by Guest Blogger, Paddy Waldron
I've already had an approach from an entrepreneurial local publisher (Larry Brennan) for these daily blogs, so I'd better not fall any further behind even though it's after midnight on Sunday morning as I start this.
Friday looked like an easy day on the printed schedule, with only Labasheeda National School scheduled before 4pm.
After my first proper night's sleep for at least a week, the day began with a phone call from Mary Troy, a faithful attender at historical events throughout west Clare, who has been laid up with a chest infection for almost a fortnight and is very upset that she has missed so much this week. She asked me to get her a signed copy of Matt Lynch's new book. Her doctor warned her not to risk a relapse by sitting out in the cold on Sunday afternoon, which upset her even more. I had the bright idea of asking Brian Comerford, who has been studying the map of Frances Street for Sunday, if he could find her a spot in one of his neighbour's windows, which he very kindly later did, in the middle of his own very busy day (`too busy to join an active retirement group'!).
John Cooke interviewed Minister Jimmy Deenihan and our own Ciarán Ó Murchadha during Morning Focus on Clare FM and both did great interviews. It's nice that there is so much praise from on high for what we have done in Kilrush. In the middle of the Minister's interview, Matt Lynch phoned as he had lost Paul O'Brien's phone number: when I told him what I was listening to, he hung up and turned on his own radio. When he called back, I was also able to pass on Mary Troy's request for his autograph.
Clare FM also brought the sad news of the death of Brendan Carmody from Henry Street, by which several people who have helped out during the week were bereaved. His brother Michael talked about the stained glass windows in the church during Wednesday's walking tour; his niece Mary Cusack acted in Brian Comerford's play on Sunday; and his nephew Pat Cusack has promised to help with a photographic archive of the week. At least the obsequies in Brendan's adopted town of Roscrea were timed to suit the many Kilrush people travelling west for the weekend.
Dolores Hamill also phoned and asked me to call in to her sister Miriam and herself in Burton Street later.
I observed the national minute's silence at noon sitting on my own at the dining room table in Doonmore.
I was just sitting down to start on Thursday's blog at 12:20pm when Paul, out of mobile phone credit as usual, phoned from his father's mobile to say that one of his old history teachers Mary Fitzpatrick had requested that we come to the secondary school at 1:40pm to say a few words to the 1st, 2nd and 5th years before they set out on their own famine walk around the town. I didn't think it was right to refuse such a request, so had to drop everything and start preparing for the return of my hosts by clearing my famine office from their kitchen table.
When I got to Kilrush and while waiting for Paul, I scribbled a few notes as to what I thought might be appropriate things to say to an audience of teenagers about the Famine. Sister Maura stopped on her way to join the school walk to say nice things about what we have done during the week. It used to be easy to recognise nuns by their religious habits, but now that they dress in civvies it's a little harder. I've been assured that the Kilrush Sisters of Mercy have been out in force at all our events during the week.
When I met Paul and Mary, they explained that they wanted the pupils to hear something about the Famine associations of the places that they would be passing on their walk, so I had to tear up my hastily prepared notes and speak off the cuff. I don't think I'd been in a secondary school since I finished my leaving cert 32 years ago. My audience listened most attentively and hopefully learned something. I wasn't looking for familiar faces but at least two of the first years had attended lectures in Teach Ceoil during the week: I spotted David O'Brien and I'm sure Luke Clancy was also there.
Mary brought us into the staff room for a quick cup of tea afterwards before she went off to join the walk. I'd brought a Trócaire box and Mary wants to take up a collection in the school next week, so we counted out the contents, left the empty box with Mary, and Paul later went off to the bank with the proceeds.
We drove back to Burton Street. There was nobody in Blunnies, and when I phoned I discovered that Dolores and Miriam were visiting their sister Imelda in the Community Hospital, so I joined Paul and Mairead O'Brien in the Buttermarket across the road while waiting for them to return. I started up my laptop in the hope of making a start on Thursday's blog, but didn't get very far, as there were various announcements to be made on facebook, such as the fact that the scheduled food fete at 4pm wasn't happening. Dolores and Miriam joined us to have lunch before we headed back across the street to their house. Dolores had filled a 4GB memory card in her camera with video footage and stills and asked me to take a copy for the archive. I was pleasantly surprised to see from her video of the lunchtime event in Moyasta N.S. (a pageant entitled "Famine Memories of Captain Kennedy") that Mary Troy had left her sick bed to attend. Nobody'll get away with anything in west Clare this week with so many cameras in constant action. I'd half-forgotten about the Moyasta event, not least because it was inadvertently added to the schedule at 10pm instead of 1pm. As usual, I had trouble paying for my decaff coffee as I was leaving the Buttermarket, and had to just leave my money in the tips jar.
It was great to sit down for an hour with Miriam and my laptop as she dictated the history of Frances Street. Larry Brennan takes months to produce one of his books on the streets of Ennis, but I think 24 hours with Miriam and someone who can type as fast as she tells Kilrush history would produce something similar for any street in the town.
Paul came back to Blunnies after going to the bank and the dentist, and we then had to tell Miriam to pause and make a mad dash to his home in Carnanes as his parents had invited me to come to dinner some time during the week, and this was the only free hour in the schedule all week!
After dinner, it was back to the church for a wonderful concert by local soprano Edel O'Brien at 6pm. Her accompanists had let her down a few days earlier as one of them got a gig in Cuba which clashed. Luckily Dolores Blunnie is becoming something of a concert promoter and found Michael Hennessy to fill in at very short notice. After fretting about amplification all week, it was amazing to see what the combination of a powerful human voice and a building with great acoustics can achieve. As I looked around at the huge crowd, I wondered how much might have been raised if this was not a free concert. As I looked around again, I could see no sign of a Trócaire box, so thought I should lean forward and whisper in Mairead's ear. She slipped her car keys to Paul beside her and sent him out to fetch it.
There was a slight distraction when one of the candles on the altar caught fire, but a member of the audience made his way to the sacristy and found the implement necessary to quench it just as Fr. Blake arrived with similar intent.
The Céilí with music by Four Courts Céilí Band was already underway in the Market Square as Paul and I made our way to the Teach Ceoil. We spotted Christine Kinealy walking down Moore Street and picked her up. She gave another great lecture to another full house at 8pm on "Philanthropy during the Great Famine with particular Reference to County Clare." She has a slightly different style to some of those who lectured earlier in the week, and likes to throw questions out to her audience. She was very impressed by the gentleman who knew that Polk was president of the U.S. when the Famine began, but disappointed that he didn't know that George Dallas (the slave owner for whom the city in Texas is named) was his vice-president. She neglected to point out that the city of Talty in Texas, now almost a suburb of Dallas, is named after Michael Talty from Rahaniska, greatuncle of Patrick Talty who has been so helpful this week, and brother of Kathleen Talty whose grave we visited in Cill na gCailleach on Thursday.
It would be impossible to rank the five world-class famine historians who have given our evening lectures this week, each setting a remarkable standard of knowledge and presentation and keeping their audiences spellbound.
We suspended the Trócaire collection for once, and had a bucket collection at the box office instead for Comhaltas, who have made the Teach Ceoil available to us free of charge for events every day during the commemoration. It raised EUR221.55.
I had to miss the Mass, also at 8pm, at the site of the old Church in Kilfearagh Graveyard, organised by the Friends of Kilfearagh Graveyard Committee, followed by unveiling of a memorial for the victims of the Great Famine and all those buried in Kilfearagh Graveyard.
I left Paul in the Teach Ceoil, setting up with Noel Ryan and Phil, the caterers for the rededication ceremony the following morning, and rushed back to the Market Square, hoping to catch the end of the Chapel Gate Cooraclare Wrenboys' performance, but was just too late. I've seen them at the all-Ireland Wrenboys' Championship in Listowel and they are great.
Mairead was still tidying up, and sent me off with directions for information about Saturday's events to be posted to facebook. I asked her to send me on the text and said that I would copy and paste.
Paddy and Dolores Murrihy were back from Belfast when I returned to Doonmore, and wanted to see the photos for the five days that they had missed and hear a blow by blow account, which took until after midnight.
By 1am, there had been no word from Mairead, so I texted her, and found that she was still in Crottys with Paul!
Only then did I manage to start cleaning up the outline of Thursday's tour enough to forward it to Chris for publication on her blog, at the slightly silly hour of 3:47am.
Editor's Note: photos to be added...
Sunday, 12 May 2013
Saturday, 11 May 2013
BEHIND THE SCENES KILRUSH'S FAMINE COMMEMORATION DAY 7, MAY 9 , 2013
by Guest Blogger, Paddy Waldron
I've fallen a day behind with this blog, so apologies to those who have been complaining!! At least this one is as long as two normal entries, as I've copied and pasted relevant material for Thursday's bus tour of famine-related sites in Kilrush Poor Law Union.
I was up early making last minute preparations for the tour. The objective was to see as many as possible of the places mentioned and sketched in the Illustrated London News (ILN) in 1849/50. Paul O'Brien was up even earlier studying and printing the itinerary and commentary which I had e-mailed to him at 1:32am. I was anxious to remind myself of the boundaries of the civil parishes/electoral divisions through which we would be passing before I set out, and to mark them on my discovery series map.
The phone was ringing from 8:34am with last minute queries.
I parked outside Crotty's and was worried to see no buses and no Paul O'Brien, so phoned Paul at 9:44am and he assured me he was on his way. Two buses and one Paul O'Brien duly arrived within a minute or two. I unloaded my car on the roadside - wellington boots, grave-cleaning gear, two sound systems, notes, clipboards, booking lists, etc., etc. Then I drove round to Brew's free car park, getting a chance to listen to a minute or so of Cindy O'Dell's interview on Clare FM, which was a signal to strike her off the list for the bus tour. Other no-shows such as Congella McGuire, Michael Nolan, Mary O'Dowd and Paul Gleeson have subsequently tendered good excuses.
Mary Rose Counihan had volunteered to act as a steward for the day, so I delegated to her the task of ticking off names on the list as people boarded the buses, and she arranged a buddy system so that nobody got left behind. I was her buddy. The biggest category of no-shows was those who had joined the facebook event; the vast majority on the list were people who had given us their names in person or by telephone, and the vast majority of those showed up. The moral is never to use a facebook event to book places for a boat or bus trip where there are a limited number of seats available. People click the join button on facebook without realising what it means. The same thing happened when Kilrush & District Historical Society organised a boat trip to Scattery Island last summer.
Noel O'Shea, who played a blinder all day, brought a modern 33-seater bus with good built-in audio system and comfortable seats, and an older less comfortable 53-seater with no working audio system. We were afraid we wouldn't have enough seats between the two buses, but no shows ensured that we almost didn't need the smaller bus. A few people who couldn't stay for the full day followed by car. I went on the large bus and Paul on the small one. Noel and Tommy drove the two buses and another Noel and Tommy (O'Brien father and son) filmed the day's activities.
We had lots of extended family groups on the buses - Miriam Scahill explained to me today that Tommy and Paul O'Brien are third cousins, as their fathers Noel and Seán are second cousins. Miriam and her sister Dolores are Noel's first cousins, children of two Brew sisters. So Noel had five blood relatives on the bus, plus Paul's mother.
We also had Terry Fitzgerald and her sister Laura Danielson from Seattle, with their long-lost fourth cousin on the McNamara side, Rebekah Ní Comardúin and Rebekah's mother Ann; brothers Michael and Johnny O'Connell are also approximately fourth cousins of Terry and Laura on the Cushen side. By coincidence, both Michael and Rebekah were recording for Raidió Corca Baiscinn during the day. Before I realised this, I had twice butted in on conversations that Rebekah was recording.
I think my own only (known) relative on the bus was my third cousin Martha Howard.
We also had two of our keynote speakers for the week, Jason King and Christine Kinealy, and Christine's co-author Seán Sexton. We were due back in Kilrush at 7pm, and Jason was due to lecture at 8pm, so I knew that we had to stick strictly to the schedule.
There was also a good turnout of family and friends just to see us off from the Market Square - Mairead O'Brien and her sister to see off their mother, Margaret Rush to see off her nieces, and a few others.
The rest of this blog is a slightly edited version of the notes on which what we said during the day was based.
We headed out by Henry Street, originally known as New Street when it was built in the early 1800s. It runs alongside the original road to Kilkee and Doonbeg which went along Chapel Street, High Street and The Glen and past the front entrances to the fever hospital and to the workhouse.
Joe Whelan's museum is now in the old creamery building, which was built on the site of the original road right in front of the main workhouse entrance.
The mural on the gable wall by Mark Kelly, completed last Sunday (5 May 2013), is based on a Lawrence Collection photograph of an eviction scene during the Land War at Moyasta.
At the end of Shannon Heights on the right we can see Broomhill House, formerly an auxiliary workhouse, and later the residence of Augustus Warren and Timothy Kelly when they were clerks of Kilrush Union.
We turned right in Carnanes for the village of Doonbeg, passing Moanmore Church on our right, and then crossing the old West Clare Railway line and the boundary between Kilrush and Killard parishes.
Our first stop was outside the post office in Doonbeg, where I changed into my wellingtons. Those who just wanted a good view of Judy O'Donnel's habitation under the bridge at Doonbeg saw it from the park on the south bank of the Doonbeg river.
Those who wanted to visit the habitation walked across the bridge and through Mary Ryan's field with her kind permission. The ground is rough and wet in places, but Michael O'Connell and one or two others took charge and shepherded people down a few at a time along a narrow dry path. Having been there on a scouting expedition a few weeks ago, I didn't bother visiting again.
The ILN in 1849/50 wrote:
"Two wretched families have taken refuge under the bridge in a hole. They consist of two widows, one with three children, all ill of jaundice, and the other with five. The history of Judy O'Donnel, one of the widows, is worthy of being sketched. She had given evidence against a dishonest relieving officer whose relative was a driver upon the estate on which she lived, and Judy's house was very soon afterwards levelled with the ground. The wreckers came upon it in her absence, when her son gallantly defended his home. He mounted on the roof with a bag of stones, and kept the enemy at bay till his ammunition was exhausted, when he was obliged to give in, and stand by to see the little furniture of this mother cast into the road and the house pulled down. Judy exhibited her receipts for the rent up to the last gale; and she declared the agent of the owner, to whom she had tendered what was due twice, had refused, and that she was ejected because she deposed against the dishonest public servant. Judy and Margaret O'Donnel, with their families, then retired to the hole under the bridge, represented in the sketch, and there they are now suffered to remain, holding their habitation at the mercy of the county surveyor. They are afraid of being ejected even from this spot, and dare not cross the stepping-stones shown in the Sketch lest they should be taken up for trespassing. Judy O'Donnel's son is dying of dysentery."
Paddy Murrihy has since told me that Rob Hopkins is having a ladder, modelled on the one in the ILN sketch, specially constructed by Francis O'Dea for this Saturday evening's re-enactment, so that his actors will not have to trespass on Mary Ryan's field.
Dolórés Murrihy in an article entitled The Cave Dweller of Doonbeg in Doonbeg: A Story To Tell (Joe Hurley, ed., 1995) tells us of other residents of the habitation under the bridge.
Biddy Belfast (whose death in Kilrush Hospital was reported in the Limerick Chronicle of 10 December 1903) is remembered locally as Mary Belfast, and called Mary by the great local historian of North Munster Thomas Johnson Westropp in the Journal of the North Munster Antiquarian Society in January 1914. It was the habitation of a local donkey in Dolores's youth.
Biddy Thunder lived in the castle across the bridge, which fell when struck by lightning in 1939. Perhaps the LC conflated the two names.
We got back on the bus and turned right at Doonbeg church into Doonmore townland. I have on occasion accidentally gone the wrong side of the traffic island at this junction; Noel O'Shea deliberately did likewise, but because his bus couldn't make the sharp turn around the correct side of it.
The ILN had this account of Doonmore:
"The last Sketch shows the Scalpeen of Tim Downs, at Dunmore, in the parish of Killard, where himself and his ancestors resided on the spot for over a century, with renewal of their lease in 1845. He neither owed rent arrears or taxes up to the present moment, and yet he was pitched out on the roadside, and saw ten other houses, with his own, levelled at one fell swoop on the spot, the ruins of some of which are seen in this Sketch. None of them were mud cabins, but all capital stone-built houses."
On the right, we passed Killard Cemetery, scene of a massacre by Cromwell's troops.
It is believed locally that The Village of Killard depicted in the ILN stood at the top of the hill where we turned left:
"The village of Killard forms part of the Union of Kilrush, and possesses an area of 17,022 acres. It had a population, in 1841, of 6850 souls, and was valued to the Poor-rate at £4254. It is chiefly the property, I understand, of Mr. John MacMahon Blackall, whose healthy residence is admirably situated on the brow of a hill, protected by another ridge from the storms of the Atlantic. His roof-tree yet stands secure, put the people have disappeared. The village was mostly inhabited by fishermen, who united with their occupation on the waters the cultivation of potatoes. When the latter failed, it might have been expected that the former should have been pursued with more vigour than ever; but boats and lines were sold for present subsistence, and to the failure of potatoes was added the abandonment of the fisheries. The rent dwindled to nothing, and then came the leveller and the exterminator. What has become of this 6850 souls, I know not; but not ten houses remain of the whole village to inform the wayfarer where, according to the population returns, they were to be found in 1841. [The ILN correspondent here has apparently confused the parish of Killard, to which the population figure applies; the townland of Killard; and possibly a more densely populated village within the townland which he sketched.] They were here, but are gone for ever; and all that remains of their abodes are a few mouldering walls, and piles of offensive thatch turning into manure. Killard is an epitome of half Ireland. If the abodes of the people had not been so slight, that they have mingled, like Babylon, with their original clay, Ireland would for ages be renowned for its ruins; but, as it is, the houses are swept away like the people, and not a monument remains of a multitude, which, in ancient Asia or in the wilds of America, would numerically constitute a great nation."
