Connemara

"Connemara" derives from the tribal name Conmhaicne Mara, which designated a branch of the Conmacne, an early tribal grouping that had a number of branches located in different parts of Connacht. Since this particular branch of the Conmacne lived by the sea, they became known as the Conmacne Mara (sea in Irish is muir, genitive mara, hence "of the sea").

One common definition of the area is that it consists of most of west Galway, that is to say the part of the county west of Lough Corrib and Galway city, contained by Killary Harbour, Galway Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.[2] Some more restrictive definitions of Connemara define it as the historical territory of Conmhaícne Mara, i.e. just the far northwest of County Galway, bordering County Mayo. The name is also used to describe the Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking areas) of western County Galway, though it is argued that this too is inaccurate as some of these areas lie outside of the traditional boundary of Connemara.[3] There are arguments about where Connemara ends as it approaches Galway city, which is definitely not in Connemara – some argue for Barna, on the outskirts of Galway City, some for a line from Oughterard to Maam Cross, and then diagonally down to the coast, all within rural lands.

The wider area of what is today known as Connemara was previously a sovereign kingdom known as Iar Connacht, under the kingship of the Ó Flaithbertaigh, until it became part of the English-administered Kingdom of Ireland in the 16th century.

Twelve Bens

Connemara lies in the territory of Iar Connacht, "West Connacht," within the portion of County Galway west of Lough Corrib, and was traditionally divided into North Connemara and South Connemara. The mountains of the Twelve Bens and the Owenglin River, which flows into the sea at An Clochán / Clifden, marked the boundary between the two parts. Connemara is bounded on the west, south and north by the Atlantic Ocean. In at least some definitions, Connemara's land boundary with the rest of County Galway is marked by the Invermore River otherwise known as Inbhear Mór[4] (which flows into the north of Kilkieran Bay), Loch Oorid (which lies a few kilometres west of Maam Cross) and the western spine of the Maumturks mountains. In the north of the mountains, the boundary meets the sea at Killary, a few kilometres west of Leenaun.

The coast of Connemara is made up of multiple peninsulas. The peninsula of Iorras Ainbhtheach (sometimes corrupted to Iorras Aithneach) in the south is the largest and contains the villages of Carna and Kilkieran. The peninsula of Errismore consists of the area west of the village of Ballyconneely. Errisbeg peninsula lies to the south of the village of Roundstone. The Errislannan peninsula lies just south of the town of Clifden. The peninsulas of Kingstown, Coolacloy, Aughrus, Cleggan and Renvyle are found in Connemara's north-west. Connemara includes numerous islands, the largest of which is Inis mór which is the biggest island, County Galway Inis mór; other islands include Omey, Inishark, High Island, Friars Island, Feenish and Maínis.

The territory contains the civil parishes of Moyrus, Ballynakill, Omey, Ballindoon and Inishbofin (the last parish was for a time part of the territory of the Clann Uí Mháille, the O Malley Lords of Umhaill, County Mayo), and the Roman Catholic parishes of Carna, Clifden (Omey and Ballindoon), Ballynakill, Kilcumin (Oughterard and Rosscahill), Roundstone and Inishbofin.

The main town of Connemara is Clifden, which is surrounded by an area rich with megalithic tombs.

The famous "Connemara Green marble" is found outcropping along a line between Streamstown and Lissoughter. It was a trade treasure used by the inhabitants in prehistoric times. It continues to be of great value today. It is available in large dimensional slabs suitable for buildings as well as for smaller pieces of jewellery. It is used for the pendant for the Chief Scout's Award, the highest award in Scouting Ireland.

Memorial to Irish language activist and novelist Máirtín Ó Cadhain inside Dublin Airport: "The best literary tool I got from my folks is the language – a homely, earthy, polished language that may at times start me dancing and at times start me weeping, sometimes despite myself."

