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Achill Island
With the greatest of ease an experienced pitcher can throw a stone across the narrow separating Achill Island from the mainland. In this respect it is amazing that, despite its nearness and natural harbours, Achill Island remained a sparsely populated and neglected island until the opening of the Michael Davitt Bridge in 1887. This swing bridge brought some prosperity to the Achill Island just when the community, depleted by the Great Famine, needed it most. In 1947, after 60 years of service, the old Michael Davitt Bridge had to make way for a more modern version. After an other 60 years Mayo County Council deemed the time ripe to renovate the narrow bridge to meet the size of modern lorries. The major road works, causing delays and irritation, are expected to be finished in September 2008.
The Michael Davitt Bridge undoubtedly provides Achill Island a distinct advantage over islands such as the Aran Islands and Clare Island, which are only accessible by ferry. As a result Ireland's largest island is a popular location for holiday cottages and facilities for tourists.
Achill Island is definitely on the rise, although it lacks typical tourist magnets such as impressive forts, tombs and castles. Apart from Kildamhnait Castle, also known as Kildavnet Castle or Grace O'Malley's Castle, and the Deserted Village at Slievemore a visit to Achill Island is primarily a scenic experience. If cliffs and views are too shallow to your taste you can bury yourself in the lore of the island, such as the saints allegedly connected to sites and the prophesy of Brian Rua O'Cearbhain, a seventeenth century visionary who not only predicted trains but also two horrible tragedies.
Deserted Village at Slievemore
Like other rural areas of Ireland Achill Island was deeply afflicted by the Great Famine. Within a decade starvation, epidemic diseases and emigration had caused a diminution of the Irish population of 20%. This official figure is an underestimation though because the most vulnerable lowest social class was excluded in the census carried out in 1841, four years before the Great Famine stroke. The real figure probably is somewhere between the 25% and 30%.
Emigration figures remained at a high level in the years following the Great Famine. Initially poverty was the main reason to leave Ireland, but in the first half of the twentieth century people also sought safety from the War of Independence, Civil War and terrorism. The size of the population more or less stabilised at the end of the twentieth century. Suddenly emigration figures declined and people actually immigrated to Ireland when the economy of the Celtic Tiger was blooming. The awareness that Ireland apparently was a promising country worthwhile to live in caused a whole new problem for the Irish Immigration Service. That is, the Republic of Ireland lacked adequate procedures for immigrants and, apart from basic customs, the country had never felt the urge to maintain an Immigration Service.
In spite of the increasing number of immigrants Ireland has yet to recover from the depopulation caused by famine, violence and emigration during the last centuries. Nowadays the combined population of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland is about six million, while it is estimated that nine million people lived in Ireland just before the Great Famine.
Deserted Village at Slievemore
(authors collection, 2006)
While driving through Ireland you might already have noticed the tangible symptoms of the negative population balance over the past years. The new housing estates on the outskirts of the cities however witness that not every single abandoned building holds a tragic story of families ripped apart. Nevertheless uninhabited houses, let alone complete villages left to the elements by their former occupants, make you face the facts in a manner articles, photographs and monuments can not compete with.
Frankly we only want to draw your attention to the existence of the Deserted Village at Slievemore near Keel. We do not want to give a full account of this village which was abandoned just after the Great Famine, because a visit at the Deserted Village is a journey to the darkest corners of your soul. Here are some thoughts, just to stir your imagination.
Take a stroll through the village where the sweat smell of burning peat attracts the attention only by its absence. The voices of children playing on the slopes of the mountain are silenced a long time ago. About halfway the main street a feverish hollow eyed tenant might invite you to his home and the senses of your mind will become saturated with the scent of despair, disease, death and decay. On the outskirts of the village, surrounded by unattended corpses, you notice a family evicted from their house and now living in a scalp, a ditch roofed with branches. You catch yourself thinking that the starving man was in no position to complain.
You leave the village accompanied by a newlywed young couple. Their rag covered bodies do not carry jewellery nor trousseau, because they cashed all they had for the passage abroad. The woman, simply too weak to nurture her unborn child, died aboard of a coffin ship. In spite of their poverty the couple had deprived Ireland of its most precious asset: their children, the country's future.
The young widower arrived penniless in the United States and he found out that the landlord did not kept his promise of arrival money. To survive the man, who had spent his entire live on the slopes of Slievemore and barely mastered the English language, worked the railway by which he contributed to the grow of the United States of America.
Kildamhnait Castle (Grace O'Malley's Castle)
The name O'Malley is unswervingly associated with County Mayo. Centuries ago the O'Malley clan held absolute sway in these parts of Ireland. The early fifteenth century tower house Kildamhnait Castle, strategically situated at the mouth of Achill Sound, is one of several tower houses and castles owned by the O'Malley's.
Kildamhnait Castle, or Kildavnet Castle, is built by an out-and-out Irish clan despite the overall distinctive Anglo-Norman architecture. Apparently the three storey tower houses, with projecting turrets to protect the otherwise blind spots, stood up to their task.
Apart from producing male chieftains the O'Malley's also brought forth Grace O'Malley, or Gráinne Uaile (also written Granuaile), probably the most colourful and talked about woman of sixteenth century Ireland. Because of her lifestyle Grace O'Malley acquired the honorary nickname The Pirate Queen.
Kildamhnait Castle yield its local name, Grace O'Malley's Castle, to this infamous and imagination stirring woman. However, Gráinne Uaile spent most of her life on Clare Island where she lived in a tower house strikingly similar to Kildamhnait Castle and where she most likely is buried somewhere. Although she might have popped in occasionally there is no direct link between the tower house in the most remote south-east corner of Achill Island and Grace O'Malley.