From Bealaha, we turned south, onto the main road Kilrush-Kilkee road briefly, and then left at Lisdeen Church and left again after Blackweir bridge for Cill na gCailleach.
The buses parked at Noel O'Shea's own house and Noel and his neighbour and my cousin Paddy Talty kindly had cars on hand for those not up walking down the cul de sac to Cill na gCailleach, where it would not have been possible to turn either bus. Noel had asked one of his children how long the walk would take, and was not pleased with the reply: `Five minutes at my pace, half an hour at yours.' Noel and Paddy, as well as Michael O'Connell, also shared their expert local knowledge of those buried in the cemetery.
Kay Clancy and I had brought along our stock of talcum powder and brushes and sponges, our favourite method for highlighting some of the fantastic artwork on the tombstones, particularly that of John O'Brien who died in the Ferry tragedy on 12 Dec 1849; also John Clanchy ship carpenter, who died during the cholera epidemic of 1832; and Thomas Carroll who died in 1846. The buglers depicted on one of these reminded me again of Anthony McNamara and I reminded his daughter and granddaughter of how he spent so many years `waiting for the old bugle call'.
The locals all cited Paddy and Eileen Barry as having confirmation from their grandfather of the location of the unmarked mass grave of the other Cammoge victims, surrounded by a low stone wall. We also looked at the once-impressive but now dilapidated Cox vault, and the grave of Paddy Talty's family, including his great-aunt Kathleen who baked the cake containing the key which Eamon de Valera used to escape from Lincoln Jail in England during the War of Independence.
Many of the group had been to Cammoge Point on Monday and we just encouraged the remainder to visit by car to see the new memorial. The road to Cammoge is also too narrow for buses and the distance is too far to walk in the time available.
Noel O'Shea was anxious to show off his collection of vintage cars, tractors, motorbikes and farm machinery, but as most people had re-boarded the bus and as it's not really famine-related, only a few people got to see it. Noel's collection is on a par with those of other local collectors like Joe Whelan, Jackie Whelan and Matthew Bermingham.
Next stop was Tullaroe Cross, also known as Behan's Cross and Johnny Mack's Cross. This was originally Behan's house. Patrick McNamara (whose family had been among the victims of eviction listed by Captain Kennedy a few years before his birth) married in here around 1882. His son Johnnie Mack lived here until his death in 1981 at the age of 95.
At the time, Mary Teresa Hynes, Kilkee librarian, believed this to have been the last inhabited mudwalled house in west Clare.
I learned on Tuesday that Cillian Murphy's efforts to buy the late Martin Moloney's house in Lisheencrony fell through when he discovered that his bank wouldn't fund the purchase of a mud-walled house. As someone pointed out, the house is still there, but the bank may not be. I remember the house before Martin got it renovated and plastered about 30 years ago, when half the thatched roof had collapsed. By Tuesday evening, the number of known surviving mud-walled houses had grown to three, as Congella McGuire reported her discovery on Monday that the Roche family still inhabit another, despite having a newly-built but less cosy house next door.
At this stage we had visited three sites that have probably never before been visited on a bus tour, and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive, with all sorts of suggestions for preserving Johnny Mack's house, which is now in a state of decay which makes the original materials and construction easily identifiable.
By now, people were getting hungry, and Mary Hamilton, who suffers from travel sickness, had already called it a day and got someone to collect her and take her home, so we phoned ahead to Myles Creek in Kilkee and to our lunchtime speaker Carmel Madigan to say that we would be arriving ahead of the scheduled 2pm break.
Tommy Foley phoned me as we were approaching Kilkee, about a minute before we passed his hall door, so I told him to stand on his doorstep and wave at the buses as we passed.
Noel pulled up in the middle of O'Curry Street, a one-way street with cars parked on either side, to allow us to disembark. Even in May, Kilkee is still Chris de Burgh's proverbial `out of season holiday town in the rain/when the tourists go and the cold winds blow'.
Gerard and Deirdre Haugh and the staff at Myles Creek coped admirably with a hungry crowd of 60+ arriving simultaneously baying for food. There was famine soup available. Those who came by bus were joined by others who had come by car, in particular Mairead O'Brien, who had organised the event and brought the now well-tested soup recipe, and Assumpta Kennedy, who gave her almost-daily performance of Lone Shanakyle after lunch. I'm sure she sang it at work at the Regina House event on Wednesday, and only that Michael O'Connell was so possessive of the microphone on Monday she would have been asked to sing it at Cammoge or Carnacalla!
Carmel Madigan showed up with a large bag of freshly harvested herbs, hedgerow plants and seaweeds to explain how our ancestors could, and possibly did, have a very nutritious diet on their doorsteps despite the failure of the potato crop.
I haven't figured out whether Carmel Madigan (née Magner) is related to Assumpta Kennedy (née Madigan) but the Madigan family tree is crying out to be researched given how intertwined it has become with famine commemoration. Rebekah pointed out that through her Madigan paternal grandmother she is related to Assumpta - and she also shares the singing gene, as she is currently singing professionally at Bunratty and Knappogue Castles.
All were eventually served lunch, everybody seeming to want something more substantial than watery soup, nettles, herbs or seaweed.
Kay Clancy popped across the road for a few copies of the Clare Champion, but there was general disappointment at the coverage of the famine commemoration. No front page banner headlines, and the first article inside was a complaint that Frances Street has been resurfaced for Sunday in preference to some more deserving lane in Kilkee. Patricia Zanini will be delighted with Peter O'Connell's piece describing how much it means to be coming back to her ancestral town accompanying her ambassador husband who will be there in an official capacity on Sunday. John Kelly must have taken hundreds of photographs in the Potter's Hand on Tuesday, but we could find only two of them. Other articles on events in Killaloe, Ennis, Carrigaholt, etc., were scattered throughout the paper, with one or two photographs with each. The Clare People's 16 page pull-out on Tuesday certainly put the Champion to shame this week.
Kay and a few others called it a day at this stage, so we realised that we could transfer everyone into the 53-seat bus, and let bus-driver Tommy have a half-day.
Noel O'Shea and Michael had both insisted that the cliff road, built as a famine relief public works scheme, looks better driving from the west, so we headed west by the upper Moveen road. Paul, now sitting beside me, encouraged me to tell of my own family connections to Moveen, where my greatgrandparents settled after their marriage in 1876. My late father spent his first holiday with his grandfather in Moveen in 1929 at the age of 12, and for the next 72 years, until he was no longer fit to travel, never went a year without a holiday in Clare, and never again holidayed anywhere further away than Carrigaholt or Kilkee.
Moveen also features in the ILN:
"The Sketch of Moveen, to which I now call your attention, is that of another ruined village in the Union of Kilrush. It is a specimen of the dilapidation I behold all around. There is nothing but devestation, while the soil is of the finest description, capable of yielding as much as any land in the empire. Here, at Tullig, and other places, the ruthless destroyer, as if he delighted in seeing the monuments of his skill, has left the walls of the houses standing, while he has unroofed them and taken away all shelter from the people. They look like the tombs of a departed race, rather than the recent abodes of a yet living people, and I felt actually relieved at seeing one or two half-clad spectres gliding about, as an evidence that I was not in the land of the dead. You may inquire, perhaps, and I am sure your readers will wish to know, why it is that the people have of late been turned out of their houses in such great numbers, and their houses just at this time pulled down, and I will give you my explanation of this fact."
My father, Ciarán Ó Murchadha, Paddy Nolan, Cindy O'Dell, Paul and myself and others over the years have spent many hours exploring Moveen on the ground, on paper maps, and on online maps and satellite images at osi.ie, maps.google.com, origins.net and askaboutireland.ie, in a vain attempt to find any surviving remains of the village shown in the ILN sketch.
The 1840 Ordnance Survey map shows villages marked Moveen (north of the road) and Moveen Lower (further west, and south of the road). There are also ruins worth investigating elsewhere in the townland and in the neighbouring townland of Kilcasheen.
At griffiths.askaboutireland.ie, one can overlay the historic (post-)Griffith's Valuation (1855) maps on a satellite image. There are two stone ruins clearly visible both on the satellite map and street view in the vicinity of where the ILN sketch seems to have been done:
1. The first stone ruin is on the roadside in Moveen East, and appears to be the house in Plot 14 (Moveen East) in Griffith:
http://goo.gl/maps/L0SxM
Edmond (Ned) M'Mahon appears to have occupied this farm, and also the second next farm to the west, in 1855, but to have lived on the other farm. So at first glance, this ruin appears to have been uninhabited by 1855. However, I believe that Edmond left one of his farms each to his grandsons, Andy Ned (m.1870) and Patsy Ned (m.1884), who married two Carmody sisters. So the present ruin was probably lived in by Patsy Ned's son Paddy McMahon (d.1976). I have been told that this farm and the adjoining farm to the north (No. 4 in Griffith) are now owned or leased by Damien McInerney.
2. The second stone ruin is a couple of fields north of the road, right on the boundary of Moveen East and Kilcasheen towlands, but appears to be No. 1 in Kilcasheen, home of Laurence Lillis in 1855:
http://goo.gl/maps/DHKyG
I have a large paper map formed by taping together copies of photocopies of parts of OS Sheets 55 and 65 from the Valuation Office, with holdings numbered in accordance with Griffith's Valuation.
At askaboutireland.ie, the map and plot numbering are of a later date, as the 6 residential holdings plus caretaker's house in Kilcasheen (which is divided in 4 by the edges of OS Sheets 55, 56, 65 and 66) have all by then merged (in two stages) into a single holding. This suggests a mass clearance by John Westropp and/or his middleman Michael O'Donnell soon after 1855. The transcripts of the parish register for 1852-1878 don't have a single entry for Kilcasheen.
Sheet 55 is mostly ocean, but covers parts of Moveen West, Moveen East Kilcasheen, Foohagh and Ballyonan/Doonaghboy. At origins.net,
Foohagh is linked to sheet 56 (1432.tif) and most of the others to sheet 65 (1441.tif). I eventually realised that by searching for Islands in Moyarta parish I would get sheet 55 (1430.tif). The quality of the reproduction is, if anything, worse than my 25-year-old paper photocopy, but by zooming in on the bottom right corner one can see the consolidation in Kilcasheen, and a curved stone wall in the north west corner of the townland, still clearly visible on the satellite image. I now seriously doubt that this is the wall in the foreground of the ILN sketch, although I think my father believed that it was. Most of Kilcasheen (including the graveyard on the lower Moveen road which we came to later) now constitutes the Tubridy estate, to which a Tubridy cousin is currently trying to establish ownership.
The Tubridy house was also occupied well into my lifetime - probably the 1980s - but is now a ruin. It appears from the satellite image to be in the very bottom right corner of OS Sheet 55, where there is no house in 1855. This looks like holding No. 3 in Griffith, Timothy Kane. Here is the ruin in Google Street View:
http://goo.gl/maps/YIffn
The eastern part of the 1855 road heading north-east from Walsh's house (No. 8 in Moveen east in Griffith) to May Deloughery's (No. 7), and formerly on into Baby Dan O'Gormans (No. 4), before turning south, appears to have been completely obliterated by the time of the historic 25" map:
http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,485582,657191,7,9
The present Moveen road passes from Moveen East through Kilcasheen and then back into Moveen east; the obliterated road skirted around the northern boundary of Kilcasheen without leaving Moveen East.
Moveen Lower is in nos. 11 and 22 in Moveen West in Griffith (around Billy Downes's, Sean Moloney's and Sonny Carmody's and between Tom Lynch's and the left turn down to the main Carrigaholt road). We saw no sign of ruins in that area either.
I spoke about writer and funeral director Tom Lynch, probably Moveen's most famous resident, if only a part-time one (who unfortunately wont be joining us until the day after the National Famine Commemoration due to teaching commitments at Emory University). I thought it especially appropriate to refer to his lovely poem Montbretia, dedicated to Michael O'Connell who was with us. Montbretia, which will not be in bloom for another couple of months, is an invasive but beautiful wild flower which was not around during the Famine, and which Carmel Madigan assured me has no nutritional value. Rather, it was brought back to Ireland by one of the Vandeleurs who fought in the Boer War and planted in the Walled Garden in Kilrush. A seed blew over the wall and it spread throughout the peninsula. People like my father loved it so much that they brought it to Dublin and other places and replanted it. I've brought some from Dublin back to Killaloe and planted it in my garden there.
We then passed the biggest farm in Moveen, now Murray's and formerly Healy's. Mainly for the benefit of Terry, Laura, Ann and Rebekah, relatives of the underbidder, I read a letter written on 14 January 1907, by M & B. Morrissey from Moveen to their `Dear Son Tom' in Jackson, Michigan, where many Moveen people settled (those who did not emigrate to Buenos Aires):
"Dear Tom, You wanted to know who bought Healys' farm. I wish to tell you it was Johnny Murray, Kilkee, & it paid £ 675 & a shilling to the pound auctioneer fees along with that Anthony McNamara Breaffa went £ 600 in in [sic] Kavanagh from Kilkee he is married to Bid Greene from Newtown he is from England went £ 670 & a boy from Mullough one Sullivan who came from California went £ 650 & indeed every one says it went great money."
[According to census returns Edward Cavanagh of Kilkee was a police pensioner born in Queen's County.] In local folklore, the purchase price paid by the Murray family has been rounded down to £600. The vendor was John Burns, to whom the farm had been left by his sister-in-law `Mrs Healy'. The island offshore previously known as `Healy's Island' has since gradually become known as `Murray's Island'.
Noel drove at a crawl along the cliff road from Goleen back to Kilkee as he could see in his rear-view mirror that everyone on the bus was oohing and aahing at the spectacular cliff scenery and busily taking photographs and videos.
A howling wind was blowing rivers that should have been flowing over the clifftop back inland, drenching the bus on one or two occasions. The thought of those starving during the famine working in similar weather conditions in the late 1840s to build this very road was humbling.
I had stories to tell about most points on the cliff road, mostly learned from my father or Seán and Martin Moloney or other Moveen natives.
Back in Kilkee, we saw the sea wall, also built as a famine relief scheme, and paused at the former Murphy's Café at the end of Marine Parade, home to the great famine historian Monsignor Ignatius Murphy, to whom Kilrush & District Historical Society hopes some day to erect a plaque on the building.
Then we headed west again on the lower Moveen road, where the first object of major interest was the afore-mentioned Kilcasheen cemetery. The two flat tombstones which it contains were clearly visible from the bus. Despite many years of campaigning by my father, by Noel O'Shea's uncle John Lynch, who grew up nearby, and by others, this ancient graveyard remains otherwise unmarked.
Eugene O'Curry wrote of it as follows:
"There is another burying ground called Killcasheen in the Townland of Killcasheen in this Parish. This was a deserted burying place in the year 1739 but in the ensuing year when famine and pestilence raged through the country and dead human bodies were to be met with by the roads and ditches, my grandfather, Melachlin-Garbh-O’Cómhraidhe, who tenanted, at will (being a Papist) the tract of land now called Moneen [in many transcripts, recte Moveen] and in which Kilcasheen is situated, employed himself, his workmen, his horses and sledges in carrying the victims of the plague from all parts of the neighbouring district and burying them here, so that it has continued ever since to be a burial place, although not a popular one."
I then explained that we were about to pass the homes of two Michael McNamaras close together. My cousin Michael in Moveen West is a blow-in, our family having lived on the farm for only 137 years. Michael `Anthony' McNamara in the next townland, Breaghva, is a real native, as his ancestors are listed in the same house in Griffith's Valuation in 1855. The Moveen West McNamaras now live in the third house on the farm, the first having been abandoned in 1888 because the residents of the nearby fairy fort were believed to have taken my greatgrandparents first five babies at birth. I'm wondering if the Breaghva McNamaras are still in the original pre-1855 house, and if it too might be, to quote Yeats, `of clay and wattles made'. Perhaps it is the very house in which Laura and Terry and Rebekah's GGGgrandfather McNamara was born away back around 1800.
Noel missed my request to stop and allow Laura and Terry to take photographs of their ancestral home, but Laura and Ann hopped out when he stopped and ran back and Ann introduced Laura to her brother, who wanted to invite her in for tea. We decided that tea for 53 would be too much of an imposition for a bachelor farmer! Having parked in the middle of a one-way street in Kilkee at lunchtime, parking on a narrow two-lane road would not have been a problem.
Next point of interest was Tullig, also depicted and described in the ILN:
"The Sketch is not of a deserted village - though that was a miserable enough spectacle, for the wretched beings who once viewed it as the abode of plenty and peace still linger and hover about it-- but of a destroyed village. The ruthless spoiler has been at work and swept away the shelter that honest industry had prepared for suffering and toiling humanity. A conqueror would not have had time and security to do the mischief which is perpetrated in safety under the guardianship of the laws by the Irish themselves. Within the Union of Kilrush, in the year of grace 1849, and before the coming of the month of June, about 16,000 persons had been unhoused out of 82,358, and 1200 were unhoused within one fortnight of May 7, in all, one-fifth or 20 per cent. of the whole population were turned out of their houses and the houses pulled down. Not less than 2890 houses were levelled in the Union of Kilrush in the years 1848-49. Ireland is now marked with many such monuments of the terrible mistakes of landlords and of the legislature as the roofless village represented in our Sketch."