The population of Connemara is 32,000. There are between 20,000–24,000 native Irish speakers in the region, making it the largest Irish-speaking Gaeltacht. The Enumeration Districts with the most Irish speakers in all of Ireland, as a percentage of population, can be seen in the South Connemara area. Those of school age (5–19 years old) are the most likely to be identified as speakers.[42]

Writing in 1994, John Ardagh described "the Galway Gaeltacht" of South Connemara, as a region, "where narrow bumpy roads lead from one little whitewashed village to another, through a rough landscape of green hills, bogs, and little lakes, past a straggling coast of deep inlets and tiny rocky islands."[43] Due the many close similarities between the landscape, language, history, and culture of West County Galway with those of the Gàidhealtachd of Scotland, the Connemara Gaeltacht during the Victorian era was often called "The Irish Highlands". Connemara has accordingly wielded an enormous influence upon Irish culture, literature, mythology, and folklore.

Micheál Mac Suibhne (c. 1760–1820), a Connacht Irish bard mainly associated with Cleggan, remains a locally revered figure, due to his genius level contribution to oral poetry, Modern literature in Irish, and sean-nós singing in Connacht Irish. Mac Suibhne was born near the ruined Abbey of Cong, then part of County Galway, but now in County Mayo. The names of his parents are not recorded, but his ancestors are said to have migrated from Ulster as refugees from the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.[44]

He spent most of his life in Connemara and is said to have been a heavy drinker. Micheál Mac Suibhne and his brother Toirdhealbhach are said to have moved to the civil parish of Ballinakill, between Letterfrack and Clifden, where the poet was employed as a blacksmith by an Anglo-Irish landlord named Steward.[44] It is not known whether Mac Suibhne ever married, but he is believed to have died in poverty at Fahy, near Clifden, around the year 1820. His burial place, however, remains unknown.[44]

In 1846, James Hardiman wrote of Micheál Mac Suibhne: "By the English-speaking portion of the people, Mac Sweeney was the 'Bard of the West.' He composed, in his native language, several poems and songs of considerable merit; which have become such favourites, that there are few who cannot repeat some of them from memory. Many of these have been collected by the Editor; and if space shall permit, one or more of the most popular will be inserted in the Additional Notes, as a specimen of modern Irish versification, and of those compositions which afford so much social pleasure to the good people of Iar-Connacht." In his "Additional Notes to Iar or West Connacht" (1846),[45] Hardiman published the full texts of Abhrán an Phúca, the Banais Pheigi Ní Eaghra (commonly known under the English title "The Connemara Wedding"), and Eóghain Cóir (lit. "Honest Owen"), a mock-lament over the recent death of a notoriously corrupt and widely disliked land agent. Following the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War, Professor Tomás Ó Máille collected from the local oral tradition, edited, and published all of Micheál Mac Suibhne's poems in 1934.[44]

After emigrating from Connemara to the United States during the 1860s, Bríd Ní Mháille, a Bard in the Irish language outside Ireland and sean-nós singer from the village of Trá Bhán, Isle of Garmna, composed the caoine Amhrán na Trá Báine. The song is about the drowning of her three brothers after their currach was rammed and sunk while they were out at sea. Ní Mháille's lament for her brothers was first performed at a ceilidh in South Boston, Massachusetts before being brought back to Connemara, where it is considered an Amhrán Mór ("Big Song") and remains a very popular song among both performers and fans of both sean-nós singing and Irish traditional music.[46]

During the Gaelic revival, Irish teacher and nationalist Patrick Pearse, who would go on to lead the 1916 Easter Rising before being executed by firing squad, owned a cottage at Rosmuc, where he spent his summers learning the Irish language and writing. According to Innti poet and literary critic Louis de Paor, despite Pearse's enthusiasm for the Conamara Theas dialect of Connacht Irish spoken around his summer cottage, he chose to follow the usual practice of the Gaelic revival by writing in Munster Irish, which was considered less Anglicized than other Irish dialects. At the same time, however, Pearse's reading of the radically experimental poetry of Walt Whitman and of the French Symbolists led him to introduce Modernist poetry into the Irish language. As a literary critic, Pearse also left behind a very detailed blueprint for the decolonization of Irish literature, particularly in the Irish language.

