Grianan In Books
Blacker's Discovery Of Grianan In The 1800's
Dr. Bernard's Restoration Of Grianan 1878
Danger Signs - A more permanent picture
Come Together Dates & Deadlines Revisit
Open Letter To The Taoiseach, May 2007
The Billeting Of Stones 21st Century Style
How To Demolish A Monument
Stories, Legends, Myths
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All places have a history.
But some have more than others.
Discovering the story of Grianan Aileach opens the door to the beginning of the history of Ireland with riches as outstanding as the views from its walls.
Published 1974
The Seat of Power: Aileach11
To anyone acquainted with the history of Ireland the name Aileach speaks of kings and kingdoms, of battles and fierce forays, of festive gatherings and of cultural events. It suggests great councils that were held on its summit and momentous decisions that were made in its halls. For a thousand years the history of the north was moulded and shaped from this seat of power. The lives of the people who dwelt in the four corners of the whole island were affected and influenced by the rulers of the Kingdom of the North whose centre of authority Aileach was. The kingdoms of Aileach and An Fochla were names which the annalists recorded often because the activities of the ruler who dwelt at this northern seat of power were important and far-reaching in the life of the whole nation.
Along this way when the world was young came a race of men who sought and found a land of peace and plenty. Their rulers required a location easily defended, a natural fortress and one free from threats of seasonal change. In the extreme south of Inis Eoghain they found such in a hill, flat-topped and extensive. To the east and west lay the inlets we know today as Foyle and Swilly. On the south and north the waters met to make an island. To those early arrivals the hill of Aileach offered all they desired. A fort was built on its summit. Such was the beginning of Aileach Neid.
The name Aileach is associated with an area, a kingdom and a hill. The name in earlier times extended to a district in the south of Inis Eoghain. Evidence of this is seen in the townlands of Elaghmore and Elaghbeag. The siting of an O Dochartaigh castle in the first-named townland gave rise to a controversy regarding the correct location of that Aileach to which there are many references in the various annals.
The hill of Aileach is situated in the townland of Carrowreagh, parish of Templemore. In some records it is mentioned as Oileach Frigreann in reference to the architect of one of its early fortifications. The word aileach is stated to mean “rock” by the noted lexicographer Patrick S. Dinneen. Perhaps the word is a survival of some ancient and pre-celtic language?
Neolithic man established himself here in the dim prehistoric past. The Tuatha De Danann held their mystic rites on this hill-top. Here came the first Milesian lords to find out about the land of Erin.
The Celts arrived and became master of this land and in the inter-Celtic struggle Aileach passed from one faction to another. Then came Eoghan, son of Niall, to establish a line and to found a city here. His descendents were to remain as lords for over six centuries and Aileach was to be their seat of power.
Up the slopes there came one day in the fifth century a foreigner, Patrick by name. His was no mission of high politics, nor did he desire booty or reward. He brought a simple message of peace and love. Its acceptance by the Gael did not mean the overthrow of the old-established way of life. On the contrary, it gave an injection which stabilised and purified the Irish pattern of living. Christianity was to be the golden thread wich would run through the fabric of national life from generation to generation. It enriched, it sustained and it gave endurance. The Celtic soul responded in full and the Irish set their own distinctive seal on Christianity at home and in far-off missionary land.
In the seventh century a native army, under Fionsneachta, son of Donncha, assailed Aileach and laid it waste. The Norsemen came up the hill in the ninth century and again in the tenth to plunder, to rob and to pillage. Aileach, nevertheless, endured.
One bright morning in the ninth century the people of Inis Eoghain, as they tended their flocks and tilled their fields. saw an important party pass northward into the upper area of the peninsula. The members of the royal family of Aileach were on their way to receive at the seashore an equally royal party from Scotland. Maol Mhuire, the daughter of the Scottish King Kenneth Mac Alpain,12 stepped out onto the land of Inis Eoghain. Forward to greet her moved Aodh Fionnliath. Aileach had got a new queen and Aodh a bride.
The Scottish princess was not coming to a foreign land. The links between these two Gaelic peoples were close and they had their source in a common origin. They shared a language, a culture and a rich corpus of tradition.
As Maol Mhuire moved about her new land and shared the life of its people she was never remote from her native Albain. From Inis Eoghain she saw daily the mountain tops of Jura, of Ceann Tire and other areas peeping up against the nort-eastern skyline to greet her and to remind her of the people who dwelt there.