I had warned Noel that the road from Tullig back to Cross was in poor shape when I did a scouting expedition with Garrett Dundon and others a couple of months back, but he wasn't worried. As he crawled across cut-away bog through bottomless pot-holes with a steep drop on either side, I wished he was in first gear rather than second! We came to a junction where he asked me whether to go right or straight ahead. The cul de sac to the right is not even shown on discovery series maps, but looked a better road than the one going straight ahead which we had to take.
Congella McGuire (another no show on the day due to pressures of work) had arranged with Fr Michael Casey that he would meet us and talk to us at the Church of the Little Ark in Moneen. As a rainshower arrived as we arrived at Seán Keating's cross, I decided it would be better to take the right fork and visit the church before an open-air stop in Kilbaha village. Fr. Casey proved hard to track down. Congella had lost his phone numbers, but eventually texted me his landline, which he wasn't answering; Michael O'Connell, who had given Congella the numbers, didn't have them either. Eventually I saw a light bulb going off in his head as he spotted Martha who, as an undertaker, was guaranteed to have the numbers of all the clergy in her mobile. She made the call and Fr Casey pulled up outside his church as we unloaded the bus. Since 2009, he has been the first man since Fr. Michael Meehan between 1849 and 1878 to be parish priest of both Kilballyowen and Moyarta parish.
I was tired of talking at this stage, and my passengers were surely tired of listening to me, so I was delighted to have someone else to take over and tell the story of The Little Ark of Kilbaha. This version is based on that at clarelibrary.ie:
"In the year 1849 the present parishes of Kilballyowen and Moyarta in West Clare were one, and were called after Carrigaholt which was the central village. The population was only 8,000 and many people were dying from Cholera. In that year a priest by the name of Fr. Michael Meehan was sent to help the dying victims and to give them the Last Sacrament. There was no church in the western part of the parish than because landlords would not permit their land to be used for a site. The priests used make-shift tents to say Mass in, but these proved useless in bad weather.
There was a church in Carrigaholt (Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, built in 1832-1833, while Fr. Malachy Duggan (1780-1849) was parish priest).
It is unsure how Fr. Meehan came up with the idea, but in 1852, he announced a plan to build a wooden box that would have four wheels and in this he planned to say Mass. It is thought he got the idea from a Bathing Box on the beach in Killkee.
The timber was ordered from Limerick and a local carpenter, Owen Collins, was employed to build what was to become known as “the little ark”. After building the wooden structure, he then covered it in tarred canvas. There were two windows which ran along the length of both sides and at the front door. Inside, at the far end of the door was a low altar on which a statue of the Sacred Heart stood, and above the altar there was a crucifix.
When it was finally ready for use it was brought down to the beach in Kilbaha. The beach was a type of “no-mans land” meaning that no-one was breaking the law by using that area. However, despite this Father Meehan was prosecuted for placing a nuisance at the crossroads of Kilbaha. The case was tried and dismissed.
There by the sea for five years, Mass was celebrated and religious instruction given. People were married there and children baptised. Around “the little ark” on Sundays, in mud and soaking rain, in the burning heat of summer and through the frost of winter, the people gathered.
The strange Mass house soon began the attract attention and visitors arrived and went away shocked and amazed - shocked at the fact that a quarter of a century after passing of Emancipation, the Catholics of west Clare, because of landlord bigotry, could not get a site for a church. Amazed at the lengths the people went to practice their religion.
A site was finally granted in late 1856 by Fr. Meehan refused it for the reason that it was on a bog. Pressure was put on the landlord and a new site was granted. The first stone was laid on the 12th of July 1857 at Moneen, a mile from the site where the ark stood.
The church of “Our Lady, Star of the Sea” was dedicated on the 10th of October 1858. At first the ark was brought to the site and was used until the church was ready. It was later placed inside the church doors to the left, until the present building to the house was added.
On the day of the dedication of the church, Mass was celebrated in the Ark and a crowd of three thousand people attended the ceremony. Fr. Meehan died on the 24th of January 1878 after spending his last remaining years working in the parish. On Saturday the 26th his remains were brought from Kilrush to Carrigaholt and to Kilbaha by horsedrawn hearse. The coffin was taken out and brought to the spot where the ark had stood on the shore. On Tuesday February 1st 1878 his body was interred where it remains today, within feet of the ark. The ark is still preserved in the church at Moneen today."
We made our last stop in Kilbaha village to see the plaque to Fr. Meehan on the site where he used to say mass in the little ark, and also the other works of local sculptors Jim and Seamus Connolly and Paddy Murray. I couldn't even find Paddy's metalwork version of Searching for Potatoes in a Stubble Field from the ILN. And I hadn't done my homework on the five pilots and the Windsor Castle, so decided to call it a day before I made a bigger fool of myself.
We left off a few people on the way back to Kilrush, such as Laura Lyons in Carrigaholt, and were back at Crotty's where the day had started just 2 minutes ahead of schedule.
I made my way to Supervalu to buy a snack and a few supplies so that my hosts would not return from their holiday to an empty cupboard. Half the bus tour group also seemed to be there, along with Adrian O'Connell, provider of the wonderful old photograph of Carrigaholt which I may have mentioned earlier in the week. I was highly amused at the sight of Linda Culligan Bruce in front of me in the checkout queue with just two items - a bottle of talc and a sponge. Paul and Kay's demonstration of this technique in Cill na gCailleach had obviously converted one genealogist!
I was back at the Teach Ceoil just in time for Jason's lecture. It's hard to rank the evening lectures that we've had there this week, as all have been superb. Jason contrasted the efforts of the Catholic clergy who ministered to famine emigrants at Grosse Ile in 1847 with the allegations about the same order of nuns a decade earlier in the Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun’s Life in a Convent Exposed. Mairead O'Brien was sorry she had chosen this lecture to bring her thirteen-year-old son David to, as she thought Monk's allegations about priests impregnating nuns and suffocating the resulting offspring were not suitable listening for the ears of one so young and innocent!
I was so relieved that my active involvement in the events of the week was over (or so I thought, until I got a phone call requesting another talk next morning!), that I was easily persuaded to go on a pub crawl with Paul and Mairead (once she'd dropped David home). I had a cidona in Crotty's, as we debated one or two bruised egos among those involved in the week's activities, and decided that most of them were caused by the overly long chain of communication from the authorities in the Department in Dublin (who will take over from the local committee on Sunday) through various County Council officials to the locals on the ground.
Then I had a 7Up in Buggle's, where we joined Miriam and Dolores and Carmel Buggle herself.
I was back at base just before midnight, totally exhausted, and went to bed without even taking the laptop out of the car.
I've fallen a day behind with this blog, so apologies to those who have been complaining!! At least this one is as long as two normal entries, as I've copied and pasted relevant material for Thursday's bus tour of famine-related sites in Kilrush Poor Law Union.
I was up early making last minute preparations for the tour. The objective was to see as many as possible of the places mentioned and sketched in the Illustrated London News (ILN) in 1849/50. Paul O'Brien was up even earlier studying and printing the itinerary and commentary which I had e-mailed to him at 1:32am. I was anxious to remind myself of the boundaries of the civil parishes/electoral divisions through which we would be passing before I set out, and to mark them on my discovery series map.
The phone was ringing from 8:34am with last minute queries.
I parked outside Crotty's and was worried to see no buses and no Paul O'Brien, so phoned Paul at 9:44am and he assured me he was on his way. Two buses and one Paul O'Brien duly arrived within a minute or two. I unloaded my car on the roadside - wellington boots, grave-cleaning gear, two sound systems, notes, clipboards, booking lists, etc., etc. Then I drove round to Brew's free car park, getting a chance to listen to a minute or so of Cindy O'Dell's interview on Clare FM, which was a signal to strike her off the list for the bus tour. Other no-shows such as Congella McGuire, Michael Nolan, Mary O'Dowd and Paul Gleeson have subsequently tendered good excuses.
Mary Rose Counihan had volunteered to act as a steward for the day, so I delegated to her the task of ticking off names on the list as people boarded the buses, and she arranged a buddy system so that nobody got left behind. I was her buddy. The biggest category of no-shows was those who had joined the facebook event; the vast majority on the list were people who had given us their names in person or by telephone, and the vast majority of those showed up. The moral is never to use a facebook event to book places for a boat or bus trip where there are a limited number of seats available. People click the join button on facebook without realising what it means. The same thing happened when Kilrush & District Historical Society organised a boat trip to Scattery Island last summer.
Noel O'Shea, who played a blinder all day, brought a modern 33-seater bus with good built-in audio system and comfortable seats, and an older less comfortable 53-seater with no working audio system. We were afraid we wouldn't have enough seats between the two buses, but no shows ensured that we almost didn't need the smaller bus. A few people who couldn't stay for the full day followed by car. I went on the large bus and Paul on the small one. Noel and Tommy drove the two buses and another Noel and Tommy (O'Brien father and son) filmed the day's activities.
We had lots of extended family groups on the buses - Miriam Scahill explained to me today that Tommy and Paul O'Brien are third cousins, as their fathers Noel and Seán are second cousins. Miriam and her sister Dolores are Noel's first cousins, children of two Brew sisters. So Noel had five blood relatives on the bus, plus Paul's mother.
We also had Terry Fitzgerald and her sister Laura Danielson from Seattle, with their long-lost fourth cousin on the McNamara side, Rebekah Ní Comardúin and Rebekah's mother Ann; brothers Michael and Johnny O'Connell are also approximately fourth cousins of Terry and Laura on the Cushen side. By coincidence, both Michael and Rebekah were recording for Raidió Corca Baiscinn during the day. Before I realised this, I had twice butted in on conversations that Rebekah was recording.
I think my own only (known) relative on the bus was my third cousin Martha Howard.
We also had two of our keynote speakers for the week, Jason King and Christine Kinealy, and Christine's co-author Seán Sexton. We were due back in Kilrush at 7pm, and Jason was due to lecture at 8pm, so I knew that we had to stick strictly to the schedule.
There was also a good turnout of family and friends just to see us off from the Market Square - Mairead O'Brien and her sister to see off their mother, Margaret Rush to see off her nieces, and a few others.
The rest of this blog is a slightly edited version of the notes on which what we said during the day was based.
We headed out by Henry Street, originally known as New Street when it was built in the early 1800s. It runs alongside the original road to Kilkee and Doonbeg which went along Chapel Street, High Street and The Glen and past the front entrances to the fever hospital and to the workhouse.
Joe Whelan's museum is now in the old creamery building, which was built on the site of the original road right in front of the main workhouse entrance.
The mural on the gable wall by Mark Kelly, completed last Sunday (5 May 2013), is based on a Lawrence Collection photograph of an eviction scene during the Land War at Moyasta.
At the end of Shannon Heights on the right we can see Broomhill House, formerly an auxiliary workhouse, and later the residence of Augustus Warren and Timothy Kelly when they were clerks of Kilrush Union.
We turned right in Carnanes for the village of Doonbeg, passing Moanmore Church on our right, and then crossing the old West Clare Railway line and the boundary between Kilrush and Killard parishes.
Our first stop was outside the post office in Doonbeg, where I changed into my wellingtons. Those who just wanted a good view of Judy O'Donnel's habitation under the bridge at Doonbeg saw it from the park on the south bank of the Doonbeg river.
Those who wanted to visit the habitation walked across the bridge and through Mary Ryan's field with her kind permission. The ground is rough and wet in places, but Michael O'Connell and one or two others took charge and shepherded people down a few at a time along a narrow dry path. Having been there on a scouting expedition a few weeks ago, I didn't bother visiting again.
The ILN in 1849/50 wrote:
"Two wretched families have taken refuge under the bridge in a hole. They consist of two widows, one with three children, all ill of jaundice, and the other with five. The history of Judy O'Donnel, one of the widows, is worthy of being sketched. She had given evidence against a dishonest relieving officer whose relative was a driver upon the estate on which she lived, and Judy's house was very soon afterwards levelled with the ground. The wreckers came upon it in her absence, when her son gallantly defended his home. He mounted on the roof with a bag of stones, and kept the enemy at bay till his ammunition was exhausted, when he was obliged to give in, and stand by to see the little furniture of this mother cast into the road and the house pulled down. Judy exhibited her receipts for the rent up to the last gale; and she declared the agent of the owner, to whom she had tendered what was due twice, had refused, and that she was ejected because she deposed against the dishonest public servant. Judy and Margaret O'Donnel, with their families, then retired to the hole under the bridge, represented in the sketch, and there they are now suffered to remain, holding their habitation at the mercy of the county surveyor. They are afraid of being ejected even from this spot, and dare not cross the stepping-stones shown in the Sketch lest they should be taken up for trespassing. Judy O'Donnel's son is dying of dysentery."
Paddy Murrihy has since told me that Rob Hopkins is having a ladder, modelled on the one in the ILN sketch, specially constructed by Francis O'Dea for this Saturday evening's re-enactment, so that his actors will not have to trespass on Mary Ryan's field.
Dolórés Murrihy in an article entitled The Cave Dweller of Doonbeg in Doonbeg: A Story To Tell (Joe Hurley, ed., 1995) tells us of other residents of the habitation under the bridge.
Biddy Belfast (whose death in Kilrush Hospital was reported in the Limerick Chronicle of 10 December 1903) is remembered locally as Mary Belfast, and called Mary by the great local historian of North Munster Thomas Johnson Westropp in the Journal of the North Munster Antiquarian Society in January 1914. It was the habitation of a local donkey in Dolores's youth.
Biddy Thunder lived in the castle across the bridge, which fell when struck by lightning in 1939. Perhaps the LC conflated the two names.
We got back on the bus and turned right at Doonbeg church into Doonmore townland. I have on occasion accidentally gone the wrong side of the traffic island at this junction; Noel O'Shea deliberately did likewise, but because his bus couldn't make the sharp turn around the correct side of it.
The ILN had this account of Doonmore:
"The last Sketch shows the Scalpeen of Tim Downs, at Dunmore, in the parish of Killard, where himself and his ancestors resided on the spot for over a century, with renewal of their lease in 1845. He neither owed rent arrears or taxes up to the present moment, and yet he was pitched out on the roadside, and saw ten other houses, with his own, levelled at one fell swoop on the spot, the ruins of some of which are seen in this Sketch. None of them were mud cabins, but all capital stone-built houses."
On the right, we passed Killard Cemetery, scene of a massacre by Cromwell's troops.
It is believed locally that The Village of Killard depicted in the ILN stood at the top of the hill where we turned left:
"The village of Killard forms part of the Union of Kilrush, and possesses an area of 17,022 acres. It had a population, in 1841, of 6850 souls, and was valued to the Poor-rate at £4254. It is chiefly the property, I understand, of Mr. John MacMahon Blackall, whose healthy residence is admirably situated on the brow of a hill, protected by another ridge from the storms of the Atlantic. His roof-tree yet stands secure, put the people have disappeared. The village was mostly inhabited by fishermen, who united with their occupation on the waters the cultivation of potatoes. When the latter failed, it might have been expected that the former should have been pursued with more vigour than ever; but boats and lines were sold for present subsistence, and to the failure of potatoes was added the abandonment of the fisheries. The rent dwindled to nothing, and then came the leveller and the exterminator. What has become of this 6850 souls, I know not; but not ten houses remain of the whole village to inform the wayfarer where, according to the population returns, they were to be found in 1841. [The ILN correspondent here has apparently confused the parish of Killard, to which the population figure applies; the townland of Killard; and possibly a more densely populated village within the townland which he sketched.] They were here, but are gone for ever; and all that remains of their abodes are a few mouldering walls, and piles of offensive thatch turning into manure. Killard is an epitome of half Ireland. If the abodes of the people had not been so slight, that they have mingled, like Babylon, with their original clay, Ireland would for ages be renowned for its ruins; but, as it is, the houses are swept away like the people, and not a monument remains of a multitude, which, in ancient Asia or in the wilds of America, would numerically constitute a great nation."
From Bealaha, we turned south, onto the main road Kilrush-Kilkee road briefly, and then left at Lisdeen Church and left again after Blackweir bridge for Cill na gCailleach.
The buses parked at Noel O'Shea's own house and Noel and his neighbour and my cousin Paddy Talty kindly had cars on hand for those not up walking down the cul de sac to Cill na gCailleach, where it would not have been possible to turn either bus. Noel had asked one of his children how long the walk would take, and was not pleased with the reply: `Five minutes at my pace, half an hour at yours.' Noel and Paddy, as well as Michael O'Connell, also shared their expert local knowledge of those buried in the cemetery.
Kay Clancy and I had brought along our stock of talcum powder and brushes and sponges, our favourite method for highlighting some of the fantastic artwork on the tombstones, particularly that of John O'Brien who died in the Ferry tragedy on 12 Dec 1849; also John Clanchy ship carpenter, who died during the cholera epidemic of 1832; and Thomas Carroll who died in 1846. The buglers depicted on one of these reminded me again of Anthony McNamara and I reminded his daughter and granddaughter of how he spent so many years `waiting for the old bugle call'.
The locals all cited Paddy and Eileen Barry as having confirmation from their grandfather of the location of the unmarked mass grave of the other Cammoge victims, surrounded by a low stone wall. We also looked at the once-impressive but now dilapidated Cox vault, and the grave of Paddy Talty's family, including his great-aunt Kathleen who baked the cake containing the key which Eamon de Valera used to escape from Lincoln Jail in England during the War of Independence.
Many of the group had been to Cammoge Point on Monday and we just encouraged the remainder to visit by car to see the new memorial. The road to Cammoge is also too narrow for buses and the distance is too far to walk in the time available.
Noel O'Shea was anxious to show off his collection of vintage cars, tractors, motorbikes and farm machinery, but as most people had re-boarded the bus and as it's not really famine-related, only a few people got to see it. Noel's collection is on a par with those of other local collectors like Joe Whelan, Jackie Whelan and Matthew Bermingham.
