Deirdre Cosgrove
The
name of the town is an anglicization of the Irish Cinn Mara. Cinn
Mara translates as “head of the sea.”Aptly
named, the town’s harbor was a central part of business, trade and life
for the town.An alternate origin
for the town was found on an Irish website that told the story of pirates
from the county of Meath in the east.Over
4,000 years ago, these were the people who built the world’s first interpretive
center at Newgrange.However, the
people who came to admire the wonderful achievements forced them from their
land.The pirates left Newgrange
and headed west in search of the Burren, a mountain range in Clare, guided
by their leader and prophet, Mara.Their
plan was to develop a center to rival that of Newgrange so they would be
able to return there and live in peace.It
is said that these pirates invented horse racing to amuse the Fianna who
in turn gave them hurley sticks.Much
later, when the ball was invented, these pirates developed the game of
hurling, a current national pastime, near the present day site of Seamount
College.Mara supposedly ordered
that the castle of Dunguaire but Mara died before the castle was completed.As
was customary at the time, his head was removed to release his spirit and
was incorporated into the roof of the castle so his wisdom would radiate
throughout the countryside.This
offers an explanation of the origin of the town with the name Cinn Mara
being
translated as “Mara’s head” (Local Ireland).The
latter explanation about pirates from Meath, however, is not the accepted
version of the foundation of the town.
A
prominent landmark in Kinvara is Dunguaire Castle.The
history of the town and many legends surround this well-known castle.As
De Breffny points out, Dunguaire was built around 1510 and was the residence
of the Uì Fiachra Aidhne clan (the O’ Hynes).The
castle stands on the site of the royal seat of the seventh century King
of Connaught, Guaire Aidhneach, from whom its Irish name is derived (106).Guaire
was a generous king and many legends exist concerning his reign.One
legend that exists is about a great Easter banquet he held.Guaire
was a cousin of St. Colman, a hermit priest who lived in a cave in the
Burren Mountains.The legend goes
that the dishes from the feast flew from Guaire’s table to the cave.The
king’s soldiers followed the dishes on horseback to the cave, but before
they got there, they were frozen to the ground, unable to move.The
soldiers were also unable to dismount the horses until Guaire gave the
order to leave.Many say that this
legend is just a legend with no truth behind it, but evidence exists on
Carron Mountain by the Galway/Clare border; the tracks of the horse’s feet
can be seen to this day
Dunguaire
has changed ownership many times.After
the O’Hynes, various families lived in the castle until 1828 when it fell
into disuse.The castle was in disrepair
except for the outside walls when Oliver St. John Gogarty acquired the
castle in the early 1900s.Gogarty
was a friend of the previous owner, Edward Martyn, Lady Gregory and W.B.
Yeats.The Irish Literary Revival
was a hot topic in the areas surrounding Kinvara as various authors, playwrights,
and poets visited Kinvara in the early twentieth century to discuss the
establishment of a national theatre.
One famous
poet, Francis Fahy, was born in the Kinvara area in 1854.He
saw his first poem published and his first play performed before he was
seventeen years old.Fahy immigrated
to London, England after taking a civil service exam in 1873.While
living in London, He founded the Southwark Literary Club, which later developed
into the Irish Literary Society, “to engender a love of Irish culture amongst
the children of Irish emigrants” (Breatnach 38).Fahy
worked ardently for the “thousands of Irish children in London [who] were
growing up Irish in nothing but name” (Ryan 12).In
1886, Fahy also became president of the Conradh na Gaeilge, or Gaelic
League, in London, an organization devoted to the revival of the Irish
language.He died in 1935 at the
age of 81.One of his most famous
poems is“The Ould Plaid Shawl”
for which a Kinvara pub is named.
The single
most significant event in Ireland in the twentieth century was independence.All
over Ireland, the Irish were fighting the British forces for home rule.People
all over Ireland rejoiced as they destroyed local barracks of the Royal
Irish Constabulary, or the RIC.Kinvara
was no different.The Kinvara Company
of the IRA burned down the RIC barracks in the town on July 20, 1920, in
an effort to prevent the soldiers from returning and the tricolor flag
could be seen flying over the demolished barracks that night.The
Irish Free State was created in 1922 but this was not enough for the freedom
fighters.They wanted to be completely
free of Great Britain and the Crown.The
Republic of Ireland was established in 1949, with 26 counties becoming
completely free from British rule (Ó hEithir 63)
Kinvara
is widely known for its festivals.Every
year in August since 1979, the Cruinni ú na mBád is
held.Cruinni a mBád translates as the “gathering of the boats”
and the festival celebrates the town’s history as an important port town.Sailboats,
called hookers, gleatógs, and leatbáds were
the instruments of trade between Connemara, Galway and Kinvara.These
boats came to Kinvara carrying turf, or peat, used for fires and poítín,
illegal whisky, made in the Connemara mountains.During
the Cruinniú na mBád, present—day hookers dock in
Kinvara quay as a reminder of the past and bring a small load of turf for
a procession through the town.Another
well—known festival is the Fleadh na gCuach, or the “Cuckoo Festival.”Every
May, this festival celebrates Traditional Irish Music keeping alive the
rich culture
My mother
was born in and grew up in Kinvara.Her
family, the Fahy’s, have lived in Kinvara for many generations.Through
the generations, the usual occupation was either a farmer or stonemasons.Stonemasons
built houses, walls and churches with stones or rocks and mortar, sand
and cement.These stonemasons were
gifted craftsmen who cut the stones into such a shape so they would fit
together.This cutting was performed
with relatively primitive hand tools.Each
stonemason had a particular design that would be carved into his stones,
such as a unique Celtic design.When
people saw these designs they would be able to identify the stonemason
who built the structure.There were
many farmers in our family as well.Farming
still remains strong in the family; my uncle or my mother’s brother owns
a farm and one of his sons plans to get a farm of his own someday.
