WHERE THE TRUSH
SINGS
- In old Doonane
the thrush is singing
- Its lays of joy
to a wakening world.
A
lovely countryside, even in its bleak moods. After the easy
plain southwards from Athy it is a long trying climb, but
the view from the top repays the effort. Below, in a
saucer-shaped valley, lies a haven of south-east Laois and
of north-west Kilkenny, a valley protected by its rim of
hills from the bog lands of the Central Plain, from the fat
dairy-lands to the west and south, and from the swelling
corn-fields of Idrone in eastern Carlow. Coming from the
Barrow one must ascend by The Rushes, Killeshin or Rossmore;
from Stradbally's lovely vale Crossard and The Windy Gap
will test resolve; from Portlaoise via Timahoe the climb by
The Blacksticks will try the lungs and tire the legs, while
eastwards from Abbeyleix and Ballinakill the unrelenting
brows of Knockcrogisheen, and Knockardigur will daunt the
faint of heart. The traveller concerned for ease will
approach from Kilkenny and Castlecomer, but, though his pain
be the less, his pleasure will be correspondingly diluted.
His the case of one who wakes to sunshine too late to see
the sunrise. From the height of Rossmore atop the eastern
rim St. Patrick hurled his triple curse on this valley. All
because the ascent had broken his chariot-tree. A hard path
and a hard man! Long before that day a Celtic clan had named
the same ridge. From here the plain below, even in the most
watery of sunshine, forever allures. A prophetess, who for
seventy years had lived hard by, once asked me: "And why
should I go to Killarney, when I can look at this every
day?" Up here, one may sit and admire, hear the call of the
quiet fields, follow the outline of countless streams,
number the tree-clusters or imagine oneself lost in the
woods along the Deen and Dinan. Only a year or two since, a
man wrote of that ridge over to the south-west, and called
his book The Road To Donaguile.1 Yet, he was a
Corkman born, living and working in Eastern Canada. Surely
that says something of our place.
From
any point on the saucer-rim distance does more than lend
enchantment to the view. It also deceives. Good farmland,
you'd tell yourself, looking across the valley, and you'd be
wrong. Even with modern methods that smiling plain, the old
Magh Leithid of Idough, does little to reward cultivation,
and affords only a sparse pasturage. Cold ground and a wet,
heavy soil. Doib bhui. Once it was a plateau, a high
limestone tableland, but centuries of erosion have created a
depression, cradled within a mountain rim of more stubborn
material. A slow land, unrewarding to sweat, spade or
plough, sparsely responding to fertiliser, but with a
mineral wealth lying undisturbed for aeons. Our fireclays
are worked even today, but neither iron nor coal any longer
constitutes a commercial proposition. Or so we're told,
though locally there are many to doubt it. From early times,
and more particularly for the three hundred years from 1650,
iron and coal working constituted a living for the many and
brought riches to the few. Here, as at Waterloo, one treads
upon an empire's dust. That empire we shall consider later,
but must first concentrate upon the small rural parish of
Doonane-Mayo. Not a quiet-watered land, not a land of roses,
but, for the one permitted to see and understand a rich and
rare land.
To
live at Doonane or at Mayo is to be aware of borders, of
places where parishes, counties and dioceses meet. To belong
to the older generation of inhabitants is to be conscious,
in addition, of a culture specific to the place, of a bond
overlapping man-made boundaries. For three hundred years the
area between Ballylinan and Castlecomer, between Coolade and
Montheen, housed one of the few industrialised rural
communities in Ireland.2 At that time to be from
The Colliery was to be different. How and why will be
explained when we come to treat of our coal. The earliest
known inhabitants were migratory Celts, a hill people.
Before Christianity they came our way from Britain and Gaul,
and among the relics of their passing are two of our
placenames, Gabhair and Slievemargy, names rarely heard
nowadays. The first survives in such combinations as Ardigur
and Kilgorey. The second is a corruption of the Gaelic
Sliabh mBairche, which was itself a corruption of a tribal
name.3 Besides naming the barony, Slievemargy
designates that eastern range of hills separating us from
the River Barrow. In Gaelic times came the Ui Duach, a
people whose name survives in corrupt form in several
placenames, and from whom our Brennan’s take descent. The Ui
Duach built the fort, an dunan, from which both parish and
townland are named.
Borders are sometimes disputed, and have been known to
change. So it was with ours, many times. After the Ui
Bariche, the Ui Buidhe, and the Ui Duach came O'Moores,
Brennans, Dempseys, Northmen, Normans, English and Scottish
planters, each with plans for self-aggrandisement and with
differing ideas as to the delimitation of territory.