Next stop was Tullaroe Cross, also known as Behan's Cross and Johnny Mack's Cross. This was originally Behan's house. Patrick McNamara (whose family had been among the victims of eviction listed by Captain Kennedy a few years before his birth) married in here around 1882. His son Johnnie Mack lived here until his death in 1981 at the age of 95.
At the time, Mary Teresa Hynes, Kilkee librarian, believed this to have been the last inhabited mudwalled house in west Clare.
I learned on Tuesday that Cillian Murphy's efforts to buy the late Martin Moloney's house in Lisheencrony fell through when he discovered that his bank wouldn't fund the purchase of a mud-walled house. As someone pointed out, the house is still there, but the bank may not be. I remember the house before Martin got it renovated and plastered about 30 years ago, when half the thatched roof had collapsed. By Tuesday evening, the number of known surviving mud-walled houses had grown to three, as Congella McGuire reported her discovery on Monday that the Roche family still inhabit another, despite having a newly-built but less cosy house next door.
At this stage we had visited three sites that have probably never before been visited on a bus tour, and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive, with all sorts of suggestions for preserving Johnny Mack's house, which is now in a state of decay which makes the original materials and construction easily identifiable.
By now, people were getting hungry, and Mary Hamilton, who suffers from travel sickness, had already called it a day and got someone to collect her and take her home, so we phoned ahead to Myles Creek in Kilkee and to our lunchtime speaker Carmel Madigan to say that we would be arriving ahead of the scheduled 2pm break.
Tommy Foley phoned me as we were approaching Kilkee, about a minute before we passed his hall door, so I told him to stand on his doorstep and wave at the buses as we passed.
Noel pulled up in the middle of O'Curry Street, a one-way street with cars parked on either side, to allow us to disembark. Even in May, Kilkee is still Chris de Burgh's proverbial `out of season holiday town in the rain/when the tourists go and the cold winds blow'.
Gerard and Deirdre Haugh and the staff at Myles Creek coped admirably with a hungry crowd of 60+ arriving simultaneously baying for food. There was famine soup available. Those who came by bus were joined by others who had come by car, in particular Mairead O'Brien, who had organised the event and brought the now well-tested soup recipe, and Assumpta Kennedy, who gave her almost-daily performance of Lone Shanakyle after lunch. I'm sure she sang it at work at the Regina House event on Wednesday, and only that Michael O'Connell was so possessive of the microphone on Monday she would have been asked to sing it at Cammoge or Carnacalla!
Carmel Madigan showed up with a large bag of freshly harvested herbs, hedgerow plants and seaweeds to explain how our ancestors could, and possibly did, have a very nutritious diet on their doorsteps despite the failure of the potato crop.
I haven't figured out whether Carmel Madigan (née Magner) is related to Assumpta Kennedy (née Madigan) but the Madigan family tree is crying out to be researched given how intertwined it has become with famine commemoration. Rebekah pointed out that through her Madigan paternal grandmother she is related to Assumpta - and she also shares the singing gene, as she is currently singing professionally at Bunratty and Knappogue Castles.
All were eventually served lunch, everybody seeming to want something more substantial than watery soup, nettles, herbs or seaweed.
Kay Clancy popped across the road for a few copies of the Clare Champion, but there was general disappointment at the coverage of the famine commemoration. No front page banner headlines, and the first article inside was a complaint that Frances Street has been resurfaced for Sunday in preference to some more deserving lane in Kilkee. Patricia Zanini will be delighted with Peter O'Connell's piece describing how much it means to be coming back to her ancestral town accompanying her ambassador husband who will be there in an official capacity on Sunday. John Kelly must have taken hundreds of photographs in the Potter's Hand on Tuesday, but we could find only two of them. Other articles on events in Killaloe, Ennis, Carrigaholt, etc., were scattered throughout the paper, with one or two photographs with each. The Clare People's 16 page pull-out on Tuesday certainly put the Champion to shame this week.
Kay and a few others called it a day at this stage, so we realised that we could transfer everyone into the 53-seat bus, and let bus-driver Tommy have a half-day.
Noel O'Shea and Michael had both insisted that the cliff road, built as a famine relief public works scheme, looks better driving from the west, so we headed west by the upper Moveen road. Paul, now sitting beside me, encouraged me to tell of my own family connections to Moveen, where my greatgrandparents settled after their marriage in 1876. My late father spent his first holiday with his grandfather in Moveen in 1929 at the age of 12, and for the next 72 years, until he was no longer fit to travel, never went a year without a holiday in Clare, and never again holidayed anywhere further away than Carrigaholt or Kilkee.
Moveen also features in the ILN:
"The Sketch of Moveen, to which I now call your attention, is that of another ruined village in the Union of Kilrush. It is a specimen of the dilapidation I behold all around. There is nothing but devestation, while the soil is of the finest description, capable of yielding as much as any land in the empire. Here, at Tullig, and other places, the ruthless destroyer, as if he delighted in seeing the monuments of his skill, has left the walls of the houses standing, while he has unroofed them and taken away all shelter from the people. They look like the tombs of a departed race, rather than the recent abodes of a yet living people, and I felt actually relieved at seeing one or two half-clad spectres gliding about, as an evidence that I was not in the land of the dead. You may inquire, perhaps, and I am sure your readers will wish to know, why it is that the people have of late been turned out of their houses in such great numbers, and their houses just at this time pulled down, and I will give you my explanation of this fact."
My father, Ciarán Ó Murchadha, Paddy Nolan, Cindy O'Dell, Paul and myself and others over the years have spent many hours exploring Moveen on the ground, on paper maps, and on online maps and satellite images at osi.ie, maps.google.com, origins.net and askaboutireland.ie, in a vain attempt to find any surviving remains of the village shown in the ILN sketch.
The 1840 Ordnance Survey map shows villages marked Moveen (north of the road) and Moveen Lower (further west, and south of the road). There are also ruins worth investigating elsewhere in the townland and in the neighbouring townland of Kilcasheen.
At griffiths.askaboutireland.ie, one can overlay the historic (post-)Griffith's Valuation (1855) maps on a satellite image. There are two stone ruins clearly visible both on the satellite map and street view in the vicinity of where the ILN sketch seems to have been done:
1. The first stone ruin is on the roadside in Moveen East, and appears to be the house in Plot 14 (Moveen East) in Griffith:
http://goo.gl/maps/L0SxM
Edmond (Ned) M'Mahon appears to have occupied this farm, and also the second next farm to the west, in 1855, but to have lived on the other farm. So at first glance, this ruin appears to have been uninhabited by 1855. However, I believe that Edmond left one of his farms each to his grandsons, Andy Ned (m.1870) and Patsy Ned (m.1884), who married two Carmody sisters. So the present ruin was probably lived in by Patsy Ned's son Paddy McMahon (d.1976). I have been told that this farm and the adjoining farm to the north (No. 4 in Griffith) are now owned or leased by Damien McInerney.
2. The second stone ruin is a couple of fields north of the road, right on the boundary of Moveen East and Kilcasheen towlands, but appears to be No. 1 in Kilcasheen, home of Laurence Lillis in 1855:
http://goo.gl/maps/DHKyG
I have a large paper map formed by taping together copies of photocopies of parts of OS Sheets 55 and 65 from the Valuation Office, with holdings numbered in accordance with Griffith's Valuation.
At askaboutireland.ie, the map and plot numbering are of a later date, as the 6 residential holdings plus caretaker's house in Kilcasheen (which is divided in 4 by the edges of OS Sheets 55, 56, 65 and 66) have all by then merged (in two stages) into a single holding. This suggests a mass clearance by John Westropp and/or his middleman Michael O'Donnell soon after 1855. The transcripts of the parish register for 1852-1878 don't have a single entry for Kilcasheen.
Sheet 55 is mostly ocean, but covers parts of Moveen West, Moveen East Kilcasheen, Foohagh and Ballyonan/Doonaghboy. At origins.net,
Foohagh is linked to sheet 56 (1432.tif) and most of the others to sheet 65 (1441.tif). I eventually realised that by searching for Islands in Moyarta parish I would get sheet 55 (1430.tif). The quality of the reproduction is, if anything, worse than my 25-year-old paper photocopy, but by zooming in on the bottom right corner one can see the consolidation in Kilcasheen, and a curved stone wall in the north west corner of the townland, still clearly visible on the satellite image. I now seriously doubt that this is the wall in the foreground of the ILN sketch, although I think my father believed that it was. Most of Kilcasheen (including the graveyard on the lower Moveen road which we came to later) now constitutes the Tubridy estate, to which a Tubridy cousin is currently trying to establish ownership.
The Tubridy house was also occupied well into my lifetime - probably the 1980s - but is now a ruin. It appears from the satellite image to be in the very bottom right corner of OS Sheet 55, where there is no house in 1855. This looks like holding No. 3 in Griffith, Timothy Kane. Here is the ruin in Google Street View:
http://goo.gl/maps/YIffn
The eastern part of the 1855 road heading north-east from Walsh's house (No. 8 in Moveen east in Griffith) to May Deloughery's (No. 7), and formerly on into Baby Dan O'Gormans (No. 4), before turning south, appears to have been completely obliterated by the time of the historic 25" map:
http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,485582,657191,7,9
The present Moveen road passes from Moveen East through Kilcasheen and then back into Moveen east; the obliterated road skirted around the northern boundary of Kilcasheen without leaving Moveen East.
Moveen Lower is in nos. 11 and 22 in Moveen West in Griffith (around Billy Downes's, Sean Moloney's and Sonny Carmody's and between Tom Lynch's and the left turn down to the main Carrigaholt road). We saw no sign of ruins in that area either.
I spoke about writer and funeral director Tom Lynch, probably Moveen's most famous resident, if only a part-time one (who unfortunately wont be joining us until the day after the National Famine Commemoration due to teaching commitments at Emory University). I thought it especially appropriate to refer to his lovely poem Montbretia, dedicated to Michael O'Connell who was with us. Montbretia, which will not be in bloom for another couple of months, is an invasive but beautiful wild flower which was not around during the Famine, and which Carmel Madigan assured me has no nutritional value. Rather, it was brought back to Ireland by one of the Vandeleurs who fought in the Boer War and planted in the Walled Garden in Kilrush. A seed blew over the wall and it spread throughout the peninsula. People like my father loved it so much that they brought it to Dublin and other places and replanted it. I've brought some from Dublin back to Killaloe and planted it in my garden there.
We then passed the biggest farm in Moveen, now Murray's and formerly Healy's. Mainly for the benefit of Terry, Laura, Ann and Rebekah, relatives of the underbidder, I read a letter written on 14 January 1907, by M & B. Morrissey from Moveen to their `Dear Son Tom' in Jackson, Michigan, where many Moveen people settled (those who did not emigrate to Buenos Aires):
"Dear Tom, You wanted to know who bought Healys' farm. I wish to tell you it was Johnny Murray, Kilkee, & it paid £ 675 & a shilling to the pound auctioneer fees along with that Anthony McNamara Breaffa went £ 600 in in [sic] Kavanagh from Kilkee he is married to Bid Greene from Newtown he is from England went £ 670 & a boy from Mullough one Sullivan who came from California went £ 650 & indeed every one says it went great money."
[According to census returns Edward Cavanagh of Kilkee was a police pensioner born in Queen's County.] In local folklore, the purchase price paid by the Murray family has been rounded down to £600. The vendor was John Burns, to whom the farm had been left by his sister-in-law `Mrs Healy'. The island offshore previously known as `Healy's Island' has since gradually become known as `Murray's Island'.
Noel drove at a crawl along the cliff road from Goleen back to Kilkee as he could see in his rear-view mirror that everyone on the bus was oohing and aahing at the spectacular cliff scenery and busily taking photographs and videos.
A howling wind was blowing rivers that should have been flowing over the clifftop back inland, drenching the bus on one or two occasions. The thought of those starving during the famine working in similar weather conditions in the late 1840s to build this very road was humbling.
I had stories to tell about most points on the cliff road, mostly learned from my father or Seán and Martin Moloney or other Moveen natives.
Back in Kilkee, we saw the sea wall, also built as a famine relief scheme, and paused at the former Murphy's Café at the end of Marine Parade, home to the great famine historian Monsignor Ignatius Murphy, to whom Kilrush & District Historical Society hopes some day to erect a plaque on the building.
Then we headed west again on the lower Moveen road, where the first object of major interest was the afore-mentioned Kilcasheen cemetery. The two flat tombstones which it contains were clearly visible from the bus. Despite many years of campaigning by my father, by Noel O'Shea's uncle John Lynch, who grew up nearby, and by others, this ancient graveyard remains otherwise unmarked.
Eugene O'Curry wrote of it as follows:
"There is another burying ground called Killcasheen in the Townland of Killcasheen in this Parish. This was a deserted burying place in the year 1739 but in the ensuing year when famine and pestilence raged through the country and dead human bodies were to be met with by the roads and ditches, my grandfather, Melachlin-Garbh-O’Cómhraidhe, who tenanted, at will (being a Papist) the tract of land now called Moneen [in many transcripts, recte Moveen] and in which Kilcasheen is situated, employed himself, his workmen, his horses and sledges in carrying the victims of the plague from all parts of the neighbouring district and burying them here, so that it has continued ever since to be a burial place, although not a popular one."
I then explained that we were about to pass the homes of two Michael McNamaras close together. My cousin Michael in Moveen West is a blow-in, our family having lived on the farm for only 137 years. Michael `Anthony' McNamara in the next townland, Breaghva, is a real native, as his ancestors are listed in the same house in Griffith's Valuation in 1855. The Moveen West McNamaras now live in the third house on the farm, the first having been abandoned in 1888 because the residents of the nearby fairy fort were believed to have taken my greatgrandparents first five babies at birth. I'm wondering if the Breaghva McNamaras are still in the original pre-1855 house, and if it too might be, to quote Yeats, `of clay and wattles made'. Perhaps it is the very house in which Laura and Terry and Rebekah's GGGgrandfather McNamara was born away back around 1800.
Noel missed my request to stop and allow Laura and Terry to take photographs of their ancestral home, but Laura and Ann hopped out when he stopped and ran back and Ann introduced Laura to her brother, who wanted to invite her in for tea. We decided that tea for 53 would be too much of an imposition for a bachelor farmer! Having parked in the middle of a one-way street in Kilkee at lunchtime, parking on a narrow two-lane road would not have been a problem.
Next point of interest was Tullig, also depicted and described in the ILN:
"The Sketch is not of a deserted village - though that was a miserable enough spectacle, for the wretched beings who once viewed it as the abode of plenty and peace still linger and hover about it-- but of a destroyed village. The ruthless spoiler has been at work and swept away the shelter that honest industry had prepared for suffering and toiling humanity. A conqueror would not have had time and security to do the mischief which is perpetrated in safety under the guardianship of the laws by the Irish themselves. Within the Union of Kilrush, in the year of grace 1849, and before the coming of the month of June, about 16,000 persons had been unhoused out of 82,358, and 1200 were unhoused within one fortnight of May 7, in all, one-fifth or 20 per cent. of the whole population were turned out of their houses and the houses pulled down. Not less than 2890 houses were levelled in the Union of Kilrush in the years 1848-49. Ireland is now marked with many such monuments of the terrible mistakes of landlords and of the legislature as the roofless village represented in our Sketch."
I had warned Noel that the road from Tullig back to Cross was in poor shape when I did a scouting expedition with Garrett Dundon and others a couple of months back, but he wasn't worried. As he crawled across cut-away bog through bottomless pot-holes with a steep drop on either side, I wished he was in first gear rather than second! We came to a junction where he asked me whether to go right or straight ahead. The cul de sac to the right is not even shown on discovery series maps, but looked a better road than the one going straight ahead which we had to take.
Congella McGuire (another no show on the day due to pressures of work) had arranged with Fr Michael Casey that he would meet us and talk to us at the Church of the Little Ark in Moneen. As a rainshower arrived as we arrived at Seán Keating's cross, I decided it would be better to take the right fork and visit the church before an open-air stop in Kilbaha village. Fr. Casey proved hard to track down. Congella had lost his phone numbers, but eventually texted me his landline, which he wasn't answering; Michael O'Connell, who had given Congella the numbers, didn't have them either. Eventually I saw a light bulb going off in his head as he spotted Martha who, as an undertaker, was guaranteed to have the numbers of all the clergy in her mobile. She made the call and Fr Casey pulled up outside his church as we unloaded the bus. Since 2009, he has been the first man since Fr. Michael Meehan between 1849 and 1878 to be parish priest of both Kilballyowen and Moyarta parish.
I was tired of talking at this stage, and my passengers were surely tired of listening to me, so I was delighted to have someone else to take over and tell the story of The Little Ark of Kilbaha. This version is based on that at clarelibrary.ie:
"In the year 1849 the present parishes of Kilballyowen and Moyarta in West Clare were one, and were called after Carrigaholt which was the central village. The population was only 8,000 and many people were dying from Cholera. In that year a priest by the name of Fr. Michael Meehan was sent to help the dying victims and to give them the Last Sacrament. There was no church in the western part of the parish than because landlords would not permit their land to be used for a site. The priests used make-shift tents to say Mass in, but these proved useless in bad weather.
There was a church in Carrigaholt (Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, built in 1832-1833, while Fr. Malachy Duggan (1780-1849) was parish priest).
It is unsure how Fr. Meehan came up with the idea, but in 1852, he announced a plan to build a wooden box that would have four wheels and in this he planned to say Mass. It is thought he got the idea from a Bathing Box on the beach in Killkee.
