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- Herausgeber: The O'Brien Press
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
Ireland is an island nation, inextricably linked with and dependent upon the sea which surrounds us. From earliest times, ships from distant lands have brought goods, ideas, invaders, influencers. Our legends, and particularly the imramma or magical Otherworld voyage tales, show how deep our involvement with the ocean goes. Jo Kerrigan has discovered and retold tales from all around the Irish coast of storms, shipwrecks, pirate attacks and smuggling, as well as shipping stories, both of long distance trading and the little boats which took supplies from major harbours to smaller communities. The sea has an enduring fascination: let Jo's tales and Richard Mills' evocative photographs transport you to the coast to rediscover the tales gathered over the centuries by its communities.
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Stories from theSea
Legends, adventures and tragedies of Ireland’s coast
Jo Kerrigan & Richard Mills
This book is dedicated to all those who, over thousands of years, have sailed to and from Ireland.
Contents
8
The Cailleach or Hag of Beara, an echo of our ancient past.
Introduction
As a small island nation, ours is a culture inextricably bound up with the seas that surround us. From earliest times, travellers in fragile craft from far-off lands have crossed the oceans to our shores, seeking a place to settle or to trade the goods they carried. Later, others came with plunder in mind, seizing the rich bounty that this fertile soil produces so effortlessly.
Over millennia, our people have earned their livings from the waters that lap our shores. They have built small boats and huge ships, the better to traverse those surrounding waters. They have learned to read the skies and sense the changing of the wind. In stormy weather, many a vessel has come to grief on the hungry rocks that are always waiting for new victims, while in secret inlets on calm, moonless nights, bales and barrels have been swiftly unloaded and spirited away to safe hiding places.
A vital source of nourishment, a natural means of travel, a source of food and income; friendly and smiling or threatening 10and deadly, the sea has influenced Ireland and its people since the beginning. It has brought goods, ideas, invaders, influences, and taken away emigrants, pilgrims, evangelising monks, adventurers. All have played their part in our history.
Here, then, are just some of the salt-drenched stories that have come from Ireland’s endless involvement with its surrounding waters. Age-old legends of fantastic voyages and strange demonic invaders; thrilling tales of storms, shipwrecks and smuggling; stirring accounts of little coastal traders and huge transatlantic liners; exciting ideas from those who pushed the boundaries of communication. Read them, feel the tug of the sea breeze in your hair, get the scent of the brine, and feel you are there.
Chapter I
The Sea Carried Them
THE LEGENDARY FIRST SETTLERS TO IRELAND
People have been drawn to Ireland, with her gentle climate and fertile soil, for millennia; ever since the withdrawal of the Ice Age, in fact. The Lebor Gabála Érenn, or Book of Invasions, is a collection of poems and prose chronicling the multiple waves of settlers who sought this green island on the westernmost edge of what was then the known world. The collection was first committed to writing by Christian scribes around the eleventh century, but the text is firmly based in oral tradition going back into prehistory, handed down from father to son, generation to generation, storyteller to storyteller. 12‘This is how it happened and how we came to be what we are today, these are the people who came to Ireland long long ago …’ the shanachie would softly chant to a spellbound audience.
Naturally enough, every single one of these early settlers used the sea as their high road to Ireland. Some may not even have intended to come here: they might have been swept before a storm or missed their planned destination in fog; they may not have had an idea of where on the great ocean they actually were. In ancient times, you quite often ended up where Aeolus, god of the winds, felt like sending you – if your cargo or mission was to somewhere very different, well, that was your problem and you had to make the best of it.
Whether the waves of settlers chronicled in the Lebor Gabála came by accident or intention, they travelled here across the ocean. Most came with the prevailing trade winds from the southeast, from Asia, Greece, Sicily, Spain; but some at least came from the colder Northlands, and one group indeed (if the legends are to be believed) from a threatening and grim Undersea world.
