Stones of Aran (55 page)

Of all the O'Flahertys, Tadhg na Buile (“of the rage or frenzy”) of Aird is the best and worst remembered. Tales of his oppression of the poor were recorded from old story-tellers in Carna in the 1930s. His castle at Aird was at the head of a little creek, and the only entrance was an arch through which a boat could be floated into a lock in the bawn; the well was outside the bawn, and a servant girl would come out in a little boat to fetch water:

And so Tadhg was thrown out of the window, and is buried where he fell.

A similar tale is told of a Marcus O'Flaherty of Aughnanure (whom I do not find in the genealogies). Two sheep belonging to a poor widow trespassed onto his land, and as recompense for the grass they ate, he sheared the wool off them. The widow's son then murdered him, and his ghost used to be seen in a wood near the castle. Once he appeared to a basket-maker there, who saw that the O'Flaherty's feet were thin and withered. The ghost
explained
his state:

The man looked down at his basket, and when he looked up again the ghost was gone.

History hardly remarks the existence of the O'Flahertys for some generations after their withdrawal into Iar-Chonnacht, and it was not until the Tudor era that the little cogs of clan rivalry began to engage with the grander machinations of European politico-religious struggles. In 1538 Henry VIII's Deputy of Ireland visited Galway, and the nearest O'Flaherty chief, Hugh Óg, came in from his castle in Moycullen and formally submitted to the King's authority. Soon after that a period of intense feuding broke out among the O'Flahertys, which the English statesmen and the Anglo-Irish Burkes were able to exploit in order to bring them to heel. The Moycullen O'Flahertys were the first to be anglicized. When Hugh Óg was old and infirm he resigned his chieftainship to his son Murtagh, but Dónal Crón of
Aughnanure
, head of the senior branch of the O'Flahertys, seized the castle of Moycullen, murdered Murtagh, locked up Hugh in his own dungeon and starved him to death. Murtagh's infant son Rory was smuggled out of the castle by his people and later was taken to England to be educated. The Elizabethan policy of
affecting
young Irish chieftains to the court and to English values in this way had some failures notable in the history of the times, but with Rory it seems to have been successful, and on his return he was granted the castle of Moycullen again “in respect of his good and civil upbringing in England.”

The western O'Flahertys remained intractable, however. The designated successor to Dónal Crón as chief of all the O'Flahertys at this period was his nephew Dónal an Chogaidh (“of the war”), whose castles were Ballynahinch and Bunowen in the farthest south-western corner of Connemara. (In the old Celtic way, the succession went to the most able and warlike among a small range of relatives, not necessarily to an eldest son.) Dónal's wife was as ferocious as himself; she was Gráinne Ní Mháille, of the seagoing O'Malley clan. Local tradition holds that Dónal was in dispute with the Joyces over a castle on an island in the north-western arm of Lough Corrib, from the fierce defence of which he was nicknamed An Coilleach, the cock; eventually the Joyces
captured
and killed him while he was hunting in the nearby mountains, and Gráinne continued to defend the stronghold with such spirit that it is still known as Caisleán na Circe, the Hen's Castle.

The doings of the remoter O'Flahertys were of less concern to the English than those closer to hand, and of these the most dangerous was the young Murchadh na dTua, Murrough of the
Battleaxes
, of Fuaidh (at the present Oughterard). His incursions into the territory of the Clanrickards (as the branch of the Burkes powerful in Galway now called themselves) were so vexatious that in 1564 the Earl of Clanrickard sent his troops into Iar-Chonnacht. Murchadh used his practiced tactic of withdrawing into the
western
fastnesses, and then as the Earl's forces with their plunder of cattle were retiring towards the ford at Galway, he fell upon them; some got over the river, although “such was their apprehension of death, that they knew not how,” but most of them were drowned. After this disaster the English decided it would be easier to buy Murchadh's friendship than compel it, and he was issued with a pardon and appointed by the Queen to the chieftainship of
Iar-Chonnacht
. Since he was not the legitimate chief under Brehon law this instigated complex feuds among the O'Flahertys. In the 1560s the ascendent Murchadh spread his wings over the Aran Islands, driving out the O'Briens. Then, when the sons of the Earl of Clanrickard staged a rebellion against the Queen and planned to seize the castles of Iar-Chonnacht as their bases, Murchadh repaid his debts by betraying their plans; the Lord President of Connacht then besieged and took the castle of Aughnanure, held by descendants of Dónal Crón. As his reward Murchadh na dTua was given the castle, which was his family's seat thereafter. Next, Murchadh ousted Rory O'Flaherty from the castle of Moycullen, and in 1584 he tried to seize Ballynahinch from the western O'Flahertys—the aftermath of this was the killings at Log na Marbh I have already written about. He got his knighthood in about 1585 in connection with the “Composition of Connaught,” the comprehensive settlement under which the chiefs were to
surrender
the clan territories to the Queen and be regranted them as
heritable property under feudal law. Murchadh signed, of course, and the anglicized Rory O'Flaherty whom he had expelled from Moycullen was probably reinstated at this time. In general the eastern O'Flahertys were docile thereafter, until the rebellion of 1641.