The timber was ordered from Limerick and a local carpenter, Owen Collins, was employed to build what was to become known as “the little ark”. After building the wooden structure, he then covered it in tarred canvas. There were two windows which ran along the length of both sides and at the front door. Inside, at the far end of the door was a low altar on which a statue of the Sacred Heart stood, and above the altar there was a crucifix.
When it was finally ready for use it was brought down to the beach in Kilbaha. The beach was a type of “no-mans land” meaning that no-one was breaking the law by using that area. However, despite this Father Meehan was prosecuted for placing a nuisance at the crossroads of Kilbaha. The case was tried and dismissed.
There by the sea for five years, Mass was celebrated and religious instruction given. People were married there and children baptised. Around “the little ark” on Sundays, in mud and soaking rain, in the burning heat of summer and through the frost of winter, the people gathered.
The strange Mass house soon began the attract attention and visitors arrived and went away shocked and amazed - shocked at the fact that a quarter of a century after passing of Emancipation, the Catholics of west Clare, because of landlord bigotry, could not get a site for a church. Amazed at the lengths the people went to practice their religion.
A site was finally granted in late 1856 by Fr. Meehan refused it for the reason that it was on a bog. Pressure was put on the landlord and a new site was granted. The first stone was laid on the 12th of July 1857 at Moneen, a mile from the site where the ark stood.
The church of “Our Lady, Star of the Sea” was dedicated on the 10th of October 1858. At first the ark was brought to the site and was used until the church was ready. It was later placed inside the church doors to the left, until the present building to the house was added.
On the day of the dedication of the church, Mass was celebrated in the Ark and a crowd of three thousand people attended the ceremony. Fr. Meehan died on the 24th of January 1878 after spending his last remaining years working in the parish. On Saturday the 26th his remains were brought from Kilrush to Carrigaholt and to Kilbaha by horsedrawn hearse. The coffin was taken out and brought to the spot where the ark had stood on the shore. On Tuesday February 1st 1878 his body was interred where it remains today, within feet of the ark. The ark is still preserved in the church at Moneen today."
We made our last stop in Kilbaha village to see the plaque to Fr. Meehan on the site where he used to say mass in the little ark, and also the other works of local sculptors Jim and Seamus Connolly and Paddy Murray. I couldn't even find Paddy's metalwork version of Searching for Potatoes in a Stubble Field from the ILN. And I hadn't done my homework on the five pilots and the Windsor Castle, so decided to call it a day before I made a bigger fool of myself.
We left off a few people on the way back to Kilrush, such as Laura Lyons in Carrigaholt, and were back at Crotty's where the day had started just 2 minutes ahead of schedule.
I made my way to Supervalu to buy a snack and a few supplies so that my hosts would not return from their holiday to an empty cupboard. Half the bus tour group also seemed to be there, along with Adrian O'Connell, provider of the wonderful old photograph of Carrigaholt which I may have mentioned earlier in the week. I was highly amused at the sight of Linda Culligan Bruce in front of me in the checkout queue with just two items - a bottle of talc and a sponge. Paul and Kay's demonstration of this technique in Cill na gCailleach had obviously converted one genealogist!
I was back at the Teach Ceoil just in time for Jason's lecture. It's hard to rank the evening lectures that we've had there this week, as all have been superb. Jason contrasted the efforts of the Catholic clergy who ministered to famine emigrants at Grosse Ile in 1847 with the allegations about the same order of nuns a decade earlier in the Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun’s Life in a Convent Exposed. Mairead O'Brien was sorry she had chosen this lecture to bring her thirteen-year-old son David to, as she thought Monk's allegations about priests impregnating nuns and suffocating the resulting offspring were not suitable listening for the ears of one so young and innocent!
I was so relieved that my active involvement in the events of the week was over (or so I thought, until I got a phone call requesting another talk next morning!), that I was easily persuaded to go on a pub crawl with Paul and Mairead (once she'd dropped David home). I had a cidona in Crotty's, as we debated one or two bruised egos among those involved in the week's activities, and decided that most of them were caused by the overly long chain of communication from the authorities in the Department in Dublin (who will take over from the local committee on Sunday) through various County Council officials to the locals on the ground.
Then I had a 7Up in Buggle's, where we joined Miriam and Dolores and Carmel Buggle herself.
I was back at base just before midnight, totally exhausted, and went to bed without even taking the laptop out of the car.
Thursday, 9 May 2013
BEHIND THE SCENES KILRUSH'S FAMINE COMMEMORATION DAY 6 MAY 8 2013
By Guest Blogger, Paddy Waldron...
This one will be quick as I still have to write tomorrow's blog before I go to bed - i.e. my notes for the bus tour.
Although I didn't get to bed until after sending Chris Tuesday's instalment at 1:56am, I was wide awake before 7am and couldn't get back to sleep. My first appointment of the day was a live telephone interview with Marian Egan (sitting in for John Cooke) for Morning Focus on Clare FM at 10:05. I am listening to the rebroadcast as I finish this up. Before then, I'd sorted out with Congella McGuire which Illustrated London News/Clare County Council postcards to print for those travelling on Thursday's bus tour, basically those for the sites that we will be visiting.
The rest of the morning went on writing notes for the bus tour.
I left for Kilrush at 1:15pm and my first task was to get diesel for the car. It was a pleasure to support Whelan's Garage as Joe has been so helpful all week. It's also probably the last garage in Ireland to employ a man to fill fuel for customers. And probably the only one with a shop and a separate office where one pays for fuel separately from groceries.
I went back to Regina House Nursing Home where I unloaded my gear for the afternoon walk and then parked the car outside the Teach Ceoil, to be ready for a quick getaway after the walking tour. People I don't know keep stopping me in the streets of Kilrush. The first was one of the local kids who have been playing (messing) outside the Teach Ceoil and wanted to know if I knew `Mr O'Brien', so he's probably one of `Miss O'Brien's' (Paul's sister's) junior infants pupils. He thought my car was Mr O'Brien's. I guess the chauffeur doesn't usually own the car! Next person to stop me was Connie Prendeville to congratulate me on how things have gone all week. Then John Blunnie, just arrived from Leitrim - he seemed to be heading for Blunnie's house, so I guessed it might be him, but he identified me first. He confirmed that his sisters Miriam and Dolores were both en route to Kilrush, Dolores on her way back after less than 24 hours back home attending to urgent matters at work!
We forgot to build in an opportunity to eat anything more than famine soup in today's programme, so I stopped at the Buttermarket for a quick lunch. Michael O'Connell was there, and having given my order at the counter I realised that it was his Seattle cousins Terry Fitzgerald and Laura Danielson who were sitting with him. It proved almost as hard to get a word in with Michael over lunch as on the Cammoge walk. I did tell Michael about the incredible old photograph of Carrigaholt which came from Kerry and which Paul produced last night. I think we may keep it for the 2014 KDHS calendar, as it will probably sell us a couple of hundred extra calendars around Carrigaholt!
Once again Anne O'Brien refused to take any money from me for my lunch. The Buttermarket wont last long if everyone who drops in leaves as little money behind as I do! The explanation this time was that `the historical society' had paid for my lunch, and I eventually figured out that Paul and Kay had left just before I arrived. Paul had sent me an e-mail saying they would be there - just after I switched off my computer.
It had been perfect walking weather when I arrived in Kilrush, but it started to rain as we left the Buttermarket. Terry and Laura didn't realise that the Buttermarket doesn't accept plastic money, so had to go to the bank, while Michael and I walked back to Regina House, where another soup kitchen and Famine Commemoration were in progress. Rob Hopkins was in charge of entertaining the patients, with a private premiere of the piece which he will be producing during the main ceremony on Sunday. Space was limited, so I didn't have much of a view, but it was well up to the standard of Carrigaholt on Friday - minus the gunshots, which would probably have frightened a few of the elderly residents to death!
The repeat of our Guided Walking Tour of the Famine Sites of Kilrush was due to start at 3pm. I was in no hurry to get moving, as the entertainment was still going on in Regina House, and I was waiting for the rainshower to stop, and for various people who had said they would be joining us straight from school. I recruited two battery carriers (Mary Hester and Terry Fitzgerald), a speaker carrier (Laura Danielson) and, as the shower turned into another deluge instead of stopping, an umbrella carrier (Paul Edson). Then we had to think of Plan B - large indoor spaces along the planned route. Apologies to those who opened up the Moneypoint pitch, which we had to skip. I decided to do a mad dash through the rain to Joe Whelan's Museum, the Youth Centre, St. Senan's Church, Quay Mills and Brian Comerford's former Tourist Office. Kay Clancy (who also provided the umbrella, which went home with Paul Edson) very kindly went ahead by car with grandnephew Michael Deloughery and checked everywhere would be open and willing to let us in. There was a `Museum Closed' sign on the door, but we still got into Joe's building! As my notes and myself got wetter and wetter from one venue to the next, my contributions became less coherent. Paul announced that he hadn't been in the Youth Centre since his first (and last?) dance with a girl at the age of 13!
In the church, we were blessed to bump into Michael Carmody, who volunteered to give a most erudite talk on the stained glass windows by Harry Clarke et al. I'd forgotten, if I ever knew, that the windows at either side of Fr. Tim Kelly's statue were presented by his brother Matt and sister, who very helpfully didn't include her name in the inscription. At least we know from the Mahon v. Kelly court case in 1846 that there were only two sisters, Mary and Anne (Mrs. O'Gorman).
Liam Irwin, who usually gives the lowdown on stained glass on Thomond Society outings, seemed to appreciate listening to another expert doing the job.
When we left the church, Seán O'Brien was deputed to pop into Michael Nolan's office down the road and collect the CD for his talk in Kilkee later on. He also took over as speaker-carrier as Laura and Terry sought shelter in a car.
The rain eased off briefly, so decided to chance going as far as Paupers' Quay. On the way there, it was nice to meet Rebekah Ní Comardúin who had some difficult questions about freemasonry in Kilrush which I referred to Paul. I've got to the age where I am regularly meeting people like Rebekah to whom I can say `I knew your grandfather', in her case Anthony McNamara, who described his state of health for the many years I knew him as `waiting for the bugle call'. Only at lunch I had been telling his cousins Terry and Laura of the day rural electrification came to Carrigaholt, when Anthony managed to throw a chain across the wires so that nothing happened when whatever dignitary was doing the honours flicked the switch!
At Paupers' Quay, Liam pointed out a misplaced apostrophe in the newly unveiled plaque (Pauper's Quay)! Not as serious as the 1894 which on another plaque which had to be corrected to 1849 at the last minute.
Richard Glynn could not be found, probably at sea, so we didn't get in to see the original Leadmore Auxiliary Culinary Department plaque. There were a couple of people there (including Rebecca Brew) with new knowledge about the location(s) of Leadmore National School and Russell's Store. Both the Distillery complex and the Custom House complex seem to have at different times included a Russell's Store and a school.
Last stop was Quay Mills, where we got a sneak preview of the art exhibition by Cindy O'Dell and local schoolchildren due to be launched at 7pm. Most people decided to call it a day there, and either stay and enjoy the exhibition or head home to get dry. That allowed me to leave the sound system with Rene Franklin, who wanted it for the launch. Only two people came as far as Market Square, where I told Brian Comerford that we didn't need his hospitality. Even Michael O'Connell disappeared, and I forgot that he had asked me for a lift to Kilkee. He was sitting with Laura and Terry in their car and they misidentified my car and never saw me drive off! I remembered Michael half-way to Kilkee and around the same time remembered that I still had the spare battery for the microphone and phoned Rene to advise her to buy a backup in Supervalu, which she later needed. As usual, Michael (Ireland's most effective hitchhiker) found another lift to Kilkee.
The reason for the trip to Kilkee was an event about Current Famine in the World at Cultúrlann Sweeney at 5:30pm. Querrin National School pupils (including my fourth cousin once removed Thomas Clancy) gave a great short presentation about their project Famine in Africa, in particular Malawi. It took me a minute or two to remember where I had met the man operating the computer, who gave me a big welcome - Jim Whitney, husband of their teacher Geraldine Keating, whom I met at Socks In The Frying Pan at the weekend. This was followed by Dr. Gerard Downes (Paul's office mate in Mary I) talking about The Politics of Famine: Supply, Deceit and Deprivation. There were apologies from the Trocaire representative who was due to talk as she is still in Somalia, where she has contracted Dengue fever and was unable to catch her flight home.
Having got Michael Nolan's six scanned PDF images sorted out (two needed to be rotated and all needed to be renamed!), I collected the caption for Maura Egan's painting in Quay Mills of the only grave of a Cammoge victim, at Cill na gCailleach, as the nearest printer to print it was in Kilkee.
Then I made a mad dash from Kilkee to Quay Mills in Kilrush to catch the end of the guided commentary by artist Cindy O'Dell, illustrating her inspiration for the photographic collection Messengers of Yesterday. The collection of images explores the Irish American identity in the historical framework of the famine. It includes the striking image of the 1849 village of Tullig superimposed on the landscape of Kilcasheen, which has convinced most people who have seen it that the Kilcasheen ruins are the remains of the Tullig ruins. Cindy is an Associate Professor of Art at DePauw University, Indiana.
Ciarán Ó Murchadha has been Cindy's guide on previous visits to Ireland and was present, so I was able to introduce him to Agnes Flewelling, possibly the nearest living relative of the Michael Roughan whose role in the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Kilrush during the Famine Ciarán is researching.
I had to skip the Clare Archaeological & Historical Society Outing to Ballyhee Cutting also at 7pm. This is located on the Fergus River which was diverted as a famine relief work at the end of the Famine. I also had to skip the lecture in the Teach Ceoil at 8pm by Dr. Gerard Moran entitled Scattering the People: the Great Famine and Irish Emigration with particular reference to Co. Clare.
Instead of these, my final engagement of the day was the lecture by Michael Nolan back in Kilkee on Failure of Famine Relief. There was a surprisingly good turnout from Kilrush among the 40 or so in attendance, including Mairead O'Brien, Brian Comerford and Josephine Glynn, while some Kilkee people went to Gerard Moran, including Padraig de Barra, whom I passed on the road. There were lots of interesting questions after the lecture, with Gearóid Williams (first cousin to the lecturer and fourth cousin to me) revealing that he holds some very old records of Kilrush Vincent de Paul of which he is treasurer, records which may shed more light on its role during the famine.
I managed to set off the alarm when I got back to Doonmore - probably because I closed the door behind me to keep out the wind and rain before turning it off.
Editor's Note: Rather than insert photos at this time, may I refer you to this Facebook site...of the Famine Commemoration page...
https://www.facebook.com/kilrush.famine?hc_location=stream
Below are just a few of Kay Clancy's photos taken on the day... I will have to identify them later on.
This one will be quick as I still have to write tomorrow's blog before I go to bed - i.e. my notes for the bus tour.
Although I didn't get to bed until after sending Chris Tuesday's instalment at 1:56am, I was wide awake before 7am and couldn't get back to sleep. My first appointment of the day was a live telephone interview with Marian Egan (sitting in for John Cooke) for Morning Focus on Clare FM at 10:05. I am listening to the rebroadcast as I finish this up. Before then, I'd sorted out with Congella McGuire which Illustrated London News/Clare County Council postcards to print for those travelling on Thursday's bus tour, basically those for the sites that we will be visiting.
The rest of the morning went on writing notes for the bus tour.
I left for Kilrush at 1:15pm and my first task was to get diesel for the car. It was a pleasure to support Whelan's Garage as Joe has been so helpful all week. It's also probably the last garage in Ireland to employ a man to fill fuel for customers. And probably the only one with a shop and a separate office where one pays for fuel separately from groceries.
I went back to Regina House Nursing Home where I unloaded my gear for the afternoon walk and then parked the car outside the Teach Ceoil, to be ready for a quick getaway after the walking tour. People I don't know keep stopping me in the streets of Kilrush. The first was one of the local kids who have been playing (messing) outside the Teach Ceoil and wanted to know if I knew `Mr O'Brien', so he's probably one of `Miss O'Brien's' (Paul's sister's) junior infants pupils. He thought my car was Mr O'Brien's. I guess the chauffeur doesn't usually own the car! Next person to stop me was Connie Prendeville to congratulate me on how things have gone all week. Then John Blunnie, just arrived from Leitrim - he seemed to be heading for Blunnie's house, so I guessed it might be him, but he identified me first. He confirmed that his sisters Miriam and Dolores were both en route to Kilrush, Dolores on her way back after less than 24 hours back home attending to urgent matters at work!
We forgot to build in an opportunity to eat anything more than famine soup in today's programme, so I stopped at the Buttermarket for a quick lunch. Michael O'Connell was there, and having given my order at the counter I realised that it was his Seattle cousins Terry Fitzgerald and Laura Danielson who were sitting with him. It proved almost as hard to get a word in with Michael over lunch as on the Cammoge walk. I did tell Michael about the incredible old photograph of Carrigaholt which came from Kerry and which Paul produced last night. I think we may keep it for the 2014 KDHS calendar, as it will probably sell us a couple of hundred extra calendars around Carrigaholt!
Once again Anne O'Brien refused to take any money from me for my lunch. The Buttermarket wont last long if everyone who drops in leaves as little money behind as I do! The explanation this time was that `the historical society' had paid for my lunch, and I eventually figured out that Paul and Kay had left just before I arrived. Paul had sent me an e-mail saying they would be there - just after I switched off my computer.
It had been perfect walking weather when I arrived in Kilrush, but it started to rain as we left the Buttermarket. Terry and Laura didn't realise that the Buttermarket doesn't accept plastic money, so had to go to the bank, while Michael and I walked back to Regina House, where another soup kitchen and Famine Commemoration were in progress. Rob Hopkins was in charge of entertaining the patients, with a private premiere of the piece which he will be producing during the main ceremony on Sunday. Space was limited, so I didn't have much of a view, but it was well up to the standard of Carrigaholt on Friday - minus the gunshots, which would probably have frightened a few of the elderly residents to death!
