The first decisive evidence of human habitation in Connemara dates back to about 7,000 years ago, when small bands of late Mesolithic hunter-gatherers seem to have arrived. They followed migrating herds of animals, fish and fowl, along the river valleys and coastlines.
The southern half of Connemara remains largely Irish speaking to this day. This is probably the most important element of Connemara’s heritage. Its continuing survival against the odds is perhaps the area’s greatest contribution to Ireland’s and Europe’s cultural heritage.
Connemara in the 18th century was still considered by the rest of the country as a wild, strange and dangerous place where ancient habits and customs held sway, as indeed it was.
The village of Cleggan (North-West Connemara) gave its name to an infamous sea disaster. On the night of 22nd October 1927, a vicious and powerful storm ripped through the combined fishing fleets of Cleggan and Inishbofin and in the process drowned 26 fishermen, many of whose bodies were never found.
Upland Blanket Bog dominates the landscape of much of Connemara. This spreads to the very summits of the Twelve Bens and the Maumturk Mountains. The Blanket Bogs are, in a very real sense, Ireland’s rainforests. They not only absorb water and release it slowly throughout the year, in the process feeding streams for spawning countless salmon and trout, but also contain a multitude of rare and fascinating species of wildlife. These include several intriguing species of carnivorous plants. There is still a vast amount to learn about the complexities of the bogs and their role in maintaining the local ecology.
The annual pilgrimage to Mám Éan has been revived in the last 20 years, having been closed down in the early 20th century because of the heavy drinking, carousing and occasional fighting that went hand in hand with the day. It has, however, been transformed into a pious, restrained affair, far from its pagan roots.
In the early part of the 20th century Clifden was put firmly on the world’s communication stage by a ground-breaking event: the building of the Marconi Telegraph Station in Derrygimlagh townland three miles south of Clifden in the midst of a massive stretch of Roundstone Bog. Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian pioneer of wireless telegraph, commissioned the station; it no longer stands today.
In 795 A.D. the first Viking longships raided the Irish coast. In the very first year of attacks, raiders sacked the monasteries at Inismurray and Inishbofin. Throughout the 9th and 10th centuries the islands were easy prey for marauding Viking fleets.
Famous 19th century characters about the town of Clifden included Cailleach An Chlocháin (the witch of Clifden), a powerful and feared woman who had the power of the curse and the cure. She was part of a common Irish rural pattern, perhaps a survivor of the earlier Irish traditions, and people flocked to her from all over the west. Another extraordinary local man was John Reilly who, together with a group of Catholic soldiers, deserted the American Army and commanded a new grouping, the San Patricios, that fought with their coreligionists, the Mexicans during the Mexican / American war of 1846-48. For many this decision was to cost them their lives when the American Army caught up with them.
Killary Harbour, twelve miles long, is Ireland’s only fjord, scoured out by the westward movement of a mile-deep body of ice over 20,000 years ago, and is ringed by mountains. Mweelrea lies to the northwest and Ben Gorm to the northeast. The eastern end is framed by Magairli an Diabhail, the Devil’s Testicles, which were renamed the Devil’s Mother on 19th century maps to save the blushes of Victorian map-makers. Between Magairli on Diabhail and the great horse-shoe of Leenaun Hill is the beautifully sited village of Leenaun. Dolphins are often seen in the fjord, following the migrating salmon in spring and early summer, as is the elusive otter. Near the mouth of the harbour is a small hostel, which was once the home of Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of Europe’s most influential philosophers.
Maum Valley, the scene of a famous ambush by the IRA during the War of Independence, is dominated by the Maumturk Mountains which take their name from the northern-most of the three high passes that link the Maum and Inagh Valleys: Mám Éan, Mám Ochoige and Mámturc.
Tourism provided a steady source of income for some and the B & B became virtually omnipresent outside every town and village but the real turn-around in the areas fortunes only arrived in the 1990s. Rising on the back of the Irish boom of this period, the so-called Celtic Tiger, Connemara has transformed itself. Major investments in mariculture and adventure tourism have restored life to the waterways and walking trails like the Western Ways have relieved a little of the emptiness of the hills which subsidies have also filled with sheep. Increasingly, however, Connemara is faced with the dilemmas of prosperity in place of the old ones of poverty. The local population is squeezed between the need to preserve the striking beauty of the area and the pressing needs of a growing population who, for the first time in almost two centuries, have the option of staying at home; preferably in their own townlands. Newly constructed housing appears to some as a blight on the landscape but every bungalow represents a family that has decided to remain in the area to raise their children or else an urban settler who will, at the very least, spend his summers here.
Excerpts taken from Michael Gibbons’ recent book ‘Connemara - Visions of Iar Chonnacht’ published by Cottage Publications, 2004. Book on sale at Joyce’s Craft Shop (Recess), Roundstone Music, Craft & Fashion (Roundstone) and The Celtic Shop (Clifden).
