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The Aran Isles: or, A report of the excursion of the Ethnological section of the British association from Dublin to the western islands of Aran, in September, 1857 (Author: Martin Haverty)

chapter 2

HISTORY OF ARAN

Every one is familiar with the form, on the map, of the three south islands of Aran, which run in a N.W. and S.E. direction across the mouth of Galway Bay, between Connemara on the north-west, and the county of Clare on the south-east. They are supposed to have been, at some stage of the world's history, connected with each other, and with the mainland on either side; and the Irish name for the Bay of GalwayLoch Lurgan — would seem to support that hypothesis; but, as several arms of the sea around the Irish coast are called loughs, as Lough Swilly, Lough Foyle, Belfast Lough, Lough Strangford, Lough Goramon (Wexford Haven), &c., there is no reason to think that Lough Lurgan, rather than any of the others, was ever a body of fresh water. It


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is stated in the old chronicles to have been one of the two lakes which Partholan's colony found in Ireland on arriving here 200 years after the Flood. The largest of the three islands is probably the only one to which the name of Aran was originally applied; supposing the derivation of the name suggested by an ancient writer, Augustin Magraiden, to be the true one, namely, that Ara signifies a ‘a kidney’ in Irish, such being the shape of the large island. The derivation is a fanciful one, but no better has yet been discovered by Irish scholars. The names of the three islands in Irish are — Ara Mor, or Great Aran; Inis Maan, or Middle Island; and Inisheer, or Eastern Island. The nearest point of the large island is about 28 miles from the quays of Galway. The large island is 9 miles long; the middle one 3 miles; and the smallest 2 ½ miles. They are all composed of carboniferous limestone, with some peculiarities of formation which we shall have occasion hereafter to notice. At the last Census they contained 3333 inhabitants, and out of a total area of 11,288 acres which they contain, little more than 700 are productive.

The earliest reference to the pre-Christian history of Aran is to be found in the accounts of the battle of Moyturey, in which the Firbolgs, having been defeated by the Tuatha-de-Dananns, were driven for refuge into Aran, and other islands on the Irish coast, as well as into the western islands of Scotland. It seems doubtful whether the Aran mentioned on that occasion be the island of the same name on the coast of Donegal, or those in the Bay of Galway; although the fact that the route took place in the direction of Sligo, and that some of the Firbolgs certainly retired into the Scottish islands, renders the former the more probable supposition. Still, Dr. O'Donovan asserts that there is no positive authority on the subject, and that it is extremely probable that the Firbolgs did retire into our southern Aran Isles after their defeat on the occasion in question, and that some of the military remains now visible on the island must be attributed even to that period — namely, to a time considerably more than a thousand years before the birth of Christ. If, however, there be any doubt on this point, there is none whatever as to the second period at which we find the Firbolgs mentioned in connexion with these islands; and that is about the first century of the


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Christian era, when Ængus, Conchovar,2 and Mil, the three sons of Uamore, with their numerous sept, being driven from the islands of Scotland by the Crithnians or Picts, came into Ireland, the country of their ancestors, and settled for a while in Leinster; but being obliged to relinquish the land they held there, owing to the exorbitant rent exacted for it by Cairbre, the King of Tara, they crossed the Shannon into Connaught, where a great part of the population was still composed of their own ancient race, and where they were well received by the celebrated Queen Maeve, who granted to them the Islands of Aran. Here they immediately fortified themselves in great stone duns, that must at that time have been impregnable, and the remains of which are objects of our curiosity and wonder at the present day. The names of the three brothers are still preserved in connexion with the topography of the Islands. The ancient fort on the great island, of which our early antiquaries had some imperfect knowledge, and which occupies the most interesting position on the brow of the loftiest precipice of all the islands, being called Dun Ængus; the great fort of the middle island, superior in strength and preservation to the former, bearing the name of Dun Connor, or Conchovar; and the name of Mil being associated with the low strand of Port Murvey, which forms the hollow or indentation of the ‘Kidney,’ and was formerly known as Muirveagh Mil, or the Sea-Plain of Mil. These particulars are mentioned in O'Flaherty's Iar-Connaught and Ogygia; and more in detail in an Irish manuscript tract on the Firbolgs, by Mac Firbis, who refers to much older authorities on the subject.