During the aftermath of the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War, Connemara was a major center for the work of the Irish Folklore Commission in recording Ireland's endangered folklore, mythology, and oral literature. According to folklore collector and archivist Seán Ó Súilleabháin, residents with no stories to tell were the exception rather than the rule and it was generally conceded in 1935 that there were more unrecorded folktales in the parish of Carna alone than anywhere else in Western Europe.[47]

One of the most important tradition bearers the Commission recorded in Connemara or anywhere else was Éamon a Búrc. Before his repertoire of tales was recorded and transcribed, a Búrc had emigrated to America and lived in Graceville, Minnesota and in the Connemara Patch shantytown in the Twin Cities while working for the Great Northern Railway of James J. Hill. After returning lamed to his native Carna, Éamon a Búrc became a tailor and was recorded by Séamus Ó Duilearga and Liam MacCoisdeala in 1935 at the home now owned the Ó Cuaig family. According to folklorist Seán Ó Súilleabháin, "Éamonn a Búrc was possibly the most accomplished narrator of folktales who has lived into our time. His artistry is at once evident in any of the tales which fill the two thousand pages of manuscript recorded from him by Mac Coisdeala. One of his hero tales, Eochair, mac Rí in Éirinn, recorded in October 1938, filled twenty-two Ediphone cylinders, that is, over 26,000 words."[48] Furthermore, according to Irish-American historian Bridget Connelly, the stories collected in Irish from Éamon a Búrc are still taught in University courses alongside Beowulf, the Elder Edda and the Homeric Hymns.[49]

Joe Heaney a legendary seanchai and sean-nós singer in Connacht Irish, is said to have known more than 500 songs – most learned from his family while he was growing up in Carna.[50] The Féile Chomórtha Joe Éinniú (Joe Heaney Commemorative Festival) is held every year in Carna.

Sorcha Ní Ghuairim, a Sean-nós singer and writer of Modern literature in Irish, was also born in Connemara. Initially a newspaper columnist termed ‘Coisín Siúlach’ for the newspaper The Irish Press, where she eventually became the editor. She also wrote a regular column for the children's page under the pen name ‘Niamh Chinn Óir’. Her other writings included a series of children's stories titled Eachtraí mhuintir Choinín and Sgéal Taimín Mhic Luiche. With the assistance of Pádraig Ó Concheanainn, Sorcha also translated Charles McGuinness' Viva Irlanda for publication in the newspaper. Their translation was subsequently published under the title Ceathrar comrádaí in 1943.[51]

While living at Inverin, Connemara during the Emergency, however, Calum Maclean, the brother of highly important Scottish Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean, was appointed by Professor Séamus Ó Duilearga (1899–1980) as a part-time collector for the Irish Folklore Commission (Coimisiún Béaloideasa Éireann). From August 1942 to February 1945, Maclean sent a considerable amount of lore in the local Conamara Theas dialect of Connaught Irish to the Commission, amounting to six bound volumes. From March 1945 Maclean was employed as a temporary cataloguer by the Commission in Dublin, before being sent to the Scottish Gàidhealtachd to collect folklore there as well, first for the Irish Folklore Commission and later for the School of Scottish Studies.

While interned during the Second World War in the Curragh Camp by Taoiseach Éamon de Valera, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, a Post-Civil War IRA member from An Spidéal, became one of the most radically innovative writers of Modern literature in Irish by writing the comic and modernist literary classic Cré na Cille.