Of course, there is a great deal of embroidery and expansion in these old legends, but at the heart of every such tale is a germ of truth, a shred of folk memory going back generations, an enshrining of actual facts and happenings, around which the story has been developed. However fanciful they may appear, they are still telling us something about the far distant past, and should be valued as such. Here, then, are some of the legendary stories of those who came by sea.13
Cessair
According to the Book of Invasions, the very first traveller to reach Ireland was Cessair, who came from far in the southeast, escaping from the Great Flood. Christian scribes copying down the tale according to their standards identify her firmly as Noah’s granddaughter, but that was probably what one might call monkish licence, slotting her into an acceptable Biblical context. Whatever her origins, she was definitely a woman, not the usual armed warrior of legend, and she landed on the Dingle Peninsula in Kerry:
This is the reason for her coming, fleeing from the Flood: for Noe said unto them: Rise, said he [and go] to the western edge of the world; perchance the Flood may not reach it. The crew of three ships arrived at Dun na mRarc in the territory of Corco Daibne.
The Flood or Deluge isn’t really our concern here, but it is fascinating to ponder on what it might actually have been, what its causes were, how large an area was affected. In our own time, we have seen disastrous tsunamis caused by volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, and it could well be that a similar natural disaster is echoed, however vaguely, in the Biblical stories of Noah and his Ark.
Modern research inclines toward the theory that the Flood was caused by the original barrier between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea (then a freshwater lake) breaking, loosing vast amounts of water from the former to the latter. This may 14have been caused by a tsunami or by rising temperatures after the Ice Age. Certainly, recent deep-water explorations of the Black Sea coast have revealed an original shoreline and ancient shipwrecks, hundreds of metres below present-day sea level. (Mount Ararat, where the Ark finds its final resting place in the story, is in eastern Turkey, which would add strength to this idea.)
After the first deadly rush, the waters would have continued to rise steadily, and survivors would have had to either move further and further up into the hills or take to boats and seek new lands.
Cessair, according to legend, was able to organise a fleet of ships and a strong band of female followers for this migration, so she was clearly somebody of importance. In fact, she is likely to have been a seer or high priestess, perhaps from Egypt, and certainly somebody possessing both strength and power, which would explain why the monks were so quick to ascribe to her a Biblical parentage. Most emphatically, it would not do to have strange women from distinctly unacceptable religious backgrounds taking the principal role in the start of Ireland’s history.
Cessair’s journey from the east was not an easy one, encountering fierce storms and high winds that sank two of their craft and drowned many of the travellers, both the women and their armed male escort. (That male escort is another indication of the leader’s social importance.) It is one of the first records of stormy weather and shipwreck, themes that are to recur again and again in stories from the sea down through the centuries.15
Wild waves threatened those trying to reach Ireland.
Cessair herself survived, along with fifty women and just three men. Making sensible plans for their future in Ireland, she divided her female followers into three groups, each under the protection of one of the men, and she herself married Fintan, the bravest and strongest of these.
However, after some time, these fortunate (or unfortunate, depending how you look at it) men eventually died, and the practical Cessair realised that she had only one man, her husband Fintan, to ensure the future of the settlement. Giving a very human twist to the legend, he realised that he could not possibly satisfy fifty women. He lost heart and fled into the wilderness. The abandoned Cessair died of a broken heart, and her abandoned followers too eventually died out.
Fintan, somewhere out there in the wild, was the only one left of those first arrivals. He must have learned some of his wife’s magical skills, as he managed to survive down through 16the ages by being reborn as many different creatures: a salmon, an eagle, a boar, a hawk and more. He lived for 5,000 years, so that he could recount to later settlers the history of Ireland as he had seen it since the beginning.
One variation of the legend says that the Great Flood eventually reached Ireland and only Fintan survived, by changing himself into a salmon in a submerged cave known afterwards as Fintan’s Grave. This cave is said to be hidden on the mountain called Tul Tuinde, or Hill of the Wave, near Lough Derg on the Shannon.
Fintan survived by changing himself into a salmon, and then an eagle.