We now arrive at a period of the history of Aran possessing an interest of a different kind, but also full of attraction for the antiquary, namely, that of the introduction of Christianity, and the foundation of the first monastic institution there by St. Endeus, in the sixth century. This holy personage, whose name is written indifferently Endeus, or Enda, in the old Latin Lives of the Saints, and is pronounced Eaney, or Ena (with the Spanish liquid ñ), in the spoken Irish, was of the royal house of Oriel, a


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territory which included the present counties of Louth, Armagh, and Monaghan. He was converted by his sister, St. Fanchea, a nun, and repaired for religious education to Italy, where he became the founder or head of a large monastery; and, returning to Ireland after many years, with a numerous body of his monks, he obtained, at the solicitation of St. Ailbe, the first Bishop of Cashel, from Aengus, the first Christian King of Munster, the Aran Island, which would thus appear to have passed from the jurisdiction of the kings of Connaught to that of the kings of Munster since the days of Maeve. St. Endeus found Aran occupied by a few Pagans, out of Corcomroe, in Clare, who were probably of the Firbolg race, as Professor Curry says that a sept of the Firbolgs can be traced for a long time in that part of Thomond.3 The Pagans fled in their curraghs, without waiting to hear the word of God; and the Saint, in process of time, founded no fewer than ten religious establishments in the island.4 Ara Mor soon became celebrated among all the anchorites of western Europe, and was divided into two parishes, over the eastern one of which St. Endeus himself presided, while the other was governed by the most eminent of his disciples, St. Brecanus, or Brecan (pronounced Breccaun), who was the son of Eochy-Ball-Dearg, Prince of Thomond, and was the founder of the old diocese of Ardbraccan in Meath. The names of several other holy persons are also preserved in connexion with the religious antiquities of the island, as St. Benan, or Benignus, St. Cronan, St. Caradoc, a Briton; St. Mac Duagh, St. Mac Longius, St. Esserninus or Nehemias, St. Brendan of Clonfert, the famous navigator, who visited St. Endeus in one of his great Atlantic voyages, and started from Aran on his supposed voyage of discovery to America; St. Kiaran of Clonmacnois, SS. Fursey, Brendan of Birr, Conal, and Berchann, who are believed to have been the holy persons after whom one of the churches was called Tempull an Cheathruir Aluin, or the Church of the Four Beautiful Saints, and several others. In

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fact, Aran became a great school of asceticism and sanctity, where many hundreds of holy men from other parts of Ireland, and from foreign countries, constantly resorted to study the sacred Scriptures, and to learn and practise the rigid austerities of a hermit's life. An ancient writer states, that in one small cemetery here the bodies of 120 saints repose, and that ‘there are more saints buried in Aran than are known to any but God alone.’ In fact, relics, as sacred as those which the Catholic pilgrim travels to venerate in other countries, here lie neglected and forgotten under moss and brambles on our own deserted shores.

Giraldus Cambrensis had heard some strange stories about Aran, and inserted them in that medley of absurdities and calumnies which he called the Topography of Ireland. About his time (the thirteenth century) we find that these islands were in the possession of the O'Briens of Tromra, in Thomond; and in subsequent ages they were a source of frequent warfare between that sept and the O'Flaherties of West Connaught. Ultimately, in the reign of Elizabeth, Sir Murrough O'Flaherty succeeded in expelling the O'Briens, and gaining possession of the Great Island; but the Queen declared both parties traitors, and seized Aran as her own.

About 1645, when Colgan was editing at Louvain, in his Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae, the life of St. Endeus, from a manuscript compiled by Augustin Magraidin, in the fourteenth century, from some authority which appears to have been as old as the days of Paganism, he obtained from Dr. Malachy O'Kealy, Archbishop of Tuam, a list of all the principal churches in that archdiocese, from which he extracted the names of those then to be found in the Aran Islands. From that list it appears that there were then thirteen churches in the Great Island, two in the Middle Island, and three in Inisheer; and as these are said to have been the ‘principal’ churches, it is probable that there were others of lesser note, or which had then been suffered to go into decay. Not many years after the compilation of that list, the work of destroying the monasteries of Aran — commenced, no doubt, some time before — was carried into complete effect; and Cromwell's soldiers, being in occupation of the island, demolished the great parish church of St. Endeus, with others which stood near it, for the purpose of using the materials to rebuild and extend the fort or


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citadel of Arkin, the possession of which gave them the command of the entrance to Galway Bay. This fort was considered to be of so much importance in 1585, that all the patents for land in Iar-Connaught were granted to be held as ‘of the Queen's manor or castle of Arkyne’; and it was a formidable obstruction to the trade of Galway, whenever that town did not stand well in the estimation of the English garrison in Aran.

From even this brief outline of the history of Aran the reader will be enabled to form some idea of what the antiquary may expect to find upon its almost undisturbed surface, and of the different kinds of feeling with which different classes of tourists may visit its shores — whether as religious pilgrims, who would almost kiss the rocks where so much sanctity has dwelt, or as enthusiastic lovers of antiquity, in search of pre-historic monuments and cyclopean churches — whether, in fact, they come to visit Aran of the Firbolgs or Aran of the Saints.