TRANSCRIBERS’ NOTE
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THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.
| Number 4. | SATURDAY, JULY 25, 1840. | Volume 1. |
CAISLEAN-NA-CIRCE, OR THE HEN’S CASTLE.
Our prefixed illustration gives a near view of one of the mostinteresting ruins now remaining in the romantic region ofConnemara, or the Irish Highlands, and which is no less remarkablefor its great antiquity than for the singularly wildand picturesque character of its situation, and that of its surroundingscenery. It is the feature that gives poetic interestto the most beautiful portion of Lough Corrib—its upperextremity—where a portion of the lake, about three miles inlength, is apparently surrounded and shut in by the rocky andprecipitous mountains of Connemara and the Joyce country,which it reflects upon its surface, without any object to breaktheir shadows, or excite a feeling of human interest, but theone little lonely Island-Castle of the Hen. That an objectthus situated—having no accompaniments around but thosein keeping with it—should, in the fanciful traditions of animaginative people, be deemed to have had a supernaturalorigin, is only what might have been naturally expected; andsuch, indeed, is the popular belief. If we inquire of the peasantryits origin, or the origin of its name, the ready answeris given, that it was built by enchantment in one night by acock and a hen grouse, who had been an Irish prince andprincess!
There is, indeed, among some of the people of the district adim tradition of its having been erected as a fastness by anO’Conor, King of Connaught, and some venture to conjecturethat this king was no other than the unfortunate Roderick,the last King of Ireland; and that the castle was intended byhim to serve as a place of refuge and safety, to which he couldretire by boat, if necessity required, from the neighbouringmonastery of Cong, in which he spent the last few years of hislife: and it is only by this supposition that they can accountfor the circumstance of a castle being erected by the O’Conorsin the very heart of a district which they believe to have beenin the possession of the O’Flahertys from time immemorial.But this conjecture is wholly erroneous, and the true foundersand age of this castle are to be found in our authentic but asyet unpublished Annals, from which it appears certain thatthe Hen’s Castle was one of several fortresses erected, withthe assistance of Richard de Burgo, Lord of Connaught,and Lord Justice of Ireland, by the sons of Roderick, the lastmonarch of the kingdom. It is stated in the Annals of Connaught,and in the Annals of the Four Masters, at the year1225, that Hugh O’Conor (son of Cathal Crovedearg), Kingof Connaught, and the Lord Justice of Ireland, Richard DeBurgo, arriving with their English at the Port of InisCreamha, on the east side of Lough Corrib, caused HughO’Flaherty, the Lord of West Connaught, to surrender the[Pg 26]island of Inis Creamha, Oilen-na-Circe, or the Hen’s Island,and all the vessels of the lake, into Hugh O’Conor’s hands, forassurance of his fidelity.
From this entry it would appear that the Hen’s Island, aswell as the island called Inis Creamha, had each a castle o