The novel is written almost entirely as conversation between the dead bodies buried underneath a Connemara cemetery. In a departure from Patrick Pearse's idealization of the un-Anglicised Irish culture of the Gaeltachtaí, the deceased speakers in Cré na Cille spend the whole novel continuing the quarrels from when they were still alive: gossiping, backbiting, flirting, feuding, and scandal-mongering.[52]

According to William Brennan, the manuscript for Cré na Cille was turned town by the first publisher to whom it was submitted, allegedly for being too reminiscent of the bawdy writings of James Joyce. Máirtín Ó Cadhain, however, was not put off. "In 1949", according to Brennan, "the Irish Press serialized it nationally over seven months, and the following year, the boutique publisher Sáirséal agus Dill released a bound version. The book became the talk of the Irish-speaking world. Young Irish speakers read it aloud to their illiterate grandparents — in Galway, according to one writer, college students passed the thrice-weekly Irish Press installments from hand to hand, and scrounged to buy the book when it appeared in stores."[53]

Cré na Cille is widely considered a masterpiece of 20th-century Irish literature and has drawn comparisons to the writings of Flann O’Brien, Samuel Beckett and James Joyce.[54][55]

Through Cré na Cille and his other writings, Máirtín Ó Cadhain became a major part of the revival of literary modernism in Irish, where it had been largely dormant since the execution of Patrick Pearse in 1916. Ó Cadhain created a literary language for his writing out of the Conamara Theas and Cois Fharraige dialects of Connacht Irish, but he was often accused of an unnecessarily dialectal usage in grammar and orthography even in contexts where realistic depiction of the Connemara vernacular wasn't called for. He was also happy to experiment with borrowings from other dialects, Classical Irish and even Scottish Gaelic. Consequently, much of what Ó Cadhain wrote is, like the poetry of fellow Linguistic experimentalist Liam S. Gógan, reputedly very hard to understand for a non-native speaker.

In addition to his writings, Máirtín Ó Cadhain was also instrumental in preaching what he called Athghabháil na hÉireann ("Re-Conquest of Ireland"), (meaning both decolonization and re-Gaelicisation). In an interview before his death, Ó Cadhain said, "If we lose the Irish language, we lose our native literature, we’ll be finished as a people. The vision that every generation of Irish people had will be at an end."[54]

With this in mind, Ó Cadhain spearheaded the 1969 founding of Coiste Cearta Síbialta na Gaeilge (English: Irish Language Civil Rights Committee"),[56] a pressure group campaigning for social, economic and cultural rights for native-speakers of the Irish-language both inside and outside of traditional Gaeltacht areas and which repeatedly emulated the direct action and civil disobedience tactics used by the contemporary Welsh Language Society, the Northern Ireland civil rights movement, and the American civil rights movement.

One of their most successful protests involved the pirate radio station Saor Raidió Chonamara (Free Radio Connemara) which first came on the air during Oireachtas na Gaeilge 1968, as a direct challenge to both the Irish government's monopoly over the airwaves and, far more importantly, their deliberate inaction regarding Irish language broadcasting. The station used a medium wave transmitter smuggled in from the Netherlands. The Irish government responded by proposing a national Irish-language radio station RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta which came on the air on Easter Sunday 1972. Its headquarters are now in Casla.

In 1974, Gluaiseacht also persuaded Conradh na Gaeilge to end the practice since 1939 of always holding Oireachtas na Gaeilge, a cultural and literary festival modeled after the Welsh Eisteddfod, in Dublin rather than in the Gaeltacht areas.[57][56][58] Gluaisceart also successfully secured recognition of sean-nós dance in 1977.[59]

Another figure highly important to Modern literature in Irish to come out of Connemara was Casla-born poet, actress, Irish-language activist, and Sean nós singer Caitlín Maude (1941-1982). According to Louis de Paor, "Although no collection of her work was published during her lifetime, Caitlín Maude had a considerable influence on Irish language poetry and poets, including Máirtín Ó Direáin, Micheál Ó hArtnéide, Tomás Mac Síomóin, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. That influence is a measure of the dramatic force of her personality, her exemplary ingenuity and commitment to the language, and her ability as a singer to embody the emotional disturbance at the heart of a song. Her collected poems are relatively slight, including incomplete drafts and fragments, but reveal a poetic voice confident of its own authority, drawing on the spoken language of the Connemara Gaeltacht but rarely on its conventions of oral composition or, indeed, on precedents in Irish poetry in either language. The best of her work is closer to the American poetry of the 1960s in its use of looser forms that follow the rhythms of the spoken word and the sense of the poem as direct utterance without artifice, a technique requiring a high degree of linguistic precision and formal control."[60]