The repeat of our Guided Walking Tour of the Famine Sites of Kilrush was due to start at 3pm. I was in no hurry to get moving, as the entertainment was still going on in Regina House, and I was waiting for the rainshower to stop, and for various people who had said they would be joining us straight from school. I recruited two battery carriers (Mary Hester and Terry Fitzgerald), a speaker carrier (Laura Danielson) and, as the shower turned into another deluge instead of stopping, an umbrella carrier (Paul Edson). Then we had to think of Plan B - large indoor spaces along the planned route. Apologies to those who opened up the Moneypoint pitch, which we had to skip. I decided to do a mad dash through the rain to Joe Whelan's Museum, the Youth Centre, St. Senan's Church, Quay Mills and Brian Comerford's former Tourist Office. Kay Clancy (who also provided the umbrella, which went home with Paul Edson) very kindly went ahead by car with grandnephew Michael Deloughery and checked everywhere would be open and willing to let us in. There was a `Museum Closed' sign on the door, but we still got into Joe's building! As my notes and myself got wetter and wetter from one venue to the next, my contributions became less coherent. Paul announced that he hadn't been in the Youth Centre since his first (and last?) dance with a girl at the age of 13!
In the church, we were blessed to bump into Michael Carmody, who volunteered to give a most erudite talk on the stained glass windows by Harry Clarke et al. I'd forgotten, if I ever knew, that the windows at either side of Fr. Tim Kelly's statue were presented by his brother Matt and sister, who very helpfully didn't include her name in the inscription. At least we know from the Mahon v. Kelly court case in 1846 that there were only two sisters, Mary and Anne (Mrs. O'Gorman).
Liam Irwin, who usually gives the lowdown on stained glass on Thomond Society outings, seemed to appreciate listening to another expert doing the job.
When we left the church, Seán O'Brien was deputed to pop into Michael Nolan's office down the road and collect the CD for his talk in Kilkee later on. He also took over as speaker-carrier as Laura and Terry sought shelter in a car.
The rain eased off briefly, so decided to chance going as far as Paupers' Quay. On the way there, it was nice to meet Rebekah Ní Comardúin who had some difficult questions about freemasonry in Kilrush which I referred to Paul. I've got to the age where I am regularly meeting people like Rebekah to whom I can say `I knew your grandfather', in her case Anthony McNamara, who described his state of health for the many years I knew him as `waiting for the bugle call'. Only at lunch I had been telling his cousins Terry and Laura of the day rural electrification came to Carrigaholt, when Anthony managed to throw a chain across the wires so that nothing happened when whatever dignitary was doing the honours flicked the switch!
At Paupers' Quay, Liam pointed out a misplaced apostrophe in the newly unveiled plaque (Pauper's Quay)! Not as serious as the 1894 which on another plaque which had to be corrected to 1849 at the last minute.
Richard Glynn could not be found, probably at sea, so we didn't get in to see the original Leadmore Auxiliary Culinary Department plaque. There were a couple of people there (including Rebecca Brew) with new knowledge about the location(s) of Leadmore National School and Russell's Store. Both the Distillery complex and the Custom House complex seem to have at different times included a Russell's Store and a school.
Last stop was Quay Mills, where we got a sneak preview of the art exhibition by Cindy O'Dell and local schoolchildren due to be launched at 7pm. Most people decided to call it a day there, and either stay and enjoy the exhibition or head home to get dry. That allowed me to leave the sound system with Rene Franklin, who wanted it for the launch. Only two people came as far as Market Square, where I told Brian Comerford that we didn't need his hospitality. Even Michael O'Connell disappeared, and I forgot that he had asked me for a lift to Kilkee. He was sitting with Laura and Terry in their car and they misidentified my car and never saw me drive off! I remembered Michael half-way to Kilkee and around the same time remembered that I still had the spare battery for the microphone and phoned Rene to advise her to buy a backup in Supervalu, which she later needed. As usual, Michael (Ireland's most effective hitchhiker) found another lift to Kilkee.
The reason for the trip to Kilkee was an event about Current Famine in the World at Cultúrlann Sweeney at 5:30pm. Querrin National School pupils (including my fourth cousin once removed Thomas Clancy) gave a great short presentation about their project Famine in Africa, in particular Malawi. It took me a minute or two to remember where I had met the man operating the computer, who gave me a big welcome - Jim Whitney, husband of their teacher Geraldine Keating, whom I met at Socks In The Frying Pan at the weekend. This was followed by Dr. Gerard Downes (Paul's office mate in Mary I) talking about The Politics of Famine: Supply, Deceit and Deprivation. There were apologies from the Trocaire representative who was due to talk as she is still in Somalia, where she has contracted Dengue fever and was unable to catch her flight home.
Having got Michael Nolan's six scanned PDF images sorted out (two needed to be rotated and all needed to be renamed!), I collected the caption for Maura Egan's painting in Quay Mills of the only grave of a Cammoge victim, at Cill na gCailleach, as the nearest printer to print it was in Kilkee.
Then I made a mad dash from Kilkee to Quay Mills in Kilrush to catch the end of the guided commentary by artist Cindy O'Dell, illustrating her inspiration for the photographic collection Messengers of Yesterday. The collection of images explores the Irish American identity in the historical framework of the famine. It includes the striking image of the 1849 village of Tullig superimposed on the landscape of Kilcasheen, which has convinced most people who have seen it that the Kilcasheen ruins are the remains of the Tullig ruins. Cindy is an Associate Professor of Art at DePauw University, Indiana.
Ciarán Ó Murchadha has been Cindy's guide on previous visits to Ireland and was present, so I was able to introduce him to Agnes Flewelling, possibly the nearest living relative of the Michael Roughan whose role in the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Kilrush during the Famine Ciarán is researching.
I had to skip the Clare Archaeological & Historical Society Outing to Ballyhee Cutting also at 7pm. This is located on the Fergus River which was diverted as a famine relief work at the end of the Famine. I also had to skip the lecture in the Teach Ceoil at 8pm by Dr. Gerard Moran entitled Scattering the People: the Great Famine and Irish Emigration with particular reference to Co. Clare.
Instead of these, my final engagement of the day was the lecture by Michael Nolan back in Kilkee on Failure of Famine Relief. There was a surprisingly good turnout from Kilrush among the 40 or so in attendance, including Mairead O'Brien, Brian Comerford and Josephine Glynn, while some Kilkee people went to Gerard Moran, including Padraig de Barra, whom I passed on the road. There were lots of interesting questions after the lecture, with Gearóid Williams (first cousin to the lecturer and fourth cousin to me) revealing that he holds some very old records of Kilrush Vincent de Paul of which he is treasurer, records which may shed more light on its role during the famine.
I managed to set off the alarm when I got back to Doonmore - probably because I closed the door behind me to keep out the wind and rain before turning it off.
Editor's Note: Rather than insert photos at this time, may I refer you to this Facebook site...of the Famine Commemoration page...
https://www.facebook.com/kilrush.famine?hc_location=stream
Below are just a few of Kay Clancy's photos taken on the day... I will have to identify them later on.
Wednesday, 8 May 2013
BEHIND THE SCENES KILRUSH'S FAMINE COMMEMORATION DAY 5 MAY 7 2013
I was pleasantly surprised to find when I was woken by a text message at 9:28 from Paul O'Brien that all my limbs were still working, despite the unaccustomed exercise to which they were put on Monday.
I had a leisurely morning tidying up things like a spreadsheet of thsoe who have booked places on Thursday's bus tour, until Paul called again at 12:24 to say that a Trócaire bucket was required at the soup kitchen in the Potter's Hand. I got there with one within the hour, via Miniters' newsagents, where I picked up a Clare People, containing a wonderful 16-page supplement on the National Famine Commemoration, including an interview by Claire Gallagher with myself on page 43.
Mick Kinsella, who had asked a few good questions during the walking tour on Saturday, pulled over in his car when he saw me walking up Vandeleur Street, to tell me about his recently completed thesis on pawnbroking in Kilrush during the Famine, recently deposited in Clare County Library's Local Studies Centre in Kilrush. This subject is of great interest to me as the two pawnbrokers listed in Kilrush in Slater's Directory in 1846 were Mary Bulger and Jeremiah Dowling. Mary Bulger was Patricia Zanini's GGGgrandmother and Jeremiah Dowling was Patricia McMahon's GGgrandfather. Patricia Zanini will be here on Sunday and I met Patricia McMahon in Kilkee on Friday.
Claire Gallagher herself was in the Potter's Hand, which was hopping. The Clare Champion was also represented, by photographer John Kelly, who was busy photographing those dressed in Famine garb out the back, their faces blackened with soot - even including the Mayor.
Denise Clancy was serving the watery Famine era soup, and explained the photograph that I found on my camera the night before. While the idols of most children of his age are the likes of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus, her 12-year-old son Luke idolises Ciarán Ó Murchadha, has read his books, and wanted to meet him, get his autograph and be photographed with him. The future of history is safe in the hands of the next generation.
It was good to see Ursula Callaghan and Kieran and Anna Lehane, down from Limerick for the day. Things were so busy that Kieran (Limerick City Manager) went home before we got a chance to discuss the Limerick and Kilrush roots of Patricia Zanini who is due to pay an official visit to Limerick soon with her husband Maurizio, Italian ambassador to Ireland.
Those of us in charge of Trócaire buckets pooled our funds when the crowd had dispersed and I set off with 500 euro in notes to deposit to the Trócaire account in AIB. First I popped into Michael Nolan's office (where he seems to spent a lot of time for someone who has recently retired and handed over his practice to his daughter!) to sort out arrangements with him for his talk in Kilkee tomorrow night.
There was a long queue in front of me in AIB, including two people I knew, Michael Morrissey and Ian Lynch. As Mayor in 2011-2012, Ian played a crucial role in getting the campaign to bring the Famine Commemoration to Kilrush off the ground, but has been kept away from most of the events to date by a combination of weddings and funerals. He has been heavily involved in preparing the exhibition in Foley's Store (Quay Mills) which is due to be launched on Wednesday evening.
The AIB cashier apologised that the 16-character limit on the note in the deposit record on the computer wasn't anywhere near long-enough for `National Famine Commemoration' - I blame Aileen Wynne in AIB HQ, who will be reading this!
I returned a food box to Dolores Hamill on my way to the Buttermarket Café. Dolores's house was one of many still being painted in Kilrush today in preparation for the town's big day on Sunday. The first economic impact of the National Famine Commemoration has certainly been in the paint business!
I had arranged to meet a genealogy client in the Buttermarket at 3pm to discuss her research requirements before the next soup kitchen event. I had time to order some 21st century food before she arrived. Our consultation was soon interrupted by the arrival of a delegation of my Famine Commemoration friends, and had to be put on hold altogether when my laptop was requisitioned for Paul O'Brien's talk on food in the Famine era at 4pm, by when there was a full house.
Anyone walking by outside probably thought they were watching a performance of Playboy of The Western World if they saw Paul wielding a loy borrowed from Considine's Bakery to demonstrate how potatoes were harvested in the 1840s.
Proprietor Cillian Murphy called me over when Paul showed a photograph of Johnny Mack's house at Tullaroe Cross, identifed long ago by the late Mary Teresa Hynes as the last mud-walled house standing in west Clare. Cillian's efforts to buy the late Martin Moloney's house in Lisheencrony fell through when he discovered that his bank wouldn't fund the purchase of a mud-walled house. I remember the house before Martin got it renovated and plastered about 30 years ago, when half the thatched roof had collapsed. By evening, the number of known surviving mud-walled houses had grown to three, as Congella McGuire discovered yesterday that the Roche family still inhabit another, despite having a newly-built but less cosy house next door. Now I'm wondering if J J McMahon's house in Moveen, probably the last thatched house in that townland until it was slated a few years ago, might not also be built of mud.
I didn't get a chance to try Mary Redmond's version of 19th century soup as I finished my genealogy consultation, but it looked more appetising that the watery version in the Potter's Hand. Meanwhile, the coin part of the Trócaire collection for the week to date was being counted at the next table.
From the Buttermarket, I went down to the Teach Ceoil to help Paul putting out chairs for this evening's lecture after the end of afternoon dancing classes.
We took a break to attend a wreath-laying at the newly erected plaque on Pauper's Quay, which is due to be moved from its present temporary location to a permanent one next week. About 40 people attended. Myself and Mairead O'Brien spoke briefly, and Edel and Anne Glynn laid the wreath to signify all that emigrated and left during Famine times.
It was straight back to the Teach Ceoil, which was handed over to the Old Kilfarboy Society, publishers of Matt Lynch's `The mass evictions in Kilrush Poor Law Union during the Great Famine', due to be launched at 8pm by Christine Kinealy, who had just arrived from the U.S., via her home city of Liverpool. She requested tea and biscuits, but the OKS had put on a wine reception only. In the spirit of the week to date, some kind soul dashed off to the shops and the tea and biscuits appeared.
I was delighted to meet Christine, about whom I had been hearing for many years from my first cousin once removed Monica Hart, one of her primary school teachers. I was sorry to have to tell Christine that Monica passed away back in 2004. I also finally met Méabh Ní Fhuartháin of the OKS, with whom I have often exchanged e-mails. Ireland being the small place that it is, her Waldron first cousins (who have no west Clare roots) are my second cousins!
Matt was kept busy signing books while the audience enjoyed their glass of wine and Morgan Roughan, who has played a blinder on sound all week, sorted out some technical difficulties. Once again, there was almost a full house.
After Christine had launched the book, we were treated to another magnificent lecture by Matt, whose mastery of his subject is most impressive. Matt confirmed that the electoral divisions of the original Kilrush Poor Law Union coincided exactly with the 13 civil parishes of the Loop Head peninsula, a conclusion that it took me over a year to reach despite exhaustive searches in online and published sources. When we launched Kilrush & District Historical Society, Kay Clancy tried to design a logo based on the map of the Poor Law Union, so we'll have to ask Matt if we can use his map as the basis of a proper logo.
Kilrush should be grateful that the transfer of Matt's home townland of Knockanalban (Mount Scott) to Ennistimon Union when the boundaries were redrawn in 1850 didn't divert his interest to the latter union.
There were some good questions for Matt after the lecture, none more so than Brian Comerford's, pointing out the parallels between the introduction of a new property tax at the behest of a distant administration in 1847 and events in the Ireland of today!
I am looking forward to reading the new book in detail next week.
There were lots of people to talk to after the lecture, ranging from Rita McCarthy, who presented me with a CD of readings of the Illustrated London News articles of 1849/50 produced by Raidió Corca Baiscinn, to Áine Hensey of Raidió na Gaeltachta, another facebook friend whom I had yet to meet in the flesh. Congella McGuire and I had also to check the postcards of the Illustrated London News sketches which the County Council has produced, first as invitations to the Commemoration, and now as souvenirs of it. The present sets of 16 are inadvertently missing `Judy O'Donnel's habitation under the bridge at Doonbeg', due to be our first stop on Thursday, and `Searching for potatoes in a stubble field', but I e-mailed off replacement digital versions of these images to David Garrihy, the very helpful printer in Council HQ, and there will be full sets of all 18 sketches available by Thursday.
I hadn't been able to contact Noel O'Shea earlier in the day, but I got him on the phone when the crowd eventually dispersed, and we had a long and productive discussion about plans for Thursday's bus tour. Noel can guarantee us two buses with a total of 86 seats and 80 people have already booked places, so latecomers may have to follow us by car!
Paul and I had various other loose ends to deal with before we could leave the Teach Ceoil. We managed to set off the alarm while trying to set it, not realising that all internal doors have to be closed before it is set! After another nice day, a deluge of biblical proportions had begun during Matt's lecture and continued as I drove back to base.
I am obviously tired, as after leaving Paul's home I turned the wrong way out of his gate and only realised my mistake when I noticed grass growing up through the middle of the road! Nothing a quick U-turn in the next gate couldn't fix.
I had a leisurely morning tidying up things like a spreadsheet of thsoe who have booked places on Thursday's bus tour, until Paul called again at 12:24 to say that a Trócaire bucket was required at the soup kitchen in the Potter's Hand. I got there with one within the hour, via Miniters' newsagents, where I picked up a Clare People, containing a wonderful 16-page supplement on the National Famine Commemoration, including an interview by Claire Gallagher with myself on page 43.
Mick Kinsella, who had asked a few good questions during the walking tour on Saturday, pulled over in his car when he saw me walking up Vandeleur Street, to tell me about his recently completed thesis on pawnbroking in Kilrush during the Famine, recently deposited in Clare County Library's Local Studies Centre in Kilrush. This subject is of great interest to me as the two pawnbrokers listed in Kilrush in Slater's Directory in 1846 were Mary Bulger and Jeremiah Dowling. Mary Bulger was Patricia Zanini's GGGgrandmother and Jeremiah Dowling was Patricia McMahon's GGgrandfather. Patricia Zanini will be here on Sunday and I met Patricia McMahon in Kilkee on Friday.
Claire Gallagher herself was in the Potter's Hand, which was hopping. The Clare Champion was also represented, by photographer John Kelly, who was busy photographing those dressed in Famine garb out the back, their faces blackened with soot - even including the Mayor.
Denise Clancy was serving the watery Famine era soup, and explained the photograph that I found on my camera the night before. While the idols of most children of his age are the likes of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus, her 12-year-old son Luke idolises Ciarán Ó Murchadha, has read his books, and wanted to meet him, get his autograph and be photographed with him. The future of history is safe in the hands of the next generation.
