History In Focus: St Patrick's Day

0:00There's time for another trip down memory lane, not our memories, but the memories of those who lived in ages gone by in County Claire because it's our latest Claire history in focus, slot, and joining me once again is the one the only local historian and author, Column Lady Column. Good morning. Good morning, Ellen. Same Patrick's day, firmly on the horizon. And that is very much the theme of what you're going to discuss this morning. That's right. About St Patrick, it has to be said that the lore is he never actually visited County Claire. Me was in many parts of Ireland, but mostly it was the north, and in particular Arma, that's the reason indeed that we still have Arma, you know, regarded as the primacy place, you know, in Ireland for Catholic Church. Nevertheless, there is one little spot in Claire, and today I'm going to almost guide you on a, we could call it a pilgrimage, or if you're not a believer, nonetheless, it's a place of huge outstanding beauty and scenic that you really do need to see. It's in North Claire. Okay. Looking forward to hearing more about this. So take us on this same Patrick's day stroll. What I would recommend is that you take yourself

1:05to New Key, up at the very north of this county, and you'll find St Patrick's Church is indeed the name of the church in New Key. There's ample parking outside, so park there, go inside the church, built in 1939, replacing a previous church that was there a century earlier. And right inside the door, you'll see a statue of St Patrick, but what's really nice is inside the sustained glass, beautiful one that's I think 130 years old, that was from the Scarrett family, the local landowners who were Catholics, and one of them Patrick's Scarrett, in honor of him, there's a a stained glass of St Patrick. Also inside, really quite arty, is there stations of the cross? Obviously you see them in every Catholic church in Ireland, but these ones are a little bit, a little bit more than average. They were done by a, you could say, Bonafida artist, Sean O'Sullivan, he was quite a big deal in the early 20th century. Indeed, his portrait of

2:07Amin De Valera is the one that sits in Orison, Uttarong, and he did stamps, he did loads of different kind of, you know, official commissions, but I don't know how they got him, but in 1940, he did the stations of the cross for new-key church, and they're really vivid, you know, just really excellent representations of the story of Jesus' final day, I guess, of life. So we're checking out. Also, I suppose a sad kind of thing that's in that church is there's two commemorations of the 1969 drowning tragedy, which took place locally, where nine children were drowned, not far from there. Okay, and I started, they're honored in that way. In the stained glass windows, are they still in? I would imagine they're kept in good condition. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and it's a fine church, you know, it's amazing. Most of these churches have at least one little thing, but this one is, you know, is a little gem that people would easily miss. Okay, what else do you want to tell us, where else are you going to take us on this? So if you leave your car there in the car park and walk

3:11behind the church, and you'll find yourself on the beginning of what is known locally as the Green Road. So we're talking about a famine era road built during the famine and never termacked. So it's about a 3.5 kilometer walk up a hill into this is one of the, you know, Boran Hills. This one was called Abbey Hill, and you kind of are walking along the shoulder of it, if you can imagine, around the corner, and suddenly you just have this amazingly vast vista in front of you, Galway Bay, of course, the island of Akhenish, all along the coast. You can see Barna and outwards, Spiddle. You can see the Martello Tower. There's just so much in front of you there, and it's quite a view. As you walk along, you can, I suppose, contemplate the fact that you're walking a road built by famine laborers in around, you know, 1846-47. I suppose we have

4:11a tendency to think that it was like working, you know, hard labor, but actually people did welcome it at the time. You read the newspaper, the day that the man, the engineer who was going to run us arrived in Balivahan, his name was Mr. James Prash. There was bonfires all over the area of delight that someone was coming to give them work, because I mean, at the time, they could not really conceive of something for nothing. They wanted work to give them money to buy the food they needed, and, yeah, well, they got it. Is the road useful? You'd have to say, not really. Look, it gave them money. It gave them money. You could say that it connects New Key Church to a village that no longer exists, it's called Curren Roo, just over the border in Galway. There was a village there, there was a post office, there was a thriving oyster industry, all that's gone. So if you like, from the A to B, B, no longer exists, and that's why now you have

