20/07/2018
EXTRACT FROM
Old Rathmullan by John J. Silke, Donegal Annual Vol. XI, No.1 (1974) p.24
These Mac Sweeneys lived in princely style. It is said of Maolmhuire, grandson of Murchadh Mear, that he was so generous towards the poets that he cut off his ring-finger to give them a gold ring that they demanded and that he could not pull off. The Mac Sweeneys were always princely in their gifts to the literati, 'Fanad, well of generosity', the poets said. Maolmhuire and his household used to lay eight score hilted swords ornamented with gold and silver on the altar of Clorldavaddog church at Mass every Sunday, and they brought with them to Mass - at least on big feasts - twelve score satchels (made from dog-skins) filled with books and musical instruments. Maolmhuire's mother was a Mag Fhinnghaile, which may help to explain his noble ways and the fact that he had a brother a parish priest - Dubhgall the Parson. Fosterfathers of the young Mac Sweeneys were the Ó’Hoirealla family, O Herrills, a good Fanad family; and the O'Donnells fostered with the Mac Sweeneys at Doe and Fanad. Mac Sweeney Fanad got the right to sit at O'Donnel1's right hand when he visited him at his houses at Murvagh (near Ballyshannon) or near Donegal. MacCoilin was Mac Sweeney's butler or cupbearer, but left to take service with O'Donnell in the time of Turlach Caoch. This Turlach ( 1458-99) had a standing retinue of 150 men in his house, besides wives and other womenfolk, musicians, poets and inferior servants. So it must have been a lively household.
The Mac Sweeneys fought a great deal among themselves, and also all over Ulster and into Connacht, against O'Neill and other enemies of Tír Chonaill, against English and Scots, and sometimes against O'Donnell even. They fought indeed allover Ireland, and were a 'castle of bones', winning more often than they lost. They were inaugurated, just like the O'Donnells, at Kilmacrenan, and they were inaugurated by O'Firghil (O'Friel). In the fifteenth century the O'Donnells were strong and made Mac Sweeney Fanad pay six beeves three times a year, in summer, harvest and winter, to be delivered at Léim Í Thirchirt, 'O'Tirchirt's Leap', on the borders of Fanad and Kilmacrenan.
In 1461 there was a great battle at Kinnaweer. Maolmhuire Mac Sweeney and Aodh Rua O'Donnell there defeated the reigning O'Donnell and Mac Sweeney, and made themselves chieftains in their place.
Ruaidhrí, Maolmhuire's son, and chieftain from 1472 to 1518, was if anything even a greater warrior than his father. When we find him fighting not only with his overlord, Aodh Rua, against the Burkes and O'Connors and O'Nei!ls, but also against Aodh O'Donnell and Mac Sweeney Doe at the famous battle of Ard an Ghaire (Ardingary), parish of Aughinunshin, we get some idea of the chaotic nature of the times.
It was Ruaidhrí who rebuilt the castle of Rathmullen, when it fell (1516). In this century the family's chief seat was at Rathmullan, and they also had a residence at Morass ('Menrice’), near Red Haven (Mulroy Bay). Red Haven separated the countries of MacSweeney Fanad and MacSweeney Doe. Ruaidhrí’s wife, Máire, daughter of Eoghan O Máille, in the same year 1516 erected -or possibly re-erected - the Carmelite priory, and from Munster came a community of the 'friars of Clary under their prior, Suibhne son of Aodh son of Donnsleibhe of CIann Suibhne of Connacht. And there two years later was laid to rest, in the Carmelite habit, after 46 years in the lordship, Ruaidhrí the greatest warrior of the great Mac Sweeneys, whose mother was an O'Doherty. He was also a great patron of poets and schools, and in our imagination we can conjure up these schools, and their classes in poetry and history, and the poets who came to Mac Sweeney's castle, the Wards, the O'Cléirighs, even the great Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn (who compared the castle to the ancient fortress of Allen), and the scribes such as Cíothruadh MagFhionnghai1 (Ginnell) from Tory, who wrote a great deal of what survives to tell us about the family at the behest of the Lady Mary, and often cursed his bad pen, and who was a much-married man, one of his wives, Black-haired Mór (Mary), belng something of a gabster.