It was good to see Ursula Callaghan and Kieran and Anna Lehane, down from Limerick for the day. Things were so busy that Kieran (Limerick City Manager) went home before we got a chance to discuss the Limerick and Kilrush roots of Patricia Zanini who is due to pay an official visit to Limerick soon with her husband Maurizio, Italian ambassador to Ireland.
Those of us in charge of Trócaire buckets pooled our funds when the crowd had dispersed and I set off with 500 euro in notes to deposit to the Trócaire account in AIB. First I popped into Michael Nolan's office (where he seems to spent a lot of time for someone who has recently retired and handed over his practice to his daughter!) to sort out arrangements with him for his talk in Kilkee tomorrow night.
There was a long queue in front of me in AIB, including two people I knew, Michael Morrissey and Ian Lynch. As Mayor in 2011-2012, Ian played a crucial role in getting the campaign to bring the Famine Commemoration to Kilrush off the ground, but has been kept away from most of the events to date by a combination of weddings and funerals. He has been heavily involved in preparing the exhibition in Foley's Store (Quay Mills) which is due to be launched on Wednesday evening.
The AIB cashier apologised that the 16-character limit on the note in the deposit record on the computer wasn't anywhere near long-enough for `National Famine Commemoration' - I blame Aileen Wynne in AIB HQ, who will be reading this!
I returned a food box to Dolores Hamill on my way to the Buttermarket Café. Dolores's house was one of many still being painted in Kilrush today in preparation for the town's big day on Sunday. The first economic impact of the National Famine Commemoration has certainly been in the paint business!
I had arranged to meet a genealogy client in the Buttermarket at 3pm to discuss her research requirements before the next soup kitchen event. I had time to order some 21st century food before she arrived. Our consultation was soon interrupted by the arrival of a delegation of my Famine Commemoration friends, and had to be put on hold altogether when my laptop was requisitioned for Paul O'Brien's talk on food in the Famine era at 4pm, by when there was a full house.
Anyone walking by outside probably thought they were watching a performance of Playboy of The Western World if they saw Paul wielding a loy borrowed from Considine's Bakery to demonstrate how potatoes were harvested in the 1840s.
Proprietor Cillian Murphy called me over when Paul showed a photograph of Johnny Mack's house at Tullaroe Cross, identifed long ago by the late Mary Teresa Hynes as the last mud-walled house standing in west Clare. Cillian's efforts to buy the late Martin Moloney's house in Lisheencrony fell through when he discovered that his bank wouldn't fund the purchase of a mud-walled house. I remember the house before Martin got it renovated and plastered about 30 years ago, when half the thatched roof had collapsed. By evening, the number of known surviving mud-walled houses had grown to three, as Congella McGuire discovered yesterday that the Roche family still inhabit another, despite having a newly-built but less cosy house next door. Now I'm wondering if J J McMahon's house in Moveen, probably the last thatched house in that townland until it was slated a few years ago, might not also be built of mud.
I didn't get a chance to try Mary Redmond's version of 19th century soup as I finished my genealogy consultation, but it looked more appetising that the watery version in the Potter's Hand. Meanwhile, the coin part of the Trócaire collection for the week to date was being counted at the next table.
From the Buttermarket, I went down to the Teach Ceoil to help Paul putting out chairs for this evening's lecture after the end of afternoon dancing classes.
We took a break to attend a wreath-laying at the newly erected plaque on Pauper's Quay, which is due to be moved from its present temporary location to a permanent one next week. About 40 people attended. Myself and Mairead O'Brien spoke briefly, and Edel and Anne Glynn laid the wreath to signify all that emigrated and left during Famine times.
It was straight back to the Teach Ceoil, which was handed over to the Old Kilfarboy Society, publishers of Matt Lynch's `The mass evictions in Kilrush Poor Law Union during the Great Famine', due to be launched at 8pm by Christine Kinealy, who had just arrived from the U.S., via her home city of Liverpool. She requested tea and biscuits, but the OKS had put on a wine reception only. In the spirit of the week to date, some kind soul dashed off to the shops and the tea and biscuits appeared.
I was delighted to meet Christine, about whom I had been hearing for many years from my first cousin once removed Monica Hart, one of her primary school teachers. I was sorry to have to tell Christine that Monica passed away back in 2004. I also finally met Méabh Ní Fhuartháin of the OKS, with whom I have often exchanged e-mails. Ireland being the small place that it is, her Waldron first cousins (who have no west Clare roots) are my second cousins!
Matt was kept busy signing books while the audience enjoyed their glass of wine and Morgan Roughan, who has played a blinder on sound all week, sorted out some technical difficulties. Once again, there was almost a full house.
After Christine had launched the book, we were treated to another magnificent lecture by Matt, whose mastery of his subject is most impressive. Matt confirmed that the electoral divisions of the original Kilrush Poor Law Union coincided exactly with the 13 civil parishes of the Loop Head peninsula, a conclusion that it took me over a year to reach despite exhaustive searches in online and published sources. When we launched Kilrush & District Historical Society, Kay Clancy tried to design a logo based on the map of the Poor Law Union, so we'll have to ask Matt if we can use his map as the basis of a proper logo.
Kilrush should be grateful that the transfer of Matt's home townland of Knockanalban (Mount Scott) to Ennistimon Union when the boundaries were redrawn in 1850 didn't divert his interest to the latter union.
There were some good questions for Matt after the lecture, none more so than Brian Comerford's, pointing out the parallels between the introduction of a new property tax at the behest of a distant administration in 1847 and events in the Ireland of today!
I am looking forward to reading the new book in detail next week.
There were lots of people to talk to after the lecture, ranging from Rita McCarthy, who presented me with a CD of readings of the Illustrated London News articles of 1849/50 produced by Raidió Corca Baiscinn, to Áine Hensey of Raidió na Gaeltachta, another facebook friend whom I had yet to meet in the flesh. Congella McGuire and I had also to check the postcards of the Illustrated London News sketches which the County Council has produced, first as invitations to the Commemoration, and now as souvenirs of it. The present sets of 16 are inadvertently missing `Judy O'Donnel's habitation under the bridge at Doonbeg', due to be our first stop on Thursday, and `Searching for potatoes in a stubble field', but I e-mailed off replacement digital versions of these images to David Garrihy, the very helpful printer in Council HQ, and there will be full sets of all 18 sketches available by Thursday.
I hadn't been able to contact Noel O'Shea earlier in the day, but I got him on the phone when the crowd eventually dispersed, and we had a long and productive discussion about plans for Thursday's bus tour. Noel can guarantee us two buses with a total of 86 seats and 80 people have already booked places, so latecomers may have to follow us by car!
Paul and I had various other loose ends to deal with before we could leave the Teach Ceoil. We managed to set off the alarm while trying to set it, not realising that all internal doors have to be closed before it is set! After another nice day, a deluge of biblical proportions had begun during Matt's lecture and continued as I drove back to base.
I am obviously tired, as after leaving Paul's home I turned the wrong way out of his gate and only realised my mistake when I noticed grass growing up through the middle of the road! Nothing a quick U-turn in the next gate couldn't fix.
Tuesday, 7 May 2013
BEHIND THE SCENES KILRUSH'S FAMINE COMMEMORATION DAY 4 MAY 6 2013
I've been getting progressively more efficient at sending these posts on to Chris - 1:59am, 1:19am and 1:12am respectively on the first three days. Unfortunately Vodafone Mobile Broadband has been giving lots of intermittent "Unable to resolve the server's DNS address" errors since I turned on my laptop this evening, which has made things very frustrating and held up this instalment.
I normally need eight hours sleep but was wide awake and raring to go again soon after 7am this morning. My hosts were due to leave at 9:30am for a long-planned trip to Belfast - planned long before the date of the National Famine Commemoration was confirmed back around the start of February. After the necessary training in setting and unsetting the alarm and other domestic duties, I was left in my house-sitting role.
I decided to do a quick check of e-mails and, not for the first time, was distracted by a genealogy query (McDonnell of Moyne) and suddenly found myself behind schedule.
Today was due to be Michael O'Connell's day in the sun. The colour of his face this evening confirms that it turned out to be just that. My own face is a similar colour. Michael and I just didn't have time to do anything about the last minute instructions on facebook this morning to bring sun screen, and water, and food. These instructions came from Michael himself.
While I may have been the first to mention the words "Kilrush" and "National Famine Commemoration" in the same sentence back in January 2012, that sentence was inspired in large part by Michael's documentary for Raidió Corca Baiscinn:
http://www.mixcloud.com/moc/cammoge-ferry-disaster-1849/
Michael has been preparing for today since he set up The Cammoge Ferry Disaster Memorial facebook page on 22 February 2012.
I was due at Moyarta Cemetery near Carrigaholt for the 11:30am Remembrance Ceremony and wreath laying at the Famine Mass Grave, with Fr. Michael Casey and Fr. Patrick Culligan, but I had two stops to make en route. The first was at Doonbeg bridge to ask Mary Ryan's permission to bring a bus load or two of people through her field on Thursday to view the habitation under the bridge. Mary wasn't at home, so I left her a scribbled note, and she phoned back later (in the middle of a solemn wreath-laying ceremony when I had to cut her off) but we eventually spoke and she confirmed that there would be no problem.
The second stop was with Paddy Murray who continues to make great progress on the sculpture due to be unveiled on Sunday. We took some measurements and made some decisions on the curtains to be made up for the unveiling ceremony. I then phoned my friend Tony Browne who specialises in curtains for awkward-shaped sculptures, suits for greyhounds and other strange tailoring jobs and confirmed that he is available to help if required.
Michael O'Connell was already giving orders to his troops in Moyarta and Rene Franklin was deputed to phone me and see where I had gone with the PA system. I was there a couple of minutes later. It was great to see that Paul O'Brien had managed to source a video camera to capture the events for posterity in the absence of our normal cameramen, both otherwise engaged today.
There was a turnout of about 80 people for the brief prayer service at the famine plot conducted by Fr. Michael Casey, parish priest of Moyarta and Kilballyowen, and his assistant and predecessor Fr. Pat Culligan, who has a great interest in Famine history and also made a short speech. He was clearly sorry that he wasn't fit to join the walk, but stood on his doorstep blessing the walkers as they passed. I heard later that he recently had a little accident in his brand new 131-reg. car.
In the absence of the Mayor of Kilrush who was at work, her mother Margaret Walsh laid a wreath at the famine cross. We left without learning any more about the mysterious Susan Murray who erected the cross with a slightly inaccurate inscription on the famine plot.
About 50 of those present set off on foot on the 13km walk to Cammoge Point in memory of the 41 people drowned in the ferry disaster there on 12 December 1849 after they were refused admission to Kilrush Workhouse. This walk re-enacted the daily journey taken by the people of West Clare to Kilrush Workhouse, going through Moyarta, Kilcrona, Lisheencrony, Doonaha, Querrin, Shanganah, Newtown East and Clarefield to Cammoge Point. People came and went all the way from Moyarta to the final destination at the Workhouse site in Kilrush, but a few stalwarts completed the whole journey on foot. For example, Pauline Barry was picked up by her brother Patrick near Querrin for a meeting to organise Friday's ceremony in Kilfearagh, but she joined us again after the meeting at the Carnacalla side.
I drove the first couple of hundred yards to find a safer parking spot than where I had originally abandoned my car, and also got a lift from Mary Hamilton for a few hundred yards later in the day after being sidetracked, but walked the rest of the way, definitely the most I have ever walked in a single day. The sun was coming out so I decided to shed all unnecessary loads. Dolores Hamill was deputed to bring the spare battery for the portable speaker by car to Cammoge; Fr. Casey was deputed to bring the Trocaire collection bucket, and I dumped the scarf and coat which had been essential for the last few days in my car and replaced them with a light high-vis. jacket. The portable speaker was quite enough to carry for the day!
Michael, like a general addressing his troops before marching into battle, instructed that there was to be no power-walking and that everyone would go at his pace, which was even faster than my idea of power-walking.
Michael Nolan told me of his discussion with a heart specialist after a scan some years ago. The doctor asked if he took any exercise and Michael assured him that he took a brisk half hour walk every day. `There's not much sign of it on this scan' was the put-down reply! He has upped his regime since and left me wondering if I am deluding myself about the effectiveness of the walking that I do.
There were lots of familiar faces and new ones among the walkers. Mary Chesser, one of my favourite cousins, introduced me to Máiréad McNamara, who came only as far as her home in Kilcrona, long enough for me to tell her that her distant cousin Terry Fitzgerald is over from Seattle for the Commemoration, but also to work on compiling the McNamara family tree.
I discovered that I had cousins in common with Martin Leyden, who came from Ennis. He told me that Susan Murray who erected the cross was mother of Jimmy Murray now living in Ennis, and has promised to put us in contact with Jimmy.
I also had things in common with another walker from Ennis,
Seónaidh Ní Shíomóin - we both left Dublin 10 years ago for cheaper house prices in Clare! Sincere apologies to Seónaidh and anyone else who, like her, was misled by a misunderstanding which resulted in the title of Críostóir MacCarthaigh's Saturday talk being wrongly changed last week on our website at
http://www.faminecommemoration2013.ie/node/2
Críostóir spoke about his original subject which appears in the printed programme.
There were brief pitstops in Doonaha and Querrin where Michael spoke about local history.
In horseracing parlance, Rene Franklin spread a plate between Doonaha and Querrin and needed to be re-shod. Randal Counihan was summoned by his wife from his home nearby with a spare pair of her socks for Rene.
There was a water stop at Coghlan's house in Newtown but it was really only of use to those with empty bottles that they could refill at the outside tap. The Coghlans' dog Bobby decided to join the walk and ran off on his own, but was eventually caught by Fiona Coghlan half-way to Cammoge. Lots of my Morrissey, Talty and Coghlan cousins who live nearby were at Cammoge for the ceremonies there.
I suddenly realised at this stage that I'd left the spare 9V battery for the microphone in my car, but luckily I was able to borrow a spare one from Noel O'Shea's house; it wasn't needed.
Michael was slightly put out that those on the Clare Pilgrim Way walk from St. Martin’s Well to Cill na gCailleach, the burial site of the Cammoge Ferry drowning victims, had gone ahead to Cammoge Point, but the result was that I've never had so many cameras pointed at me as when Michael with the microphone and myself with the portable speaker led the walkers onto the shore at Cammoge. Pat Talty had arranged for his wife's young nephews Colm, Liam and Seán Browne to greet us with traditional music on whistle, concertina and accordion.
Kay Clancy who has been mothering Paul O'Brien for a long time has now started to mother me and came to my rescue by appearing with a sandwich and a bottle of water which I eventually devoured when I was able to put down camera and portable speaker!
Veteran broadcaster Donncha Ó Dulaing of RTÉ came all the way from Dublin to welcome the walkers on arrival at Cammoge and to hear P J Murrihy sing the West Clare Famine Song to which he has given lots of airplay on his Saturday night radio show Fáilte Isteach. It took the crowd baying for P J to sing to persuade Michael to stop barking orders about loading boats on the shore-line and give P J the microphone. For once Assumpta Kennedy escaped being asked to sing.
There was a Remembrance Ceremony, welcome address, memorial unveiling and blessing by Fr Michael Casey and an address by veteran historian Paddy Nolan whose 2006 article on the Cammoge disaster in The Other Clare first brought the story to the attention of a wider audience. Paddy explained the importance of Cammoge in history from St. Senan to Cromwell to Napoleon to the Famine.
Donncha and Paddy are mere young lads compared to Matthew Bermingham, who was among the special ones allowed to drive all the way down to Cammoge. Daddy Bermingham, as he is better known to his facebook fans, will turn 96 at the end of this month:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Daddy-Bermingham-Matthew/139997086073165
I finally got to meet sisters Terry Fitzgerald and Laura Danielson from Washington State at Cammoge - but their cousin Michael O'Connell didn't give us much chance to chat!
The next stage of the journey involved crossing Poulnasherry Bay to Carnacalla in currachs with the West Clare Currach Club. The idea was to confine the numbers crossing by water to 45; it was only today that I realised the significance of that number: it was the number of people aboard the ferry that capsized in 1849.
Michael and myself had to share a currach as, narrow as the mouth of Poulnasherry Bay is, it is wider than the range of the PA system and Michael had to be on the same side of the water as the portable speaker and the troops he wished to address. I hadn't bargained for the mischievous crew of another currach crossing back for two more passengers, who wanted to splash Michael with their oars, so I got caught in the crossfire. In this photo of us setting off, Michael in his personal lifejacket wielding the microphone reminds me more of a bishop in a stole sprinkling holy water over his congregation than of a general barking orders to his troops:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=638606429488403&set=a.638605999488446.1073741858.583099478372432
I didn't get to see or talk to the two rowers behind me, so many thanks to Ray O'Leary and Kerryn Power.
Ned Griffin also brought a few people across in his boat. Maura Egan and Congella McGuire were among those who managed to cross the water in contravention of Michael's rule that only those who had walked from Moyarta would be brought across and everyone else would have to go the long way round by bus.
Michael Burke sang a new song which he had composed especially for the occasion when all had arrived at Carnacalla.
Pat Madigan invited me into his house in Carnacalla so that he could take down the original pencil sketch of his ancestor Thomas `The Poet' Madigan from the attic and allow me to photograph it. After that brief interlude, his cousin Mary Hamilton, who happened to be driving past, picked me up and drove me a few hundred yards to catch up with the main body of walkers.
The walk continued by the Ferry Road from Carnacalla via Leadmore to Pound Street and on up to the Old Kilrush Creamery, now becoming known as Joe Whelan's Museum, beside the Workhouse site in Kilrush, where we arrived about 15 minutes before the scheduled time of 5.30pm. Michael looked a little incongrous still wearing his lifejacket standing in the middle of the N67 holding up the traffic to allow the walkers to cross.