Conflict was inevitable, indeed was seldom absent for long
together. In Gaelic times a clay rampart beginning at
Knockcrogisheen on the west reached through Slatt and
Doonane towards Turra and Killeshin on the east.4
The name itself, Cruach Coigriche, (now Crogisheen, frontier
peak), is indicative of division and borderland.
Christianity came to us in the fifth century, some say with
Patrick, or even earlier with Ciaran of Saighir. We have
already indicated that Patrick cursed the place, so it as
well, perhaps, that there is some doubt about his coming.
The story and even the words said to have been used may be
found at page 383 of T. P. Lyng's Castlecomer Connections.
It seems more likely that the local apostle was Fiacc of
Sletty, reputed to have been a disciple of Patrick. It is
said of Fiacc that he spent the Lent of each year in retreat
and penance at Drom Coblaighe, the Dun of Clopook. Abban too
may have worked for a time in the locality; his name is
connected with Killabban in the parish of Arles. Longarad,
otherwise Lon Gabhra, and Guaire sanctified the places we
now know as Kilgorey and Shrule, but, as with Abban, their
stories have become hopelessly entangled with those of
others of the same name.
With
the Anglo-Normans came Purcells, Marshalls, Ridgeways, de
Laceys and Graces, all intent on displacing the Ui Duach.
The newcomers established boroughs at Castletown and
Killabban5 Castles rose at those places, at
Ballyadams, Coolbawn, Clogh and Mayo. The Celtic monasteries
were replaced by European Orders, and church structures
followed continental models. Dioceses and their subsidiary
units had already begun to be formed from the time of the
Synod of Rath Breasail (1118), and at some stage two
parishes were formed around our early monastic foundations
of Rathaspick and Killabban. The former name, Bishop’s Rath,
suggests a centre of ecclesiastical authority, but according
to O’Hanlon our “bishops” exercised only some episcopal
functions in districts and villages”.6 The name
of St. Aengus is connected with Rathaspick, probably from
its monastic days and possibly from as far back as the sixth
century. His feast day is 16 February, and was observed at
Clogh until late in the nineteenth century7. I
have heard it said that the present parish church at Clogh
was first dedicated to St. Aengus, but think it more likely
that any such title belonged to an earlier structure, very
possibly on the same site.
With
the Gaelic resurgence of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries our place was more than ever marchland, disputed
between Gael and Norman, fought over by shifting alliances
of both. Lying along the edge of the Pale, it was a war
zone, utilised by those who would attack Carlow, Athy,
Kildare and Dublin itself. Anglo- Norman overlords
complained to the English King that “Irish enemies
habitually retreat to safe areas, such as ... Slievemargy,
outside the land of peace.”8 With time the
Norman families became the Seana-Ghaill, or “Old
Foreigners”, but the plantations of Mary’s reign and the
wars of Elizabeth brought Barringtons, Bowens, Davells and
others. The Hartpoles acquired Shrule, the Hovendons
Killabban, the Keatings Ballickmoyler and Crockentagle, the
McDonnells Farnans. A copy of a map made to assist the
plantation process constitutes the frontispiece to Canon
O’Hanlon’s History of the Queens County and marked on it are
“the hill of Dunaun” and the thickly-forested valleys of
“Kyledunaun”. Perhaps the earliest map references to that
place.
Some
of our planters lost their lands in the aftermath of the
Confederate Wars, but we have little information on how the
Cromwellian Plantation affected the area. Petty’s map of the
barony shows churches at Killabban and Killeshin, a castle
at Shrule, and names such as “Rathaspug, Dunnan, Fatten,
Towlerton, Garindenny” are marked in. The west bank of the
Dinan is shown heavily wooded.10 The
re-settlement under King Charles II brought Gales to
Crockentaggle, Hamiltons to Farnans (or Newcastle, as it was
briefly known), Cheyneys to Doonane, Hewetts and Lloyds to
Killeshin. During the reign of James II religious toleration
returned, and before the end of that period a lady of the
Hartpole family had built a thatched chapel at Arles.