Between 1399 (when Richard II, having failed to 'supplant' the 'rough rug-headed kerns', had retreated hurriedly to England) and up until the reformation, there was a great revival of Gaelic culture and power, so that the Gaelic tide threatened the very existence of the Pale and lapped at the walls of Dublin itself. Irish culture in all this period dominated that of Scotland; there was in fact one homogeneous culture embracing most of Ireland and the highlands of Scotland. There were schools of history, poetry, law, medicine and music all over, and scholars and students passing to and fro, and some even going to university at Glasgow. Fanad shared in this ferment, and shared too in the pe*******on of Irish culture by the Renaissance Latin and vernacular literature of the period. We know this from the MS which Cíotruadh Mag Fhionnghail made for Lady Mary, 1513-14 and which Fr. Walsh describes. It contains devotional treatises, lives of the saints (such as St. Catherine of Alexandria, who was greatly honoured in Ireland; she was, e.g., patron of Killybegs), exemplary tales, and so on, all of European origin, but with an Irish twist - as for example the story of the Fortunate Island.
This was also a time of building of friaries, and they were sorely needed. After Kinnaweer, for instance. Turloch Cairbreach O'Donnell was maimed, by having a hand and foot cut off - indeed a common enough barbarism. After the turmoil of the fourteenth century, the century of the Avignon captivity. the great western schism and the black death – the mendicant friars were first to attempt to pick up the pieces in Europe and put them together again. The reform among the friars - the Observant reform - came to Ireland, and Gaelic Ireland, Connacht and Ulster, was to the forefront in this reform among the Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians during the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The Franciscan reformers were brought to Donegal by Lady Nuala O’Donnell, daughter of O'Brien, 1474. They must have flourished here, for in 1497, for example, we find the Donegal friars sending sixteen of their number to take over the friary at Carrickfergus. Not many years later others went to found a friary at Dromohaire. Nuala O'Donnell's sister, Margaret, wife of O'Rourke, had a hand in this last move. Not to be outdone, Lady Mary Mac Sweeney brought the Carmelites to RathmuIlan in 1516. We know very little of these friars, whose abbey of the Blessed Virgin Mary stood for a hundred years, but with a woman of such exemplary piety introducing them they must have been active in restoring religion. Perhaps Bishop Menelaus MacCarmacan ( 1484-1515), whose famlly seems to have been associated wIth Clondavaddog and who was a reforming bishop - he was buried in the Observant habit at Donegal -¬had a hand in introducing the Carmelites. Here lies a field of study for the local historian. Máire heard Mass each day, sometimes more than once. three days each week she fasted on bread and water, and kept the Lenten and winter (Advent) fasts, and the Golden Fridays. These were twelve Fridays during the year on which a black fast was kept. She also had built a great hall for the Friars Minor in Donegal, and had many other churches built in Ulster and Connacht. (Was Killydonnell founded by the MavSweeneys? The houses of the third Order Regular, plentiful in Connacht and Ulster, were also evidence of the spread of reform).
It was in memory of her son, Ruaidhrí Óg, who died in 1506, that Máire had the priory built. and his remains were the first laid there. We are told that he was a noble, princely man. He travelled many of the countries of the world and could speak all the common languages - which would be, besides Irish, Latin, French and English, perhaps even Spanish and Italian. We can picture him perhaps going on pilgrimage to St. James's shrine in Compostela San Sein - or to Rome. We know of Irish chiefs going to Compostela in 1501, 1508 and 1518, and Hugh O'Donnell went on pilgrimage to Rome in 1510. Abroad. thcse chiefs would come info contact with the whole world of High Renaissance culture. They would see the new St. Peter's rising in Rome. or watch Michaelangelo at work on his frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine. They would see rising the magnificent renaissance Royal Hospital at Compostela, designed by Enrique Egas, and begun in1501, paid for by funds devoted for the purpose by Ferdinand and Isabella, funds which had been raised on the occasion of the capture of Granada (1492) and they would feel some of the excitement caused by the whole ferment of Renaissance ideas, artistic, intellectual, political, and spiritual too, now being exported across the Alps from Italy.
