Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Journey to Connaught, April 1709 (Author: Samuel Molyneux)

entry 6

Monday, 19th— 20At Killconnell we saw the famous old Abby of Franciscans, where was little of antiquity or remarkable. Their churchyard is surrounded by a wall of dead men's sckulls and bones21, pil'd very orderly, with their faces outwards, clear round against the wall to the length of 88 foot, about 4 high, and 5 f. 4 in. broad, so that there may be possibly here to the number of 50000 sckulls: within they shew you Lord Gallway's and other great men's heads kill'd at Aghrim. This Abby was in repair, and inhabited by Fryers, in K. James' time, so that some of the woodwork, the wainscot, and ordinary painting yet remains; nay I am told 2 of ye Fryers are yet alive, and live, tho' blind with age, on ye charity of the neighbouring papists, in a poor cabin, in a very small island, which they shew'd me, not ½ mile from Killconell, in a bog: they employ one to begg for them22, and by that means subsist near their old habitation.

Having gotton out of this miserable village, we rid 4 hours thro' a fine champain country; no enclosures, generally good land, yet pretty good roads. We pass'd thro Killtollogh23, and came to ye ancient Burrow of Athenree24: it is all wall'd, and makes, with its old round

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towers on ye walls and other old buildings within, a very venerable appearance and pretty prospect, it being built on green fields, and not a house without the walls: it seems to have been of old a well inhabited and thriving town, on account of ye large pav'd streets and many ruin'd houses which remain; it has nothing now but cabins in it, and those so few they have room for all ye gardens too within ye walls, which I am told enclose more than Dublin walls, and at least 33 acres. Here we met Sr T. Montgomery25, who seeing us gaping strangers, invited us in to look at his improvements, which are pretty and whimsicall enough: part of his house is ye wing of an old Abby repair'd, which makes an odd and convenient house. He has lately set up here a napping and a tucking mill, and designs a weaving manufactory, the inhabitants of the town being, as he tells me, allmost all weavers and cottoners.

As you go out of town to Gallway you meet with a pretty new improvement of Mr. Shaw's. From hence you travell thro' a barren gravelly soyl to Gallway in 4 hours. As you draw near Gallway the country grows extreamly stony, and in many places one may observe naturall cawseys of stones, which, tho' not so regularly form'd as ye Gyants' Cawsey in ye county of Antrim, are yet so like one another, all consisting of stones full of fissures and cracks, and lying in great layers or strata one over another, the fissures paralell to the horison, that one that sees 'em can't but rank 'em among regular form'd stones,

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which a description or even a draught of 'em could scarce be exact enough to make one think. There are many of these cawseys on each hand the road: one only I observ'd in which ye rimae or cracks of ye stone directed upwards. All along, as we travell'd thro' ye county of Gallway, I observ'd a very great number of heaps of stones rais'd into a Pyramid26, some with lime, generally without, along the road, in memory, as I am told of burialls that have pass'd that way. Their enclosures of land are here odd enough, being walls of single stones, so pil'd up without mortar that as you pass by you may see thro', and they stand so ticklish, the beasts, that know the way of them, will not come near 'em for fear of throwing 'em down on themselves, so that they serve as well as stronger. I observ'd on ye road many figur'd stones here and there, like ye one describ'd page 7th [vide p. 165], and in ye pavement of a street in Athenree a stone consisting of pillars, with appearance of joynts, like ye Gyants' Cawsey, of all numbers of sides as that too; nay, indeed, the generality of ye stones that ly at the sides of the way between Athenree and Gallway have something very different from common stones in their figure, which is much more scraggy than usuall, and full of holes: their surfaces are very smooth and their colour black, so that in every thing they look like stones to be seen on the sea shore, much excavated and beaten by ye waves. This resemblance of these stones, with the aforemention'd cawseys, the like of which are often seen also among rocks at the sea shore, with the universall stonyness of ye country, has sometimes almost tempted me to think this place was once ye bottom of ye sea: however, 'tis certain ye stones here are not like those of other countrys.

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