Maude also led the successful Gluaiseacht Chearta Sibhialta na Gaeltachta direct action campaign that forced the Irish State to open an experimental Irish-language immersion school, Scoil Santain, in the Dublin suburb of Tallaght.[60] This experiment has been successfully duplicated in countless other English-speaking communities throughout Ireland, with an overwhelming record of success as a tool of language revival.

The Connaught Irish memoirs of Colm Ó Gaora, the former IRA company commander in Rosmuc during the Irish War of Independence, were published in 2008 under the title Mise. An English translation, under the title On the Run: The Story of an Irish Freedom Fighter, was published in Cork City by Mercier Press in 2011.

Recently, the Coláiste Lurgan, a language immersion summer college located at Inverin, has won worldwide acclaim for their Irish language covers of pop songs,including Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, Adele's Hello, and Avicii's Wake Me Up, on the TG Lurgan YouTube channel. The band Seo Linn is composed of musicians who met at the college.

Writing in 1994, John Ardagh recalled, "One night I attended a Sean Nós festival in a crowded village pub in Carraroe - local people all talking Irish, singing in turn their solo ballads, semi-improvised, with strange, almost oriental rhythms. There were microphones, videos, and girls in jeans; yet in some ways it might have been a century ago. I felt in the presence of an alien culture, so different from the world of modern Dublin; and I asked myself whether this was the true Ireland, or something today irrelevant to it. I also felt sad that the English and Irish had long ago conspired to marginalize this beautiful Celtic language."[61]

John Ardagh also conceded, though, that the Gaeilgeoir community of Galway City, which, "today sees itself as the Gaelic capital of Ireland, and has been filling up with intellectual enthusiasts similar to those who have been leading the language revival in Dublin", benefits enormously from their proximity to the Connemara Gaeltacht. The Gaeilgeoirí of Galway City, where, "Irish is often heard in the streets," and which, "has a flourishing little Irish language theatre", often "make pilgrimages" to the rural Gaeltacht to, "drink at the fountains of its culture", attend it's summer cultural festivals, and further perfect their knowledge of the Irish language by conversing with native speakers.[62]

Connemara is accessible by the Bus Éireann and City Link bus services. From 1895 to 1935 it was served by the Midland Great Western Railway branch that connected Galway City to Clifden.

The N59 is the main area road, following an inland route from Galway to Clifden. A popular alternative is the coastal route beginning with the R336 from Galway. This is also known as the Connemara Loop[63] consisting of a 45 km drive where one can view the landscape and scenery of Connemara.

Aer Arann Islands serves the Aran Islands from Connemara Airport in the south of Connemara also known as Aerfort na Minna.