There was much to talk about at Rathmullan in those days, talk of travel, talk of battles, for these were violent times, and many were the hostings, to Knockdoe, to Omagh, to Farsed Swilly, made by the three Mac Sweeneys at the command of their lord, and talk too of religion. When Ruaidhrí the chief died, he was buried in the Carmelite habit, and when Máire died (1523), she was too. Remembering how women in Irish history have been forgotten, we should remember with gratitude the zeal of these three pious ladies - and they were not alone - the Ladies Nuala, Margaret and Máire. Not that all their time was spent in praying. Hospitality was a mark of great households, and the chroniclers loved to praise the 'general houses of hospitality', where everyone was welcome. There was much entertaining to do at Rathmuilan, when the MacSweenev cousins came from Doe or Rahan, or when O'Donnell came to visit his children, or when in-laws like the O'Dohertys or O'Malleys came. And there were singing, and stories, and fidcheall, and the hunt. The ladies too knew the outdoor life. We are told (A.F.M., 1532)that Mary, daughter of MacSweeney Fanad and wife to O’Boyle, died when thrown from her horse. The Gore-Booths did not invent the type of outdoor Irish woman!
Sixteen years after the building of Rathmullan castle and priory Turlach (chief, 1529-44) began the castle of Carraig Fheile in Magh Ross, 1532. The last chieftain to be inaugurated was Donal, in 1570. In his reign Red Hugh was captured, with other hostages, including Donal’s son, Donal Gorm. When Red Hugh rose out, Mac Sweeney Fanad followed his lord, but in 1607 he tried to save what he could. His son attacked the boats' crews who were taking firewood and water aboard the earls' ship, and he himself denounced the earls as traitors. For such services he received 2,000 acres in the Plantation.
The towns and lands of Rindooghargie. Carrownamoney, Lehadmore, Glinskie, Doaghmore, Ararhinibiny, and Arhirinimore, one quarter each; 5/16th parts of the quarter of Cashell; Bolyheirman, Rindrome, Twome, Fanavolty, Carrow¬-Inillan, C'oolederry. Glannavadd, and Dowaghknabine, one quarter each; arid Carrowblagh, 1/2 quarter; 2,000 acres in all. . .
He lost Rathmullan, however, Bishop Andrew Knox receiving possession of the castle and priory in 1618.
This incidentally ended a chapter in Irish Carmelite history. At the reformation, the government was able to suppress only those religious houses within the area of effective control. Generally speaking, monks and friars west of the Shannon managed to hold out until reorganization, directed from the continent, became possible in the reign of James I. Thus four or five of the Carmelite monasteries continued to function, under the protection of the local lords, and in 1570 Father Mahon Mac Sweeney, M. Th., of Rathmullan, was entrusted with the government of the province, being appointed vicar provincial. He attended the general chapters in Piacenza (1575) and Rome {1580), and was confirmed in office. In 1600 he was still provincial; but, happily for him, he was apparently dead before Bishop Knox took over the priory.
Knox built up the priory and castle in Tudor style. A century ago there was still a solid Elizabethan building there. The priory, with its pointed Gothic arches, had over its east window large figure of St. Patrick, in a good state of preservation. ¬
Meanwhile Donal Mac Sweeney built himself a new house. Pynnar reported in l619:
(He) hath 2,000 acres, called Roindoberg and Caroocomony. He hath built a good Bawne, and a House, all of Lime and Stone, in which, with his Family, he dwelleth.
This, the last chief of Fanad, was succeeded in possession of the 2,000 acres by his son, Donal Gorm, who died in1637. In 1654 his widow, Honora (daughter of Mac Sweeney of Doe), and her son, Donal Og, owned the major part of a total of 2,171 forfeited acres held by the Mac Sweeneys in Clondavaddog. Morass Castle was then 'an little old Pile of Stone', but the church and the 'little Bawne some tyme belongeing to Donell Gorm McSwyne' still stood, although it appears that the bawn, with its house, was no longer lived in. Thereafter there was nothing for the great MacSweeneys of Fanad but poverty or exile. O'Donovan was told in 1835 of a Mac Sweeney, a tinker, who claimed to be the proper owner of Rathmullan. As the annalists said, Ní bhí glóir saolda nach dubhachs a déire.