5:17this road that appears to not really have a purpose, but it's a fantastic place for any tourist or walker to go. What about St. Patrick's Well? So if you walk along, at anywhere from, as I've said, down to the far end, you will find just in off of about maybe 50 meters from the road, St. Patrick's Well. So as I remarked, St. Patrick never came to clear, but the thing is right here where I'm describing, you're just a few hundred meters from Galway. Patrick did go to Galway, and he was in South Galway, and here is a place like so much with these Holy Wells, they exist often as borders between tribes, because a well, first of all, you could argue, it's the most authentic form of Christianity in Ireland, is the Holy Wells. Much more so than churches, which were really for most of history, just for an elite, the churches of Ireland in many of the times, they wouldn't have fitted the people, and mass going as such was not a major thing, but going to Holy Wells always was. And that's why you have a

6:20connection here to the really long ago Christian past of Ireland, and arguably to even further back again, the area of Druids, because Druids and all of their activities took places at Wells, and you generally found that they took place at borders between one tribe and another, and here's where the land of the Corco Madru, who were in charge of the borne, that's where their land ends, and the South Galway boys are there. So it's a place where people have been going for well at the very least 1500 years, and arguably all the way back to the Bronze Age quite possibly. Okay, so long, long, long links going back, and lots of memorials as well. That's right, you're aware there that you're in a place that usually tens of thousands of people have common gone. A few of them are remembered on that spot. Most notably out in the field from the well, the well itself has little gigas of St. Patrick and rosary beads that people have left behind,

7:21and little notes, you know, prayers and intentions, but out on the field, there's this bizarre kind of square slab of rock built. You could call it an altar, but it has strange writing on it. It's hard to decipher, and yes, you know, you can clearly see it's writing, and it has a little moon man they call it, a sort of a figure of a man's face, quite striking that's there, and the right, it has been deciphered anyway that the whole thing is in honor of John Common and Mary McNamara, a couple that lived in around 1760, set up by their son. That's what the writing says. Also at the actual well itself, there's a tiny little copper plaque, and it says, it's in memory of Matthew C. Mescal, who died in Ireland on the 3rd of August 1958. You Google a bit and you figure out this is a guy who essentially his grandfather had emigrated

8:24from Dune Bag back in the Famine era, and now he goes back, you know, in American. I yank to see his ancestors. He appears to have come to Ireland three times actually, but only one of the third occasion he died. Oh, third time unlucky for this poor chap. He dies in Ireland, and then they leave this little plaque there. Even further connection with, you know, I mentioned Dune Bag, but this Matthew, Mescal, is a major Republican, I'm talking about Republican as in the American Congress, and indeed Dune Bag, as you know, now has a connection with Republican, a very question marks where I'm in over how Republican he actually is. And do we know anything about how Matthew died? No, well, it appears a heart attack. You can actually look up his death certs, yeah, so just heart attack. But I guess, you know, he was where he longed to be, you know, back in the home country, which was nice. This was he just unplanned for it to be like

9:25that. Any other memorials? Yeah, the ones I'm talking about are easily visible to anyone. Now we're getting into the ones that are both difficult to see, and quite mysterious. What you need to do, if you're really interested, and this is now the more hard core people who want to get into the history. I'm sure it's, I can't be the only one column who's picturing you just digging through brambles and bushes and to get to these. Something I have done several times this year. Yes, you know, so that you don't have to. Now what you're going to need for this one, you probably need Wellies, you do because you're going to need to get into the well. And depending on the state and level of the water, you might get wet. Have you done this? Of course I have. Of course. In fact, I have other plans. Some of the writing I'm going to describe now, stop etching on a rock. And it's quite hard to read. Some of it's easy and some of it's hard. But some of it I have conceived could be better read if I went there some night at midnight and show on a torch. And because you see the certain etchings that they come up better

10:27in darkness. They just don't stand out during the day. Yes, exactly. So anyway, some nice, if you if any of the local inhabitants see a man were to torch. Don't call the guys please. Understand that it's for science. As he said, he's putting in the hard yarn so we don't have to. Anyway, I'll tell you what you can see. If you get in there with your Wellies and look at that certain stone, which is inside in it. First of all, there's another of these strange, ignimatic faces. It's smaller than the other one, the moon man. They're called it the sun man. But it's similar. You have one very, I mean, some of these have been chiseled out huge efforts went into them because they're visible at long time. One says M burn, 1916 A.D. Kinvara. And then the last word is contested. Somebody else told me it says R.I.P. I think it says R.I.C. Oh, I'm giving the ear that's in us. Yes. And maybe not widely known, slight diversion.