Saint Damhnait's Church
Memorials of the Clew Bay Drowning (left) and
Kirkintilloch Burning (right)
(authors collection, 2006)
Do not be disappointed though. Kildavnet has more to offer than a tower house wrongfully associated with Grace O'Malley. Near Kildamhnait Castle are the remains of what appears to be a twelfth century church and an attractive graveyard. The church, which is believed to be built on a two centuries older church, and a nearby holy well are associated with Saint Damhnait, or Saint Dympna, from whom the area took its Irish name Cill Damhnait, meaning Church of Dympna.
The graveyard offers an interesting array of gravestones from unmarked boulders used on mediaeval graves, weather-beaten eighteenth and nineteenth century headstones up to modern gravestones. The graveyard also contains two monuments dedicated to two tragedies which stroke post-Famine Achill Island.
The first, known as the Clew Bay Drowning, took place in 1894 when a ship with day labourers bound for Scotland to pick potatoes capsized in Clew Bay near Westport. This accident took the lives of 32 young people from Achill Island.
The second incident took place near the Scottish village Kirkintilloch in 1937, when ten potato pickers from Achill got killed in a fire in a temporary accommodation, a so-called bothy.
These two, on the face of it isolated, tragedies are closely linked to the railway to Achill Island.
When the railway to Westport was extended to Achill in 1894 expectations ran high. Trains would carry goods, tourists, researchers and businessmen to the poor depopulated region, but instead of economic prosperity the first train brought home the bodies of the Clew Bay Drowning victims.
The railway was not turning a profit and in 1937, after 43 loss-making years, the railway company decided to take the line out of service. Officially the line was already closed when the final train arrived with the burned remains of the Kirkintilloch Burning Disaster.
In itself it is a gruesome coincidence that both the first and the last train to the island, already tormented by poverty and depopulation, carried the corpses of young folks, but even more strikingly is the notion that this was foreseen by Brian Rua O'Cearbhain in the seventeenth century. Story has it that Brian Rua O'Cearbhain, an Achill man born in 1648, once had a portentous dream. In this dream he saw among other things Carriages on iron wheels emitting smoke and fire would carry dead bodies to Achill both at the beginning and end of a new era of transport.. Because the first steam-powered vehicle with iron wheels was presented in 1804 Brian not only predicted the Achill tragedies, but also trains.
The railway itself has completely disappeared. All that is left are photographs and creative new uses for rail. We've spotted rail used in cattle grids and as stock for the bell of the St. Thomas Church at Doogort.
As mentioned in the introduction Achill Island has plenty of folk tales and because Saint Damhnait's life story is vague we might give this story associated with her church the benefit of the doubt.
It is commonly accepted that she was born in Airgíalla, or the Kingdom of Oriel, which is roughly current County Monaghan, in the seventh century as daughter of a pagan chieftain and a Catholic wife. After the death of his wife Damhnait's father made incestuous advances to his daughter. According to local lore she sought refuge at Achill Island, but others assume that she fled straight to Gheel, a village near Antwerp in nowadays Belgium, where she dedicated her life to nursing mentally ill. Damhnait's life abruptly came to an end when she was traced down and killed by her jealous father.
In the thirteenth century when her body was reburied many miraculous recoveries of epileptics and mentally disturbed people who attended the procession were recorded, as a result of which she was consecrated and became the patron saint of the mentally ill.
Hiking
In 2000 the Achill Tourism Committee issued a booklet with a number of marked round walks of various lengths and degrees of difficulty. Unfortunately, and incomprehensible indeed, this publication, Siúlóidí Acla - A Guide To Walking in Achill, is out of print. Likewise most of the markings are gone. According to the lady of the Tourist Information Office on Achill Island they are in the process of reviewing the walks before reprint. Luckily the void is felt by many. Some of the walks are available as download from the Achill Tourism website, while photocopies of all walks are available at the Tourist Information Office in Cashel. There's a good chance that you pay a visit to the Tourist Information anyhow to purchase a good map of Achill. Be warned though. The complimentary maps in brochures are useful when touring, but impractical for hikers. What you do need is the 1:50,000 Discovery Series Sheet 30.
Let there be no mistake about it: even if you have prints or copies of the walks you need a proper map!
Owners of a hand held Global Positioning System (GPS) unit will be pleased to read that we've put together a file with four round walks in various formats to download to your receiver. Obviously these tracks are provided with no guarantee whatsoever and we can't be held responsible for any damage or loss caused by using or misusing the tracks.
The Saints of Achill Island
Isolated as it was Achill Island held a great attraction for saints searching for a place to retreat. Although there is little to none historical evidence the locals are eager to link sites to saint. Consequently the island is covered with churches, holy wells and graveyards devoted to saints such as Saint Colman and Saint Fionan.
One of the many Saint Colman's or Saint Coleman's allegedly settled on Achill Island after a dispute with the Church of Rome and he is said to be associated with a graveyard, a church and a holy well near Slievemore.
Motivated by his quest to led a Spartan lifestyle Saint Fionan is said to have lived near Dookinella where a well is dedicated to him. Apparently even Dookinella offered too much joys of life so Saint Fionan moved to the barren outcrop Skellig Michael.
Whether fabricated or historical the stories relating to the saints of Achill Island share one common issue, namely the urge to flee from whatever haunted them. Maybe it is a good idea to take up their advice because Achill Island is an well-chosen spot to release yourself for a while from the career and mortgage issues that are haunting you.