Confiscation and persecution returned in the wake of the
Jacobite Wars, making the eighteenth century a dark period
in Irish history. Yet, we sometimes forget that those
infamous Penal Laws were drafted and enacted here at home,
London merely approving their presentation to an Irish
Parliament. During that era Catholic clergy kept a very low
profile, moving from place to place and ministering
secretly. Killabban, Doonane and Mayo provided ideal refuge
for priests on the run, especially as the Denn and Hartpole
houses remained open to them. Clogh, Kill, Tourtane and
Massford were “safe areas”, since their overlords, the
Bryans of Jenkinstown, stayed with the old faith.11
In 1704, when a “Return of Popish Priests” was ordered,
fifteen such registered for the Queens County, and three of
those resided in Slievemargy. As the Act under which the
Return was ordered was very much of “a cat and mouse
enactment, it may be presumed that the clergy who registered
under it had particular reason for declaring themselves.
Twenty-seven years later Dublin Castle ordered that High
Sheriffs of Counties should furnish a Return of friars and
nuns living within their borders, and, ”to make assurance
double sure”, sought the same information from the clergy of
the Established Church. William Fynn was High Sheriff of the
Queen’s County that year (1731) and on the 20th November
duly reported that his “diligent inquiry found no reported
Frierys or Nunnerys, or no reputed friars or nuns, in the
said county. The Bishop of Leighlin was more forthcoming,
finding two priests, Bryan Moore and Manus Egan, with one
mass-house, at Killeshin, an unnamed priest, schoolmaster
and mass-house at Rathaspick, two priests, several itinerant
clergy, one mass-house, two private chapels and four
schoolmasters at Killabban.12 The Roman Catholic
bishop at the time was James Gallagher, author of
Gallagher’s Sermons in Irish, and residing “in a wretched
hut near the Bog of Allen”.13 The next bishop,
James Keeffe, seldom remained for long in any one place, and
sometimes endorsed official documents as issued “from the
place of our hiding”. Yet, he was among those who made the
first feeble attempts to better the position of Catholics
before the law. Late in life he moved to Browne’s Lane in
Carlow town in order to superintend the building of St.
Patrick’s College on a site he had acquired.
From
early in the eighteenth century coal was mined in large
quantities over the area between Ballylinan and Castlecomer.
Population increased, woods were cleared (a process already
under way to serve iron-smelters at Killeshin and Glenmagoo14),
roads were laid down and villages built. A difficult terrain
and an inhospitable soil had long discouraged movement and
cultivation, but now a new source of wealth had appeared,
and, as ever, people flocked to its exploitation. From
mid-century coal mining was the way of life for the majority
of our people and “The Colliery” had begun to be
distinguished from adjacent rural areas. Regular income,
itself a new factor in the life of Irish labourers, and a
location cut off from easy communication with neighbouring
counties, contributed to the distinction, and to our
people's sense of being different. The pit-workers, many of
them newcomers to the work and to the area, spoke English
and Irish with equal facility, but among themselves
generally used Irish.15 A new industrial era had
begun in a lovely valley isolated from its rural hinterland.
Our fathers were on the way to being different, distrusted
and even feared, sharing with common folk elsewhere only the
fact that their wealth was not their own. Property, and the
influence which went with it, belonged to a smaller group,
largely of non-Irish origin, holding to an alien faith and
professing allegiance to a distant government.
-
References
-
-
- 1.
Rev. H. Driscoll, The Road to Donaguile, pub.
Cowley Publications, Cambridge, Boston, Mass.,
2000.
- 2.
William Nolan, Fassaclinan, The Wandesforde
Estate, pp. 105-140.
- 3. T.
P. Lyng, Castlecomer Connections, pub. 1984, p.
395.
- 4.
Ibid., p. 393.
- 5. J.
Bradley, Early Urban Development in Co. Laois’
in Laois History and Society, pp. 259, 263.
Edited Lane and Nolan, Geography Publications,
1999.
- 6.
History of the Queens County, vu1. 1, p. 91.
- 7.
O’Hanlon, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 302.
- 8.
Cormac O Cléirigh, The Impact of the
Anglo-Normans in 1.aois’, in Laois,
- History &
Society, p. 174. Edited Lane & Nolan, Geography
Publications, 1999.
- 9.
O’Hanlon, O~. Cit., Vol. 2, pp. 491-492.
- 10.
O’Hanlon, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 492.
- 11.
Lyng, op. cit., p. 46.
- 12.
O’Hanlon, O~J. Cit., vol. 2. pp. 569-570.
- 13.
Rev. Michael Comerford, Collections Relating to
the Dioceses of Kildare &
- Leighlin,
vol. 1, p. 47.
- 14.
Lyng, op. cit., p. 285.
- 15.
Coote, Statistical Survey of the Queen's County,
1801, p. 188.
Source: "Beneath
Slievenargy’s Brow" by Brother Linus Walker
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