Donegal.

            My Donegal family in a chronological order: Kelly, Logue, McAteer, Coll, Rogers, Murray, Friel and Green. With I am sure many more to be identified.

My mother’s family originates from Co. Donegal in the North West of Ireland.  Donegal  an English rendition of Dun na nGall, an area which prior to the 17^th century would have been part of Tír Chonaill more of which later. Dun na nGall in English is ‘Fort of the foreigner’ a reference probably to the Norsemen who would have recognised the coastline and ventured to contact, attack, make pacts with, or be seen off by, the locals.  

All my maternal great-great grandparents were from Fanad in north Donegal except Ellen Murray of Barnes Termon (about 10 crow flying miles from Fanad). They were John Kelly and Anne Rogers, John McAteer and Sarah McAteer, William Logue and Ellen Murray, Hugh Coll and Margaret McAteer, Hugh Coll’s parents were Daniel Coll and Catherine Friel, Margaret McAteer’s were James McAteer and Margaret Green, all these lived in the early 19th century some indeed in the late 18th.

Fanad is a peninsula is bounded on the east by Lough Swilly, Loch Súilí in the native tongue, súile in English is ‘eyes’ tá súil is ‘hope’ in English, I’d like to think the name came from one of these. Loch Súilí is a glacial fjord, which would have been a very familiar type of inlet to the Norsemen. Fanad’s western demarcation is Mulroy Bay or Cuan na Maoil Ruaidh ‘Bay of the red stream’ in English (1). Cuan na Maoil Ruaidh is a convoluted sea loch which winds into, probes and widens around thereby defining western Fanad, it fights its way into the sea through ‘the narrows’ now straddled by the Harry Blaney Bridge(2). The northern boundary of Fanad is the North Atlantic, where our long summer holidays indulged a dip in the sea followed by fishing for Pollack, Glasson, Ballan and Mackerel from the rocks, at what we knew as Ballywhoriskey which the 18^th/19^th century English cartographers made up from Baile Ui Fuaruisce the town of the son or grandson of ‘cold water’, fuar- cold uisce-water all of which I know now but did not then!

Donegal always seem to pull me back, when I go people say welcome home, even though it was my mother’s childhood home. We are now lucky enough to have a house there, a constant for the enlarging, extending family. But it is just not me (nor my brothers and sisters) that Donegal in general and Fanad in particular will have affected so I look for and enjoy writings on this wild county, hence this blog. My go to source initially has been: Lacey, Brian (2006). Cenel Conaill and the Donegal Kingdoms, AD 500-800. Four Courts Press, Dublin. ISBN 978-1-85182-978-1. As Brian Lacey notes Donegal’s influence on early medieval Ireland was significant but often under estimated, he considers that the two if not three first king of Ireland –even if slightly exaggerated claims- were from Donegal, as were early Christian heroes such as Colum Cille and Adomnan(3). Thus there should be plenty to keep me going.

This is a poignant snippet to get under way with, my GG Grandfather’s brother Dominic Logue was picked up during the Battle of Ranny in 1813 sent Van Diemen's Land Australia at the age of 11 or 12 years. He was going to Kerrykeel for groceries. This is something on that ‘battle’, although the thought of a child being sentenced and sent for penal transportation is foul, barbaric, and inhuman but what else would one expect of the authority of that time!

I have not been able to find out more on Dominic.

But the Battle of Ranny.

The background would be, Fánaid and Ros Goill Catholics might be accosted at fairs in Rathmelton or Milford and Protestants then beaten at the pig-markets of Rosnakill or Carrigart, or vice versa. Partisan policing by the yeomanry exacerbated the situation; the Milford Rangers, for instance, shot and bayoneted at least three Catholics when clearing the town fair in May 1811. The worst single incident of this sort, which threatened to spark a conflagration across a much wider district, occurred in May 1813 when five men died in an affray at Ranny, outside Kerrykeel. Two Catholics who attacked John Williamson, a young Protestant, for sporting an Orange lily on the way home from Milford Fair were themselves severely beaten by their victim’s friends; Fánaid Catholics threatened revenge against Protestants if they attended the next fair in Kerrykeel; on the fair day, seven or eight armed Protestants, including Williamson, assembled on a hill overlooking the town; Williamson displayed himself to the Catholic crowd at about four o’clock and ‘several hundreds’ then pursued the party into Ranny; the Protestants fired, killing two Catholics and wounding another before barricading themselves in a house; the Catholics burned the building, killing three Protestants as they tried to escape the flames and then ransacked the village until sunset. (4).

Finally some pictures, of Gortnatra, Mulroy Bay and Knockalla.

Sunset Mulroy bay from Gortnatra

Mulroy Bay

Gortnatra South

Gortnatra South

Knockalla from Gortnatra South

I hope all this will be of interest; I will try to follow up at least monthly. Comments or advice will always be welcome.

1.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulroy_Bay accessed 7th Jan 2017

2.    http://www.creeslough.com/HaryBlaneyBridge.html accessed 7th Jan 2017

3.    Lacey, Brian (2006). Cenel Conaill and the Donegal Kingdoms, AD 500-800. Four Courts Press, Dublin

4.    Hugh Dorian, Breandán Mac Suibhne, David Dickson (2001). The outer edge of Ulster: a memoir of social life in nineteenth-century Donegal. University of Notre Dame Press, Indiana

Bibliography

Lacey, Brian (2006). Cenel Conaill and the Donegal Kingdoms, AD 500-800. Four Courts Press, Dublin

Hugh Doherty, Arthur Lynch, Aine Ni Dhuibhne (2015) Oughterlin to Lough Swilly, A local history.

Liam Ronayne (Author), Pat Cowley (Illustrator) (1998) Donegal Highlands: Paintings and Stories from Northwest Donegal , Donaghadee N. Ireland: Cottage Publications.