In 1101 a major disaster befell the royal palace at Aileach. Donall Mac Lochlainn had some time before invaded Munster and destroyed the royal seat of Ceann Cora. Muireartach O Briain led his army northwards, plundering and burning as he advanced. Aileach was demolished. To wreak his vengeance on the house of Mac Lochlainn he ordered his soldiers each to carry back to Limerick a stone of the palace of Aileach. Perhaps the annalist’s manner of describing how complete was the demolition is the interpretation of this hyperbole. The memory of this terrible event remained long in the mind of the men of the north. The curse of Colm Cille, the favourite treatment of Donegal people for their enemies, was placed on the despoilers of royal Aileach. The believer in this rite saw the fulfilment of the curse well-nigh five centuries later when in 1599 Aodh Rua O Donaill ravaged Thomond, punishing the descendants of the the infamous Muireartach.
The poet Mac Brody - Maoilin Og - wrote:
“It was destined that, in revenge of Aileach,
O Hugh Roe, the Prophet announced
Thy troops should come to the house of Maigh Adhair,
From the north the aid of all is sought.”
It would seem that this devastation of Aileach brought to an end its existence as a seat of power in the north. The days of its glory as a centre of Authority thus came to a close after an aeon stretching far back into pre-historic times.
Throughout the centuries, as Aileach gazed sphinx-like on the island of Eoghan, it has seen there a vast train of events since man first set foot in this remote area.
Neolithic man, first dwellers in the peninsula, gave way in time to the Celt. Successive Celtic conquerors held sway until the advent of Eoghan, son of Niall. The Christian message was brought and transformed its people, Norse invaders came and went. Cineal Eoghain yielded Inis Eoghain to Clann Dalaigh. Then came the Norman lordship, which gave way again to Irish dominion.
O Donaill and his vassal O Dochartaigh established sovereignty in the peninsula and were ceaselessly challenged by Cineal Eoghain, Irish rule ended when the English came and established foreign government over this northern principality.
The “indomitable Irishry” again asserted their power and their rights. Three centuries of Saxon sway ended in our own century and the descendants of the ancient line were again masters in their own land.
And still Royal Aileach waits, watches and guards, rich in memories, So it will continue to witness the changing scene until La an tSleibhe, when the curtain falls for the last time on the Island of Eoghan, son of Niall.13
11. I Annals of Ulster; II Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland; III The History of Ireland, Abbe MacGeoghegan
12. Kenneth I died in 860 after reigning for 16 years as king of Dal Riada. He had three daughters: one married a prince in Strathclyde, the second married Olaf the White, the Norse king of Dublin, and the third as stated. See Dictionary of National Biography.
13. There is a reference to the "Bell of Aileach”. According to one writer this is the ssame bell as that found in 522 A.D. when Colm Cille opened the grave of Patrick. The record speaks of the “Bell of the Testament” and states that it was then given to Armagh. The bell would seem to have come later into the custody of the king of Aileach, Donall Mac Lochlainn, the Ardri, gave the bell to Donall Mac Amhalai when he was made successor of Patrick at Armagh. It is more correctly known as the “bell of Armagh”. See I Annals of Ulster; II Inis-Owen and Tirconnell, W.J. Doherty.
Photos courtesy of Paola Arosio & Diego Meozzi www.stonepages.com
Grianan Aileach's demise and dilapidation has been of great concern to me for the last six years and it is most unlikely that it will go away any time soon, rather the opposite.
Since the day I stood for the first time in front of this force of grandeur and pride I have been bound by its spell, and it does personally hurt to see how one blow after the other is served while Grianan Aileach is already on its knees. Utter inalation by restoration. Grianan is being taken apart piece by piece until it as well will join the long line of failed deceptions and will be discarded, so that one day a strange gathering indeed will stand on its remains and conclude, that it is hardly worthwhile to keep all this rubble on such a magnificent spot.
This is a journey of crossing over and its outcome is not as decisive yet as taking the sword from a hero's hand.
From Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
The bardic poems of Tadhg Dall Ó Huiginn (1550-1591)
INISHOWEN
1] Speak on, thou castle of Oileach, many a thing must one ask of thee, thou fair, long-standing dwelling, regarding the warriors of Ireland.
2] Let us learn from thee, tell us, thou ancient, bright-lawned castle, of those who invaded Bregian Banbha, of the forays and seizures of the Gael.
3] Each thing of which I have knowledge will be got from me, hearken, what time were better to reveal it? downwards from the pouring of the Flood.
4] I know, as a rare branch of knowledge, of six seizures in turn after the Flood on the cool, moist, white-surfaced, dewy plain.
5] The coming of Pártholón from the land of Greece, and of the Sons of Nemhedhto the country of Fál, the third age of the world, it is I that best remember them.
6] How wast thou at first, thou lovely, changeful castle, when Pártholón of Bregia's haven had come to occupy the Field of the Gael?
7] Upon the coming of Pártholón I was enduring my misfortune in this land, with no enclosed meadow or stone rampart, but all an oaken thicket.