Parthalon
After Cessair, it is said, Ireland lay empty until the coming of Parthalon, who came all the way from Greece, via Sicily, in a sea journey that took two and a half months. He and his people are said by some to have landed near Kenmare in Kerry.
Now Ireland was waste [thereafter], for a space of three hundred years, till Parthalon came to it. He is the first who took Ireland after the Flood, on a Tuesday, on the fourteenth of the moon, in Inber Scene: [for three times was Ireland taken in Inber Scene].
Henry Morris, in a detailed lecture given to the Royal Society of Antiquaries in 1937, maintains that Parthalon landed not in Kerry but at the mouth of the Erne in Donegal, where the town of Ballyshannon stands today.
Parthalon settled on an island in the River Erne.
18Parthalon settled on an island here with his wife Delgnat and his followers, making their living by fishing in the rich waters of the river. One day, so the legend relates, he went off to fish, leaving Delgnat in the care of one of his servants. Clearly this servant must have been attractive, since the lord of the island came home to find them having rather too fond a time together. Furious, he turned on his wife’s pet dog, which came leaping to greet him, and killed it with a blow. This would in fact have been a major offence in ancient Ireland, under Brehon law, and would have been perceived as such by listeners to the tale.
Delgnat, however, gave as good as she got, asking Parthalon what else he expected if he were to leave her alone all day with temptation laid out in front of her. It’s an observant touch, and notable that it is dutifully recorded in the old text, even though written down by Christian scribes. Women in those times had minds of their own, unlike the obedient and subservient wives of later literature. The event was ever afterwards claimed to be the first instance of jealousy in Ireland (and also, incidentally, the first of adultery).
Parthalon, and his descendants after him, lived many years in Ireland (300, according to the Lebor Gabála), and cleared much of the heavy woodland that covered that part of the northwest in which they settled, in order to graze cattle and plant crops. He is in fact credited with being the first to introduce cattle, to till the land, to churn butter and to brew ale. Clearly a man of practical sense and skill was Parthalon.
Once again, these are indications that the legend is based on real events of the far distant past. If it wasn’t precisely 19Parthalon and his followers, somebody certainly came, stayed and cleared woodland. Those are the basic facts that are remembered over the generations.
In the end though, according to the Lebor Gabála, the entire Parthalon tribe died in a single week of a dreadful sickness. This was in all probability the ‘yellow plague’, which is recorded in old sources as recurring regularly. That could have been bubonic plague, better known in medieval times as the Black Death, or perhaps smallpox. One might think, given the descriptive ‘yellow’, that it was a form of jaundice, but that couldn’t really be described as a virulent and fatal disease. Bubonic plague, on the other hand, is spread by fleas, carried by rats, and there would have been plenty of both around in ancient times.
Whatever the identity of the swift-moving pandemic, it is held to have wiped out the Parthalonians within the space of seven days. For a long time, it was held that this happened on the site of modern-day Tallaght (Tamleacht, the Plain of the Plague), just southwest of Dublin, but more recently there have been disputes about the location. Tamleacht is a name found all over Ireland, in places where many have died at one time of an epidemic, and several of these are nearer to where Parthalon is said to have lived on the west coast.
After that, Ireland remained empty and silent for thirty years, say the legends. Perhaps there was no-one left after the plague to go adventuring on the sea; perhaps the fear of the infection kept new invaders away.20
It was thirty lean years that she
was empty in the face of war-champions,
after the death of her host throughout a week
Nemed
But then came Nemed and his followers, from the land of Scythia, far away on the very borders of Europe and Asia. The Scythians were a group of ancient tribes, mainly nomads, who came originally from Siberia and spread gradually outwards as far as the Black Sea. The name Nemed means ‘holy’ or ‘privileged’ in ancient Irish, and this new invader may well have been a druid – or, given that they came originally from Siberia, a shaman.