The western O'Flahertys, on the other hand, did not recognize the Composition, and neither did the Burkes of Mayo, who rebelled against the ruthless efforts of the new Lord President of Connacht, Sir Richard Bingham, to impose the settlement. But the Mayo rebels were soon suppressed, and Sir Richard Bingham sent his brother John into Iar-Chonnacht in pursuit of rebels there. Owen, the son of Gráinne and Dónal an Chogaidh, took no part in the rebellion but withdrew his men and cattle to the island of Omey, where a local chief Tibbot O'Toole kept a house of hospitality. (Omey is on the west coast a little south of Renvyle; it is accessible over the sands when the tide is out.) When
Bingham
could not find the rebels he came to Omey and was entertained there, and in the middle of the night his men seized Owen and eighteen of his followers, and took them, with four thousand cows, five hundred stud mares and horses and a thousand sheep (the figures are from a deposition made later on by the aggrieved Gráinne), to Ballynahinch. There Owen was stabbed to death and the others, including the nonagenarian O'Toole, hanged.

The Binghams' violent policies failed to make a reality out of the Composition, however, and Owen's younger brother, known as Murchadh na Maor, “of the stewards,” from his extensive
domains
, remained in control of the western coastline and the castle of Bunowen. When the rebellion led by Red Hugh O'Donnell broke out in the north, Murchadh was commanded to join with the O'Malley sea-lords to ship the English troops from Galway to Sligo. However he chose to join the rebels, and brought his men to Munster with O'Donnell; but after the defeat of Kinsale he returned peaceably to Bunowen, where he died in 1626. His eldest son was Murchadh na Mart, “of the beeves,” so called from his custom of fortifying himself against the rigours of Lent by “
killing 
and devoureing in his one house, among his servants and followers everye Shrove Tuesday at night fifty beeves.” There is a tradition that the Earl of Strafford, Lord Deputy of Ireland, made the dangerous journey into the depths of this Murchadh's
territory
in 1637, but found on arrival at Bunowen that Murchadh was absent on some expedition against “his enemies of Galway”; Strafford waited patiently for his return and was then “received with all the rude profusions of Irish hospitality.” On this occasion Murchadh was knighted, but it is said that the true object of Strafford's journey was to spy out the land with the intention of robbing him of it.

However it was not until the defeat of the rebellion of 1641 that the O'Flahertys, of both east and west, were finally thrown down. The long-boats of Sir Murchadh na Mart had protected the western coast on behalf of the rebels, and he had joined his younger brother Col. Edmund, in bringing their hundreds of “rude kearns” against the fort at Galway. What befell Edmund after the Cromwellian victory I have already told; Sir Murchadh was
luckier
, in that he lost his lands but was allowed to retire to Aran, where he died in 1666 and was buried in Teaghlach Éinne. As to the opportunist eastern O'Flahertys who had so prospered in Elizabethan times, they also took the Catholic Confederate side in the rebellion of 1641, and lost all. The castle of Aughnanure, which had passed down in Murchadh na dTua's line, was
confiscated,
and both castle and land were granted, like so much else, to the Earl of Clanrickard.

The Moycullen O'Flahertys, although they regarded
themselves
as loyal to England, fared little better. Roderic O'Flaherty the historian was of this branch; he was only two years old when his father died, and by the time he reached his majority the
patrimony
had been confiscated. Even after the Restoration he received back only 500 acres, a tiny fraction of the territory, and by then he was so deep in debt they did him little good. “I live a banished man within the bounds of my native soil,” he wrote, “a spectator of others enriched by my birth-right; an object of condoling to
my relations and friends, and a condoler of their miseries.” The unfortunate “Ogygian” was yet to face further impoverishment. Fearing that he would lose even the rump of his estate through the oppressions that followed King William's defeat of King James, he signed it over to his friend the lawyer Richard Martin, who had wangled an exemption from confiscation. When the danger had passed and Roderic asked for his land back, Nimble Dick asserted that it had been a genuine sale, and the historian was left with just his cottage and his view of the Aran Islands. The great Celticist Edward Lhuyd visited him there in 1700, and later sent him a book and a letter, observing to another correspondent that “Unless they come frank, [O'Flaherty] will, I fear, be unable to pay the postage.” Nine years later another antiquary, Sir Thomas Molyneux, wrote,

Roderic O'Flaherty died in 1718. Hardiman records a tradition that his son Michael was a fool, and had him buried within the house, thinking that that would strengthen his own claims to the land. A humble scrap of oral lore I picked up in Connemara
indicates
that his unknown grave is at least very near the house, for the potatoes were put on to boil before the funeral left, and they were not yet cooked when the mourners returned.