• Seán 'ac Dhonncha (1919–1996), sean-nós singer
• Nan Tom Teaimín de Búrca, a local sean-nós singer, lives near Carna in Rusheenamanagh
• Róisín Elsafty, sean-nós singer
• John Ford, the American film director, and winner of 4 Academy Awards, whose real name was Seán O'Feeney, was the son of John Augustine Feeney from An Spidéal, and directed the classic film The Quiet Man in nearby Cong, County Mayo.
• Máire Geoghegan-Quinn is an Irish politician, and was the former European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science was born in Carna.
• Claire Hanna, SDLP MP in Westminster was born here.[65]
• J. Bruce Ismay, Chairman of the White Star Line, which owned the Titanic, lived for part of his later life in his lodge in Connemara. Ismay was on board the Titanic when it sank but was one of the survivors.[66]
• Seán Mannion, a professional boxer who fought for the WBA, was born in Rosmuc.
• Richard Martin, MP, known as "Humanity Dick", was born in Ballynahinch Castle, Ballynahinch and represented Galway in the House of Commons.
• Michael Morris, 3rd Baron Killanin, was president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and lived at the family seat in Spiddal.
• Patrick Nee, Rosmuc-born Irish-American organized crime figure turned Irish republican, senior member of the Mullen Gang, and mastermind of an enormous arms trafficking ring to the Provisional IRA from bases in Charlestown, South Boston, and Gloucester, Massachusetts and which paid protection money to local crime boss Whitey Bulger.
• Sorcha Ní Ghuairim (1911–1976) was a teacher, writer of modern literature in Irish, and sean-nós singer.
• Peter O'Toole, the noted actor of stage and screen, who achieved international stardom in 1962 playing Col. T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia, was born in Connemara in 1932, according to some accounts of his life.
• K. S. Ranjitsinhji, Maharaja Jam Sahib of Nawanagar State in British India, was the first head of state to make an official visit to the newly founded Irish Free State, bought Ballynahinch Castle estate and visited the area every year till his death in 1932.
• Major John Riley, an Irish Catholic soldier from Clifden, who deserted from the United States Army over anti-Catholicism in the United States and religious persecution by White Anglo-Saxon Protestant officers. Riley became a Major in the Mexican Army and the commanding officer of the highly decorated Saint Patrick's Battalion during the Mexican–American War.
• Tim Robinson, a cartographer, has lived many years in Connemara and published books on the area.
• Gráinne Seoige, the Irish TV presenter and journalist, who has worked for TG4, RTÉ, Sky News Ireland and the BBC, is a native of An Spidéal.
• Síle Seoige, the Irish TV presenter and journalist. She is the younger sister of Gráinne Seoige and a fellow native of An Spidéal
• Mairtin Thornton was a heavyweight boxer, nicknamed the "Connemara Chrusher", he was the Irish Heavyweight boxing champion in 1943, and fought Bruce Woodcock for the British heavyweight title in 1945.

• Connemara Wedding is a poem written by Micheál Mac Suibhne (c. 1760–1820)
• French singer Michel Sardou had an international hit with the song "Les Lacs du Connemara" in 1981.
• The Irish drinking song "The Hills of Connemara" has been recorded and performed by a number of Irish and Celtic-themed bands.
• Poet Carl Sandburg's home of 22 years in Flat Rock, North Carolina, which is now a national monument, is named after the Connemara region.
• Conamara Chaos is a region of chaotic terrain on Jupiter's moon Europa.
• The Connemara pony is a breed of horse native to the region. The only native pony breed in Ireland.
• Connemara is also the name of a brand of Irish whiskey produced at the Cooley Distillery.
• Connemara public library was built in 1896 at Madras by Britishers making it one of the oldest library in india.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Connemara.

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Connemara.

• Alcock and Brown's first non-stop flight across the Atlantic crash landed near Clifden
• Ceantar na nOileán
• Connacht Irish
• Connemara Heritage & History Centre
• Connemara National Park
• Joyce Country
• Lough Corrib
• The Twelve Pins and Maumturks mountains
• The Western Way (Long-distance trail)
• The Connemara Pony
• Wild Atlantic Way
• Lord Connemara

• A Chorographical Description of West or H-Iar Connaught written A.D. 1684 by Roderic O'Flaherty ESQ with notes and Illustrations by, James Hardiman M.R.I.A., Irish Archaeological Society, 1846.

- Connemera public library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connemara_Public_Library?wprov=sfla1

• Connemara after the Famine at History Ireland
• Bishop Ireland's Connemara Experiment: Minnesota Historical Society
• Love Connemara – Visitor Guide to the Connemara Region
• Connemara News – Useful source of information for everything related to this area of West Ireland: environment, people, traditions, events, books and movies.

53°30′N 9°45′W