He and his tribe set sail from the Caspian Sea in forty-four ships, but only one survived to reach the Irish shore, after storms and catastrophes. One such disaster came about when the voyagers saw a golden tower floating in the sea and tried to conquer it. As a result, many of the boats were wrecked. An allegory or a real-life iceberg? One wouldn’t expect an iceberg along the complex route they must have taken from the Caspian Sea. Up into the Volga River and then down the Don into the Sea of Azov and on to the Black Sea, through the Bosphorus (if there was a way through, otherwise a bit of overland portaging would have been necessary) and into the Aegean. Then along the Mediterranean, around Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal), up past what is now France and across to Ireland. Nevertheless, it is an interesting echo of those iceberg encounters which occur in the ancient imramma or travel tales (see later sections of this chapter).21
Nemed landed at Great Island in Cork Harbour.
The Nemedians landed at Great Island in Cork Harbour, on Ireland’s south coast. In old Irish, Great Island was known as Oileán Ard Neimheadh.
Puzzlingly, though, we are told that Nemed’s wife died twelve days after their arrival, and was buried at Ard Macha or Armagh, which lies almost 400km to the north. Geographically, that isn’t really possible. But then, it was common for storytellers to ascribe a particular location to an important event when it seemed politic so to do. That is, if you are being housed and feasted in a noble hall or indeed a monastery or abbey in the north of the country, you would naturally emphasise the importance of local places in your tale.
A more practical solution to this puzzle of location lies in the woman’s name. Since she was called Macha, it is likely that the hill or cairn where her body was entombed would have been christened Ard Macha, wherever it was located. Irish place names, in both their original and their present-day forms, are a challenging study all on their own.22
After only nine years, Nemed and 3,000 of his followers also died of that endemic plague. He himself is said to have been buried on Great Island, where he first landed. The few who survived the infection were, naturally enough, somewhat less than enamoured with Ireland, and decided on emigration – but in three groups. Two retraced their sea-steps to Greece, while the third moved sideways to the neighbouring island of Britain, which had a very similar landscape and climate to Ireland.
The Fir Bolg and the Tuatha Dé Danaan
That section of the Nemedians who crossed to Britain decided to stay on, and thus became the ancestors of all future Britons. Those who went back to Greece, though, eventually returned to Ireland. One group had fared badly by landing among tribes where wealthy aristocrats enslaved the poorer people; thus these luckless survivors became slaves themselves. They are said to have been forced to work at gathering rich soil and carrying it to poorer land to improve crops, using large leather bags to do so. One imagines them longingly telling their children stories of the green land far to the northwest where crops grew almost by themselves, so fertile was the soil.
Eventually their descendants managed to escape, using those very leather bags to construct boats, and they journeyed northwest across the oceans to find this wonderful place. Later generations were to christen them the Fir Bolg, or Bag Men, on account of this. When they reached Ireland, they set about tilling the land and enjoying a free life at last. Not for long, though.23
The descendants of the second group that had gone south were quite different in outlook. The Greece of ancient times stretched far in many directions, and it would seem that they had settled in the Near East, where wise men studied ancient arts. Here they learned the complex skills of druidism, philosophy and even magic. A couple of centuries later, they returned to Ireland, this time as the Tuatha Dé Danaan.
Of course, it may not have happened exactly this way. The remnants of one tribe abandoned this island; much later, other groups came. There may not have been any connection at all. The Book of Invasions is adamant though that those who left as Nemedians came back as either the Fir Bolg or the Tuatha Dé Danaan. As is always the case, there is very likely to be a germ of historical truth buried somewhere in there.
Lazy beds on Inisheer, Aran Islands.
All the old sources agree though that the age of the Tuatha Dé Danaan was a golden one, an era of beauty and joy, music and song. Tall, golden-haired and powerful in magic, after defeating the Fir Bolg in battle, the Tuatha Dé Danaan did not 24drive them out entirely, but pushed them across to the western coast and its islands. Were the Fir Bolg then the ancestors of those who put to sea even today in lightweight currachs, and collect soil from the mainland to make ‘lazy beds’ for growing crops on the harsh and rocky Aran Islands?