At this stage, Mairead O'Brien took over the microphone from Michael. A plaque on the surviving front wall of the Workhouse was unveiled by Joe Whelan and Pat Burke who had erected it last night, and a wreath was laid beneath it by two of the young Browne musicians. All present admired the eviction scene painted on the gable wall of Joe Whelan's new museum, which Mark Kelly finished yesterday.
Those of us who had walked from Moyarta were excused from the guided walking tour with Maura Harvey from Paupers’ Quay to the former site of Kilrush House at Vandeleur Walled Gardens via Cappa Pier, Kilrush.
Noel O'Shea was on hand to transport people back by bus to their cars, with about ten of us going back to Carrigaholt. Noel is very laid back about Thursday's bus tour, but Paul and myself would like to have tied down the precise route and the maximum number travelling by now!
On a glorious sunny evening with a high tide, I was sorely tempted to soothe my aching feet in the Shannon before driving off from Carrigaholt, but I had to return to Kilrush for the next event. I drove via Querrin again and the journey was a lot quicker this time!
Back in Kilrush, Dolores Hamill invited me round for a quick dinner when I phoned to ask for my battery back for recharging.
There were a few nervous moments at the Teach Ceoil where we had another full house and no speaker. We eventually found someone with a mobile phone number for Ciarán Ó Murchadha and he confirmed that he was on his way. He blamed speed camera vans at Lissycasey for slowing down the traffic and said it was the first time he had ever been late for a lecture, but rumours to the contrary had been floating around earlier.
After all our trouble setting up screen, laptop and projector in case he wanted them, Ciarán didn't need any of them. He gave a brilliant performance without them and had his audience all spellbound for well over an hour listening to his lecture entitled `Captain A.E. Kennedy in Kilrush Union 1847-1850'. It clearly meant a lot to him to be giving the lecture in the building where Captain Kennedy attended church every Sunday during his stay in Kilrush. He painted a picture of a man who underwent an abrupt conversion from friend of the landlords to friend of the poor about five months after his arrival in Kilrush.
Ciarán said that Captain Kennedy was absent from folklore and published history until Ignatius Murphy's article in The Other Clare in 1979, but was delighted to hear from Brian Comerford that his group had written an unpublished thesis about Kennedy earlier in the 1970s - a thesis from which Brian's dramatic works performed last night emerged a few years later.
Ciarán is seeking information on various topics from the people of Kilrush for his next book, which will be specifically on the Famine in West Clare. I can't wait for its publication. Ciarán recently signed the book contract with a major international publisher. I can't remember which one!
One subject of Ciarán's interest is the Michael Roughan who was head of the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Kilrush during the Famine. I think there might have been a relative of Michael Roughan in the audience but couldn't find her after the lecture. I will make the necessary introductions at the first opportunity.
Among those to sign up this evening for Thursday's bus tour, which is now almost fully boooked, was Anne Comerford née McNamara. I told her that her long-lost cousin Terry Fitzgerald is looking for her, but it turned out that the connection is not as distant as Terry and I thought - Terry's mother stood as godmother for Anne shortly before she emigrated.
I dropped Paul home on my way back to Doonmore.
Now that I have the house to myself, I've unpacked my car in the hope of sorting out all my famine files which have fallen into quite a state of disarray of late.
I took 68 photographs today, and would have taken more if I wasn't on duty as speaker carrier and struggling to go the pace. I like to add captions and name tags offline before uploading photos, so I'll leave Chris to select from those already uploaded by others to illustrate this blog.
Editor's Note: Apologies for the later posting...Paddy decided to hide in my spam file for a well earned rest, then I had an appointment I couldn't postpone, but I'm sure you'll agree this was well worth waiting for.
I normally need eight hours sleep but was wide awake and raring to go again soon after 7am this morning. My hosts were due to leave at 9:30am for a long-planned trip to Belfast - planned long before the date of the National Famine Commemoration was confirmed back around the start of February. After the necessary training in setting and unsetting the alarm and other domestic duties, I was left in my house-sitting role.
I decided to do a quick check of e-mails and, not for the first time, was distracted by a genealogy query (McDonnell of Moyne) and suddenly found myself behind schedule.
Today was due to be Michael O'Connell's day in the sun. The colour of his face this evening confirms that it turned out to be just that. My own face is a similar colour. Michael and I just didn't have time to do anything about the last minute instructions on facebook this morning to bring sun screen, and water, and food. These instructions came from Michael himself.
While I may have been the first to mention the words "Kilrush" and "National Famine Commemoration" in the same sentence back in January 2012, that sentence was inspired in large part by Michael's documentary for Raidió Corca Baiscinn:
http://www.mixcloud.com/moc/cammoge-ferry-disaster-1849/
Michael has been preparing for today since he set up The Cammoge Ferry Disaster Memorial facebook page on 22 February 2012.
I was due at Moyarta Cemetery near Carrigaholt for the 11:30am Remembrance Ceremony and wreath laying at the Famine Mass Grave, with Fr. Michael Casey and Fr. Patrick Culligan, but I had two stops to make en route. The first was at Doonbeg bridge to ask Mary Ryan's permission to bring a bus load or two of people through her field on Thursday to view the habitation under the bridge. Mary wasn't at home, so I left her a scribbled note, and she phoned back later (in the middle of a solemn wreath-laying ceremony when I had to cut her off) but we eventually spoke and she confirmed that there would be no problem.
The second stop was with Paddy Murray who continues to make great progress on the sculpture due to be unveiled on Sunday. We took some measurements and made some decisions on the curtains to be made up for the unveiling ceremony. I then phoned my friend Tony Browne who specialises in curtains for awkward-shaped sculptures, suits for greyhounds and other strange tailoring jobs and confirmed that he is available to help if required.
Michael O'Connell was already giving orders to his troops in Moyarta and Rene Franklin was deputed to phone me and see where I had gone with the PA system. I was there a couple of minutes later. It was great to see that Paul O'Brien had managed to source a video camera to capture the events for posterity in the absence of our normal cameramen, both otherwise engaged today.
There was a turnout of about 80 people for the brief prayer service at the famine plot conducted by Fr. Michael Casey, parish priest of Moyarta and Kilballyowen, and his assistant and predecessor Fr. Pat Culligan, who has a great interest in Famine history and also made a short speech. He was clearly sorry that he wasn't fit to join the walk, but stood on his doorstep blessing the walkers as they passed. I heard later that he recently had a little accident in his brand new 131-reg. car.
In the absence of the Mayor of Kilrush who was at work, her mother Margaret Walsh laid a wreath at the famine cross. We left without learning any more about the mysterious Susan Murray who erected the cross with a slightly inaccurate inscription on the famine plot.
About 50 of those present set off on foot on the 13km walk to Cammoge Point in memory of the 41 people drowned in the ferry disaster there on 12 December 1849 after they were refused admission to Kilrush Workhouse. This walk re-enacted the daily journey taken by the people of West Clare to Kilrush Workhouse, going through Moyarta, Kilcrona, Lisheencrony, Doonaha, Querrin, Shanganah, Newtown East and Clarefield to Cammoge Point. People came and went all the way from Moyarta to the final destination at the Workhouse site in Kilrush, but a few stalwarts completed the whole journey on foot. For example, Pauline Barry was picked up by her brother Patrick near Querrin for a meeting to organise Friday's ceremony in Kilfearagh, but she joined us again after the meeting at the Carnacalla side.
I drove the first couple of hundred yards to find a safer parking spot than where I had originally abandoned my car, and also got a lift from Mary Hamilton for a few hundred yards later in the day after being sidetracked, but walked the rest of the way, definitely the most I have ever walked in a single day. The sun was coming out so I decided to shed all unnecessary loads. Dolores Hamill was deputed to bring the spare battery for the portable speaker by car to Cammoge; Fr. Casey was deputed to bring the Trocaire collection bucket, and I dumped the scarf and coat which had been essential for the last few days in my car and replaced them with a light high-vis. jacket. The portable speaker was quite enough to carry for the day!
Michael, like a general addressing his troops before marching into battle, instructed that there was to be no power-walking and that everyone would go at his pace, which was even faster than my idea of power-walking.
Michael Nolan told me of his discussion with a heart specialist after a scan some years ago. The doctor asked if he took any exercise and Michael assured him that he took a brisk half hour walk every day. `There's not much sign of it on this scan' was the put-down reply! He has upped his regime since and left me wondering if I am deluding myself about the effectiveness of the walking that I do.
There were lots of familiar faces and new ones among the walkers. Mary Chesser, one of my favourite cousins, introduced me to Máiréad McNamara, who came only as far as her home in Kilcrona, long enough for me to tell her that her distant cousin Terry Fitzgerald is over from Seattle for the Commemoration, but also to work on compiling the McNamara family tree.
I discovered that I had cousins in common with Martin Leyden, who came from Ennis. He told me that Susan Murray who erected the cross was mother of Jimmy Murray now living in Ennis, and has promised to put us in contact with Jimmy.
I also had things in common with another walker from Ennis,
Seónaidh Ní Shíomóin - we both left Dublin 10 years ago for cheaper house prices in Clare! Sincere apologies to Seónaidh and anyone else who, like her, was misled by a misunderstanding which resulted in the title of Críostóir MacCarthaigh's Saturday talk being wrongly changed last week on our website at
http://www.faminecommemoration2013.ie/node/2
Críostóir spoke about his original subject which appears in the printed programme.
There were brief pitstops in Doonaha and Querrin where Michael spoke about local history.
In horseracing parlance, Rene Franklin spread a plate between Doonaha and Querrin and needed to be re-shod. Randal Counihan was summoned by his wife from his home nearby with a spare pair of her socks for Rene.
There was a water stop at Coghlan's house in Newtown but it was really only of use to those with empty bottles that they could refill at the outside tap. The Coghlans' dog Bobby decided to join the walk and ran off on his own, but was eventually caught by Fiona Coghlan half-way to Cammoge. Lots of my Morrissey, Talty and Coghlan cousins who live nearby were at Cammoge for the ceremonies there.
I suddenly realised at this stage that I'd left the spare 9V battery for the microphone in my car, but luckily I was able to borrow a spare one from Noel O'Shea's house; it wasn't needed.
Michael was slightly put out that those on the Clare Pilgrim Way walk from St. Martin’s Well to Cill na gCailleach, the burial site of the Cammoge Ferry drowning victims, had gone ahead to Cammoge Point, but the result was that I've never had so many cameras pointed at me as when Michael with the microphone and myself with the portable speaker led the walkers onto the shore at Cammoge. Pat Talty had arranged for his wife's young nephews Colm, Liam and Seán Browne to greet us with traditional music on whistle, concertina and accordion.
Kay Clancy who has been mothering Paul O'Brien for a long time has now started to mother me and came to my rescue by appearing with a sandwich and a bottle of water which I eventually devoured when I was able to put down camera and portable speaker!
Veteran broadcaster Donncha Ó Dulaing of RTÉ came all the way from Dublin to welcome the walkers on arrival at Cammoge and to hear P J Murrihy sing the West Clare Famine Song to which he has given lots of airplay on his Saturday night radio show Fáilte Isteach. It took the crowd baying for P J to sing to persuade Michael to stop barking orders about loading boats on the shore-line and give P J the microphone. For once Assumpta Kennedy escaped being asked to sing.
There was a Remembrance Ceremony, welcome address, memorial unveiling and blessing by Fr Michael Casey and an address by veteran historian Paddy Nolan whose 2006 article on the Cammoge disaster in The Other Clare first brought the story to the attention of a wider audience. Paddy explained the importance of Cammoge in history from St. Senan to Cromwell to Napoleon to the Famine.
Donncha and Paddy are mere young lads compared to Matthew Bermingham, who was among the special ones allowed to drive all the way down to Cammoge. Daddy Bermingham, as he is better known to his facebook fans, will turn 96 at the end of this month:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Daddy-Bermingham-Matthew/139997086073165
I finally got to meet sisters Terry Fitzgerald and Laura Danielson from Washington State at Cammoge - but their cousin Michael O'Connell didn't give us much chance to chat!
The next stage of the journey involved crossing Poulnasherry Bay to Carnacalla in currachs with the West Clare Currach Club. The idea was to confine the numbers crossing by water to 45; it was only today that I realised the significance of that number: it was the number of people aboard the ferry that capsized in 1849.
Michael and myself had to share a currach as, narrow as the mouth of Poulnasherry Bay is, it is wider than the range of the PA system and Michael had to be on the same side of the water as the portable speaker and the troops he wished to address. I hadn't bargained for the mischievous crew of another currach crossing back for two more passengers, who wanted to splash Michael with their oars, so I got caught in the crossfire. In this photo of us setting off, Michael in his personal lifejacket wielding the microphone reminds me more of a bishop in a stole sprinkling holy water over his congregation than of a general barking orders to his troops:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=638606429488403&set=a.638605999488446.1073741858.583099478372432
I didn't get to see or talk to the two rowers behind me, so many thanks to Ray O'Leary and Kerryn Power.
Ned Griffin also brought a few people across in his boat. Maura Egan and Congella McGuire were among those who managed to cross the water in contravention of Michael's rule that only those who had walked from Moyarta would be brought across and everyone else would have to go the long way round by bus.
Michael Burke sang a new song which he had composed especially for the occasion when all had arrived at Carnacalla.
Pat Madigan invited me into his house in Carnacalla so that he could take down the original pencil sketch of his ancestor Thomas `The Poet' Madigan from the attic and allow me to photograph it. After that brief interlude, his cousin Mary Hamilton, who happened to be driving past, picked me up and drove me a few hundred yards to catch up with the main body of walkers.
The walk continued by the Ferry Road from Carnacalla via Leadmore to Pound Street and on up to the Old Kilrush Creamery, now becoming known as Joe Whelan's Museum, beside the Workhouse site in Kilrush, where we arrived about 15 minutes before the scheduled time of 5.30pm. Michael looked a little incongrous still wearing his lifejacket standing in the middle of the N67 holding up the traffic to allow the walkers to cross.
At this stage, Mairead O'Brien took over the microphone from Michael. A plaque on the surviving front wall of the Workhouse was unveiled by Joe Whelan and Pat Burke who had erected it last night, and a wreath was laid beneath it by two of the young Browne musicians. All present admired the eviction scene painted on the gable wall of Joe Whelan's new museum, which Mark Kelly finished yesterday.
Sean O'Brien, Josephine Glynn, Joe Whelan
Those of us who had walked from Moyarta were excused from the guided walking tour with Maura Harvey from Paupers’ Quay to the former site of Kilrush House at Vandeleur Walled Gardens via Cappa Pier, Kilrush.
Noel O'Shea was on hand to transport people back by bus to their cars, with about ten of us going back to Carrigaholt. Noel is very laid back about Thursday's bus tour, but Paul and myself would like to have tied down the precise route and the maximum number travelling by now!
On a glorious sunny evening with a high tide, I was sorely tempted to soothe my aching feet in the Shannon before driving off from Carrigaholt, but I had to return to Kilrush for the next event. I drove via Querrin again and the journey was a lot quicker this time!
Back in Kilrush, Dolores Hamill invited me round for a quick dinner when I phoned to ask for my battery back for recharging.
There were a few nervous moments at the Teach Ceoil where we had another full house and no speaker. We eventually found someone with a mobile phone number for Ciarán Ó Murchadha and he confirmed that he was on his way. He blamed speed camera vans at Lissycasey for slowing down the traffic and said it was the first time he had ever been late for a lecture, but rumours to the contrary had been floating around earlier.
After all our trouble setting up screen, laptop and projector in case he wanted them, Ciarán didn't need any of them. He gave a brilliant performance without them and had his audience all spellbound for well over an hour listening to his lecture entitled `Captain A.E. Kennedy in Kilrush Union 1847-1850'. It clearly meant a lot to him to be giving the lecture in the building where Captain Kennedy attended church every Sunday during his stay in Kilrush. He painted a picture of a man who underwent an abrupt conversion from friend of the landlords to friend of the poor about five months after his arrival in Kilrush.
Ciarán said that Captain Kennedy was absent from folklore and published history until Ignatius Murphy's article in The Other Clare in 1979, but was delighted to hear from Brian Comerford that his group had written an unpublished thesis about Kennedy earlier in the 1970s - a thesis from which Brian's dramatic works performed last night emerged a few years later.
Ciarán is seeking information on various topics from the people of Kilrush for his next book, which will be specifically on the Famine in West Clare. I can't wait for its publication. Ciarán recently signed the book contract with a major international publisher. I can't remember which one!
One subject of Ciarán's interest is the Michael Roughan who was head of the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Kilrush during the Famine. I think there might have been a relative of Michael Roughan in the audience but couldn't find her after the lecture. I will make the necessary introductions at the first opportunity.
Among those to sign up this evening for Thursday's bus tour, which is now almost fully boooked, was Anne Comerford née McNamara. I told her that her long-lost cousin Terry Fitzgerald is looking for her, but it turned out that the connection is not as distant as Terry and I thought - Terry's mother stood as godmother for Anne shortly before she emigrated.
I dropped Paul home on my way back to Doonmore.
Now that I have the house to myself, I've unpacked my car in the hope of sorting out all my famine files which have fallen into quite a state of disarray of late.
I took 68 photographs today, and would have taken more if I wasn't on duty as speaker carrier and struggling to go the pace. I like to add captions and name tags offline before uploading photos, so I'll leave Chris to select from those already uploaded by others to illustrate this blog.
Editor's Note: Apologies for the later posting...Paddy decided to hide in my spam file for a well earned rest, then I had an appointment I couldn't postpone, but I'm sure you'll agree this was well worth waiting for.
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