of Connemara that stretches along the coast towards the city of Galway. But if there had come to be such a kingdom its capital would have been further west, in Ros Muc, where its ruler was to build, write and plot, and to foresee his death.

In his short stories Pearse often used the topography of Ros Muc symbolically, almost as if he could assume that everyone else was familiar with it, as Dante could rest on certain commonplaces about Jerusalem and Rome; this was overweening in Pearse, but the quality of his stories is not negligible and there are of course extraliterary reasons for examining them. So I will begin by locating Ros Muc, the innermost complication of the topographical knot of south Connemara. A low-lying, south-pointing peninsula (ros) some five miles long, pinched into narrows here and stretching out into subsidiary peninsulas there, it has to the north of it a great tract of bogs and hills beyond which the Twelve Pins form the skyline; to its west is a much larger peninsula bearing the villages of Cill Chiarin and Carna and backboned by the long hill of Cnoc Mordin; to the east and separated from it by the narrowest and twistiest of seachannels is the hill of Camas and its hinterland of yet more bare hills; while to the south a proliferation of islands spills out into Galway Bay, some deserted, others, joined to each other and the mainland by causeways, having their own dense network of roads, villages and little harbours.

Theres not a foot of Ros Muc that isnt woven into Pearses writings, as one of his young disciples from that locality was to put it; the phrase he uses is the expressive fite fuaite