So far, the legend of these settlers may read as a fairly peaceful sequence of events over centuries, even allowing for the inevitable battles for supremacy among waves of invaders. But a particular group, of a very different and more frightening nature, which threatened, attacked and oppressed all of these groups of settlers one after another, has been impatiently waiting its turn to come into the foreground. It has been kept out of the story until now, because if ever a tribe deserved full individual attention, it is this one.
Came from beneath the sea? The Fomorians
Who exactly were the Fomorians? Legends speak of them with fear and horror. The earliest tales describe them as monstrous creatures who came not over the sea but from under it, bringing terror to those dwelling peacefully on land. One-eyed and one-legged are included in their legendary attributes, but the abiding theme is of brutality, oppression, extortion. No question here of living in peaceful harmony, sharing the fruits of labour. The Fomorians descended in hordes from the ocean, attacking any settlement and demanding taxes in food, slaves and even children. Naturally enough, in later times, their story became blended with that of Viking raiders, but the originals were quite terrifying enough without any additions.25
Sea pirates certainly, but from where? Perhaps they were early Norsemen, but their physical difference to the land-based settlers of Ireland is always emphasised. Grotesque, dark-skinned, terrifying, seeking only to attack and seize, they were feared everywhere along the coast. And they did not scruple to join in battle when desperate groups of settlers tried to oppose their demands. Nemed’s people fought them, as did Parthalon’s, and the Tuatha Dé Danaan, the last finally managing to drive them from our shores.
Tradition has long held that their main outpost close to the Irish mainland was on Tory Island off Donegal, using as the main justification of their argument the ancient name of Balor’s island, Tor Inis, but a study by Henry Morris in the 1930s makes a very convincing argument for Dernish Island, just off the Sligo shore.
Derinish Island – was this the home of Balor?
26As part of his argument, he quotes the original text, which describes how the Nemedians, in one battle, attacked the Fomorians both by land and by sea. This would not make sense if Tory Island was the stronghold of the enemy, since it is already almost 15km (9 miles) off the Donegal coast.
Further, there is a very descriptive passage detailing how the forces are so engaged in fighting on the strand that they do not notice the tide rising around them, and eventually they are all drowned. This again doesn’t fit Tory’s rocky shoreline, but works very well into the geographical layout at Dernish – here there is a wide sandbank that is exposed at low water but covered at full tide, and the tide turns notoriously quickly.
How were the Fomorians so successful in their raids and their demands? What gave them the superior strength that enabled them to oppress so many tribes over such a long period?
Tory Island.27
Cattle still cross to Derinish at low tide, just as the Nemedians did so long ago.
Well, now we come to perhaps the most feared of all old Irish figures, one used by countless parents over the millennia to threaten their children into good behaviour. The Fomorians had a secret power – almost, you might say, a weapon of mass destruction – that they could unleash to wreak havoc on the strongest band of opposing warriors.
Balor of the Evil Eye
The Fomorians were malevolent and demonic, both in their looks and in their warlike ways, but Balor was feared most of all. Our legends are full of frightening stories about his dreadful appearance, most of all because of that one terrifying and fatal eye in the middle of his forehead. He had only to look on an opposing army for every one of them to fall dead. Because of this, some tales say, his eye was normally bandaged, and he was led by two of his followers until the moment came to remove the 28bandage and let the terror loose on the enemy. Other versions say there was a brass ring in his eyelid and it took seven men to lift it. Other tales describe seven separate layers of leather hiding it from view (seven being one of the magical numbers).
Aodh de Blacam, in his thrilling tale The Druid’s Cave (1920), transposes two young men of the present day back to that ancient time, where they lend their field glasses to King Conall so that he can see the dreaded figure approaching in the far distance:
’Tis Balor himself; who would not know that evil form? Balor the death-dealer; Balor whose deadly eye can slay man by its gaze even at a league’s distance! Balor is not dead: he has escaped, he lives, he is back!