While we
do not know the name of our first ancestor to emigrate, we do know that
family members have been leaving Ireland for America since the Great Famine
of the 1840s.My mother immigrated
in 1962 at the age of nineteen.Times
were hard in the 1940s and 1950s because of an economic recession in Ireland
while she grew up on a small farm.She
and her family worked hard as there was not much farm machinery.They
did not have a lot of money but there was always enough food on the table
and they had nice house to live in.My
mother was lucky enough to attend high school; most children left school
at the age of fourteen to go out to work.She
attended Seamount College, a high school located in the town, and when
she graduated she got a job in Dublin City with Telecom Éireann,
the national telephone company.As
with most Irish at the time, however, the prospect of going abroad appealed
to my mother’s sense of adventure.Rather
than go to England, like most Irish at the time, my mother decided to go
to New York because she had family there.Her
sister had already emigrated four years previously and her aunt also lived
here for many years and was already an American citizen.Her
aunt was able to claim my mother so she could stay in the country permanently
and work.
Her
aunt booked a ticket for my mother to travel aboard a ship from Galway
port to New York from the Holland American Line.On
July 26, 1962, she began her journey and started to get nervous and have
second thoughts.But it was too late
to turn back from the adventure that was ahead of her.“With
a heavy heart and tears in [her] eyes” she embarked on her journey.On
board ship she met others who were also leaving their families and friends
for the first time.Her trip across
the Atlantic ocean lasted eight days.My
mother compares it to taking a cruise; it was a wonderful journey.She
arrived in the harbor of New York City on the morning of August 3, 1962.There
she met her aunt for the first time and was reunited with her elder sister
for the first time in four years.She
received a job with Blue Shield insurance company and that was her only
job until she became a mother in 1969 and stayed at home to look after
her family.
In
1974, my parents, along with my brother and sister, returned to Ireland
to live because my mother wanted her children to grow up in Ireland.They
settled in the county of Mayo, north of Galway and they remained there
for thirteen years until my mother’s doctor insisted that we leave for
the benefit of her health.The damp
climate of the region was detrimental to her asthma so in 1987, my father
and brother boarded an airplane bound for New York to set up our new life
in America.Meanwhile, my mother,
my sister and I stayed with my grandmother in Kinvara.My
sister moved to New York after she had completed high school in 1989, and
finally my mother and I moved here in August of 1990.We
still have family in Ireland and we go home regularly.The
family traditions of farming still hold today and it is still very much
a family—oriented occupation; my three cousins help their father out with
a lot of the farm work. Even I have been known to give a helping hand if
I can.
Every family
has a story. Being Irish is about being part of a family, having a rich
history and culture.Our story is
rather short, but it has a lot of history in it.I wish I were a better
storyteller, so that my family would get the kind of recognition it deserves.There
are people, like my mother, who could sit and talk for hours and tell a
person their life story and captivate their audience with every word but
that does not seem to be a trait that was passed down to me. Hopefully,
it is something that comes with age so that future generations do not lose
hold of the rich past that belongs to the Fahy family.
Works Cited
Breatnach,
Caoilte.Kinvara: A Seaport Town
On Galway Bay. Kinvara, Co.Galway: Tir Eolas, 1997.
Cosgrove,
Ellen.Personal Interview.12
Dec. 2000.
De
Breffny, Brian.Castles of Ireland.London:
Thames and Hudson, 1977.
Local
Ireland. An Introduction to Kinvara, Co. Galway.1999.Galway
Rural Development Company.13 Dec.
2000. <http://galway.local.ie/content/14125.shtml/kinvara/tourism_and_travel/activities/places_to_see/in_brief> Ó
hEithir, Breandán.A Pocket
History of Ireland.Dublin: The
O’Brien Press, 1996
Ryan,
William Patrick.The Irish Literary Revival: Its History, Pioneers and
Possibilities. New York: Lemma Publishing Corporation, 1970.
For
a picture of Dunguaire Castle:http://www.hynes.net/photos/galway18.jpg