11:29Outside the Dublin during Easter week, 1916, the rising only took place in one other place outside of Dublin, really, the GPO. And that is Kinvara. I think you're onto something. Okay, but anyway, let's park that because the other one fascinates me even more. What's super clear and it's a beautiful image is somebody has gone to the bottom of chiseling out a little logo. And what it is is it's a harp. And then the harp is embroidered with shamrocks. And then around the harp, the three sides of it says God save Ireland. Now that plus another page where it says Williamson August 1867 puts us very clearly that this is Thinion. This is the year of the Thinion's big time 1867. And that particular concept, God save Ireland. Eventually there was a song about it. So what is this? I mean, I've read that much online, a local guy up there, Tony Kirby. He does, he does walking tours around the Boran.

12:33He put up a lot of very interesting stuff on this online. But I think I have dug a bit more and I'm prepared to say that this Williamson is a very specific fella because one year later, a Williamson was tried in a London court for various sort of Thinion, conspiracizing, you know. And if it's my same guy, he would add up because what this guy was accused of was that in Ireland, he was looking to get stores of gunpowder from military installations, you know, to steal some for the corpses. You know, at that year of the Thinions, they tried to explode various places in London. Some of them then wound up getting hung. The Manchester martyrs, people might have heard of them. There's a major statuineness, indeed, to them. But anyway, back to our man, he's accused of basically scouting for major supplies of gunpowder. Well, lo and behold, if you are standing at that

13:35holy well, right in front of you, across the fields, is the Akanish Martellotar, which at that time would have had quite a bit of gunpowder. And around the corner is the Finnavara one. So I can think of no better place where you could pretend you were being all religious. And meanwhile, what you're actually doing is watching troop movements back and forth, because those towers, of course, were still very much active at that time. I think we're going to have to start calling column local historian, author and local sleuth. Possibly. Or maybe conspiracy theorists, I don't know. I mean, I don't see any tinfoil hats in this studio. But I haven't proven any of this yet, but let's say I'm on the case and piecing together a little bit. But I've definitely have to go up there at midnight some night, anyway, to look at the etchings more clearly in the darkness. But it just shows you a column. And I think it's why history and particularly local history is so fascinating that if you put in the hard yards as you clearly do and have done many times in the past, you find these little nuggets that they're not the big stories of years

14:40gone by the people to be aware of, but they're no less fascinating. And it must be great for you when you won't cover them. Yeah, I love that. We'll say there's a certain amount. I mean, it has to be said, everything I ever say here, a hell of a lot of it is. I'm just regorged at hate and stuff that is well known. I'm just kind of putting it all together, you know, apart from when you pull your wilys on and jump into wells. But then, yeah, but then there's these extra other bits that I'm digging up out of the ground practically. So look, that's the end that I could say about that well. If you stroll back along the green road to your car, you should contemplate the fact that one famous person who definitely walked along is William Butler Yates. William, of course, well known for his poetry, not so well known for his plays. For the very reason, they're terrible. But he did write a play called The Dreaming of All Bones. And that is set literally on that roadway, a one act to play, not particularly good, but as I say, of interest. And then when you get back to your car, might I recommend a trip just around the corner. The other side of that same mountain is where you'll find Carcom Roe Abbey.

15:44All was a great spot to look at. Fantastic old ruin from around 1200 and filled with some very interesting statutory inside. There's a weird looking bishop up on the wall. You know, he looks like an alien. But he's pretty cool, you know, and there's an old O'Brien warrior lying on the ground as well, you know, in cast and stone. Also nearby is a chocolate factory. As far as I'm aware, this chocolate factory does not run on the slave labor of Lumpa Lumpas. So it's perfectly safe. There's Lenin's pub and restaurant, fine eatery, and there's an ice cream place called Lenalla. I also recommend in Finnevara a vegetable shop run by Honesty Box, where you can just get you in fantastic vegetables, you know, pollacious carts, the works. So yeah, great little spot for a little pilgrimage. Brilliant. And if you return to your car and you've done some or all of what I call him has clearly gotten up to in the past, make sure you have a change of clothes and a clean

16:48pair of runners in the car to get into once you arrive back. I call him let you thank you as ever. Fascinating St. Patrick's Day stroll there for people who want to check out your merch. How can they do so? It's such a shop in Ireland.ai.