King Conaill sees the dreaded Balor through modern field glasses.
29Eventually, according to one source, Balor was slain by Lugh of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who was in fact his daughter’s son, thereby fulfilling the prophecy that the monster would die at his own grandson’s hands. Lugh fired a slingshot with deadly accuracy right through that fatal eye, thrusting it back into the fiend’s head. Another tale, slightly later in date, says Balor survived the injury and was chased by Lugh all the way to the southernmost tip of Ireland at Mizen Head. Here he was killed, and his head was set on a large rock, which immediately shattered, forming his cairn.
There is more than an echo of both the Cyclops and Medusa in the tales of Balor, but that isn’t surprising, given the apparently regular journeys made between Ireland and Greece by these settlers. But who were the Fomorians, and did they really exist?
Early legends say they were monsters who came from beneath the sea itself; later versions describe them as sea raiders who used offshore islands as their bases and came ashore to harry those dwelling on the mainland. Given that the later Vikings were also in the habit of using offshore or estuarine islands as bases, they might well have been early Norsemen. Or, given the many descriptions of their dark skin and monstrous appearance, is there some other, more eerie explanation?
Still: Balor slain; the Fomorians driven back to sea. Now could the Tuatha Dé Danann settle down in peace and quiet? Alas, no. Yet another invader was already preparing to cross the sea to Ireland.30
The Coming of the Celts
The Milesians, later known as the Celts, had been moving inexorably westward across Europe for many thousands of years. It is said that they had long believed their destiny lay in green Inisfáil, the island on the edge of the world. (Again and again, we are reminded that people long ago, in far-off lands, already knew of Ireland and its desirability, and knew how to get there.)
The Celts were a warlike people, ready to fight for what they wanted, and as they made their final voyage from Galicia in northern Spain, they were fully prepared for battle. Landing in Kerry, they stormed to the court of the Tuatha Dé Danann and demanded submission. Those skilful diplomats claimed reprovingly that they had been given no warning, no time for preparation. Go back to sea, they said, beyond the ninth wave, and give us time for fair fight.
The Celts agreed and returned to their boats, sailing out well beyond the ninth wave. In Irish tradition, this is the all-important dividing point beyond which the laws of the land do not run. Offenders were often sent beyond the ninth wave for their crimes, in a boat without oars, so that the sea could decide what to do with them. In the case of the invading Celts though, the Tuatha Dé Danaan knew just what to do.
‘Let us trust to the powers,’ said the druids, ‘that they may never reach Ireland.’ With that the druids cast druidic winds after them, so that the bottom gravel was raised to the top of the sea, so great was the storm; so that the storm took them westward in the ocean till they were weary. ‘A druids’ wind is that,’ said Donn, son of Mil. ‘It is indeed,’ said Amergin, ‘unless it be higher than the mast; find out for us if it be so.’ Erannan, the youngest son of Mil, went up the mast, and said that it was not over them. 31
Storms and mist were used by the Tuatha de Danaan to prevent the Celts landing.
32Confirming that it was indeed a magic mist, Amergin, himself a wise and learned druid, chanted a countering spell, which calmed the storm at once. And so the Celts came to Ireland to stay. The Book of Invasions claims that they then defeated the Tuatha Dé Danann in battle and drove them into the sea.
However, local tradition refutes that, insisting instead that these magical, bright-haired people used their skills to disappear into the hills, making their home forever after in the Otherworld, from where they could still watch their beloved country.
The Tuatha de Danaan still live in our green hillsides.
33At certain times of year, it is still believed, they emerge and move around the upper world. They sometimes let themselves be seen, and often tempt unsuspecting young men and women to come away with them to Tír na nÓg, as Niamh of the Golden Hair did to Oisín, son of Finn McCool. On other occasions, a young Otherworld god might seduce a girl in the everyday world, who would then bring forth a stunningly beautiful and powerful warrior son, thus ensuring that the Tuatha Dé Danann genes would never quite die out. That was most likely to happen at the great summer and winter festivals of Bealtaine and Samhain, when the veil between this and the Otherworld is at its thinnest.