8] How was it with thee during the sovranty of the Children of Nemhedh, when thy form had been changed? Tell us, thou castle of limewashed [...](?) walls.
9] I was a smooth plain, without thickets, without woods, the border slope of my bright, steed-haunted lea was a splendid mound of assembly.
10] Of my bending wood with its graceful fruit-trees not a root was left in the ground—small since that has been the growth of my noble forest—from the might of Nemhedh's saintly race.11] How long wast thou thus, a smooth, brightly glistening slope, without house or household, thou greens-swarded castle of Oileach?
12] Until the coming of the Tuath Dé Danann to the spreading woods of Fódla. I was, as such were unfitting for me, empty of house or dwelling.
13] Dost thou remember who were the first of the comely Tuath Dé who inhabited thee, thou tower amidst supple, flowering stems?
14] The Children of mighty, honey-mouthed Cearmaid, keen-weaponed warriors, a glistening band from the Bregian Boyne, were the first that entered into fellowship with me.
15] For my smooth, fertile hills the Children of Cearmaid forsook stately Cathair Chröoinn, hereditary citadel of the race.
16] A while after they had come to me the Sons of Míl of Spain wrested Banbha from the Children of Cearmaid without a division as profit of battle.
17] From that day to this the lords of Míl's race, white-handed host, dealers of heavy blows, have been defending Ireland within me.
18] From that time on I have never lacked one high-king in succession to another, or a provincial chief who excelled any in Ireland's swan-necked plain.
19] From me five-and-twenty kings of Róch's, valiant, generous race seized the Dwelling of Dá Thí, thereby my dignity is ennobled.
20] And after the Faith there were crowned from me six-and-twenty kings of the blood of fair Conall, and of Niall's line, fruit from (?) each cluster were they.
21] Then was I held alternately by the noble kindreds of Niall's seed—a smooth [...](?) plain with lofty stems, another Tara of the men of Ireland.22] Since from thee all other tidings have been obtained, from the beginning until the end of time, thou fortress amidst pleasant, brown-surfaced hills, which company hast thou found the best?
23] The wondrous warriors from Ulster's soil, Fiamhain's seed, the blood of Dochartach, that bright band are the best whom we have known from of yore.
24] O tapering tower of smooth, even walls, who is it that excels even amongst the lords of Fiamhain's race, stems from [...] of Frewen?
25] Were we considering it forever, John son of Felim, of the clear soft eye fore which the sea is shallow, would be the choicest of Fiamhain's fair stock.
26] O'Doherty of the castle of Oileach—why should it be asked?—rosy, bright-hued countenance, he is my one darling in his time.
27] Though Fiamham's seed are the best of the noble stocks of Ireland, they are as stars about the full moon, John is the one choice of them all.
28] It is he that has most possessions, he is the one who bestows most gifts, in the benevolence of Iomghán's, valorous scion there comes no ebb.
29] It is unlikely that any should attempt to surpass Felim's heir in his name for generosity; as a plain lies beneath a hill so is every other renown in comparison with his.
30] Considering the fruitfulness of his territory, the goodliness of his kingdom, why would he not do all that he does?—no man should marvel thereat.
31] 'The paradise of Ireland' is the name for that stretch of land which is his; never did eye behold a finer territory than the soil of its plains and hillocks.
32] From sea-locked Fanad to the bright streams of Loch Foyle, from Malin to the plain of Bearta, a lovely and most famous land.33] Land where waves are gentlest, where granaries are loftiest, angelic country of shallow streams, 'Land of Promise' of the men of Ireland.
34] Well is it placed, between the sea and the woods, level strands beyond far-stretching plains, wondrous, fairy-like regions.
35] Smooth moors amidst its forests, peaked hills beyond the moors, a yellow-hazelled wood by the fair plain, a billowing sea as a hedge around it.
36] Good is this land [...], better is he who has custody of it; alas, if one should see over any part of Ulster a king that did not surpass Ireland.
37] Were his the supremacy of Bregia's plain he would spend it and defend it; if prosperity according to benevolence be just the lord of Fahan should be prosperous.
38] If the contents of his house are considered, and the number of his household—it is not a superfluity which should be grudged to him—no superfluity (?) of riches is found.
39] Thou man who proclaimest what the high-king of Fiamhain's stock possesses, grudge it not to the princely hero of Fál, greater is his spending than his gains.
40] If many speak truth, did not the' house of Oileach fall to John, the thronged dwelling of O'Doherty would not be a shelter for any in Ulster.
41] This is the several statement of those who have journeyed the plains of Banbha—all the delight of Ireland would be found in the labyrinthine (?) four-towered court.
42] Since Tara received Ruadhán's interdiction against the men of Fál, the lords of Conn's land have dwelt in the pleasant, fairy-like, comely castle.
English translation by Eleanor Knott