The coming of the Celts bridges the gap between legend and actual history, moving from a druidic world to a sternly factual one. From now on, invaders and raiders would be very real indeed. Well, except perhaps for one curious little group of settlers on the Cork/Kerry coast, who straddle the divide between tale and truth, remaining a mystery to this day.
The Ranties
You won’t hear much about this strange community except in a throwaway remark by a local – ‘Aren’t you a right Rantie?’ Even then, you might not find out much more than that a belligerent little tribe known as the Ranties are said to have lived in Kerry at one time. The historian Richard Caulfield did some research on the topic in the 1870s, establishing that these people had lived on Sugarloaf Mountain near Bantry, close to the border between 34Cork and Kerry, in the previous century, keeping very much to themselves.
Bantry Bay, where the Ranties are said to have lived.
On the eastern slope of this mountain, where the land borders on the sea, a curious race of people formerly dwelt, called ‘Ranties.’ A little before the close of the eighteenth century they possessed all the characteristics of a peculiar people …
In appearance they were very small indeed, apparently no more than four feet high. Caulfield attributes this to their determination to remain secretive and independent, marrying only among themselves and having as little to do with the outside world as possible. The language they spoke seems to have been some form of Irish, but was very difficult to understand.
The Ranties kept cows and goats, and lived principally on potatoes and fish. At certain times of the year, they would bring coral sand and seaweed to Bantry to sell to farmers for 35enriching the fields. Sailing small boats skilfully, they would bring their loads in on the full tide, hastening back to their mountain domain as soon as business had been transacted. It seems that they were a primitive maritime tribe who had followed the coastline and settled in this part of the country in ancient times because it suited their preferences, being wild and remote, and lacking roads.
One distinctive characteristic of the Rantie women was their habit of wearing red cloaks. The dye for these bright garments was obtained from shellfish by a secret method, jealously guarded (much like the ‘Tyrian purple’ of ancient Phoenicia). These cloaks may have been similar to the traditional Kerry cloak, with its many pleats and capacious hood, but, given the extravagant use of fabric in that design, those of the Rantie women may have been more economical in cut.
A local legend states that when the French fleet was threatening to invade in 1796, Lord Bantry ordered all of these women to assemble on the side of Sugarloaf to give the effect of many English redcoat soldiers, but this is unlikely to be true. Given their shyness, and their near-obsessive desire to avoid contact with other communities, the chances of their being, first of all, located, and second, persuaded to undertake such a task, are extremely slim. It’s a nice image though.
A severe epidemic of cholera in 1832, followed some years later by the Famine, in all likelihood spelled the end of the Ranties and their mountainside community. Those who survived went on to intermarry with neighbouring communities and, probably reluctantly, adopt a more modern way of life. 36There is an ancient burial place at Tracashel, called Killeenah, which is held to be the last resting place of the Ranties.
Those who had any contact with this strange community in the eighteenth century said that the Ranties themselves believed they had come from ‘the North’, but whether that meant Ulster or further north again – across the sea in the Hebrides, Shetland, the Faroes – was never made clear. Perhaps they didn’t know themselves.
One knowledgeable Irish scholar at the time of Caulfield’s research claimed that they came originally from Ulster around the sixteenth century, and were by nature and inclination robbers and plunderers, who chose a remote region on the coast as somewhere they were not easily to be discovered or apprehended. Another diligent researcher claimed that there was a similar race of people living at a place called Togher Rann, near Lahinch on the Clare coast. There is also a townland known as Ranafast in the Rosses in Donegal, again on the sea coast. It is appropriate to remember that ‘Rann’ was the Norse sea-god. Did the Ranties originally come from Norway? Could they possibly have had any connection to the dreaded Fomorians?
FANTASTIC VOYAGES
The imramma and echtrae
