‘My father had a sister Bríd. She was a beautiful woman when she was young. She was friendly with Jack (Seán ) ‘ac Coscair, but her father never knew they had spoken a word to each other. It was Bríd who used to rake the fire and close the door each night. She raked the fire and closed the door that night, and she went to bed. She was only a short time asleep when a sinneán (strong gust of wind ) came, and the door was blown in against that wall below. ‘Get up, Bríd,’ said her father, ‘and close the door!’
‘I already closed it’, she said. ‘Get up quickly!’ said her father. “For God’s sake don’t make me get up!’, said Bríd. Her father got up and closed the door. He was only back beneath the blanket when the door was blown in again. It was then he thought of the people who were drowned. He went then and he closed the door, and he put a bolt across it. Iron has a special property; there is nothing as good as an iron bolt.
Then my father saw a man walking by the window. Seán ‘ac Coscair that was in it. He was gone with the ‘daoine maithe’. The door wasn’t blown in again. ‘It’s a good thing, a mhuirnín’, said the father, that I didn’t make you get up tonight, or the fairies would have taken you away…’
This strange tale was part of folklore collected in the village of Menlo, close to the site of the drowning of 20 people when a crowded boat, on its way to the fair in Galway, sprang a leak, and rapidly sank. The above story was told by Risteárd Ó Dúgáin (1860- 1947 ) who as a boy saw the boat coming over the lake towards the village the morning of the tragedy.
It has all the wonder and mystery of Irish tales of the dead and the fairies. It seems that poor Seán ‘ac Coscair, who had drowned in the desperate struggle for life, had come back from the dead, to take Bríd away with him. When the father saw ‘ac Coscair pass the window, it must have been a perfect Alfred Hitchcock moment.
Dangerously overloaded
The Freeman’s Journal of September 5 1828 described the tragedy: ‘The unfortunate accident occurred by a sheep putting its foot through one of the planks, which produced a leak’. In order to stop the leak, one of the passengers ‘applied his great coat to the aperture, and stamped it with his foot’, but in doing so his foot went through the rotten hull, and caused ‘its immediate sinking.’ The boat was dangerously over loaded: as well as about 31 passengers it was carrying a quantity of timber and ten sheep.
Although the tragedy probably took place at Annaghdown bay, the boat had come from an older quay at Shankill, near Rabbit Island.
For communities living along the lake shore or near-by, travel by boat was the quickest way to get to Galway, as the construction of the Headford-Galway road did not commence until 30 years later. A steamer plied between Galway and Cong, calling at various piers along the way, but obviously travellers had a choice of river transport, and sadly an overcrowded, rotting rowing- boat, with animals, timber and people must have been the cheapest fare on the Corrib.
Folklore collection
There were many tragedies on the lake and river, but none captures the shock and grief as Eanach Cuain, by Antoine Ó Raifteirí (1799-1835 ). Blind since childhood, a womaniser and a drunkard, whose literary swipes could humiliate or enchant depending on his mood and his reception, Ó Raifteirí walked the roads of Galway and Mayo in the early 19th century.
He was born, the son of a weaver, in Cill Liadáin (Killedan ) near Kiltimagh, Co Mayo. Blinded by smallpox as a child, he was nevertheless well looked after by his father’s employer Frank Taaffe, of Killeaden House. He was a stableboy, and, as a natural singer and musician, entertained his employer’s friends. But according to Douglas Hyde, who researched the bard’s life, and collected what he could of his oral verse, the relationship ended when Ó Raifteirí was sent out one night with another man to get whiskey. The took one on the master’s best horses, rode him into a ditch where the horse drowned. Ó Raifteirí was kicked out of the house, and sent on his way. He became a wandering minstrel, spending most of his time in south Galway, in the Kilchreest, Gort and Kiltartan area. He played his fiddle, and performed his songs and poems in the big farm houses along his way.
Annaghdown may not have been his usual haunt, and it was by mere chance that a reference in the School’s Collection of Folklore* shows that Ó Raifteirí visited Annaghdown on a regular basis. Pádraig Ó hArgadáin of the same village records one of the poet’s lodging places, and a rhyme, not necessarily flattering, for his host:
‘In the time when Raftery the poet used to travel the county, he would get a night’s shelter from a man called Seán Ó hÁinín from Cloonboo, Currandulla. One night Raftery happened to be in Lynch’s public house in Corrandulla, who did he meet but Seán Ó hÁinín. ‘Musa Seán’, said Raftery, ‘It’s outside your shirt that you wear your báinín/ and on the side of the ditch grows the tráinín/ and it’s on the turf grows the daisy/ and I wish you good health Seánín Ó hÁinín’.
Ó Raifteirí would have heard all the stories and strange supernatural sightings many times in his travels.
Survivors
Risteard Ó Dúgáin, who as a boy saw the ill-fated boat coming over the lake and probably witnessed the whole tragedy, mentions again Seán Ó Coscair (slight deviation of spelling ) who saved the life of Máire Ní Chaodháin, before he was drowned.
Anna Ní Oisín often told the story of how she saved her own life by clinging on to a sack of wool she was taking to the Galway market. She vividly described the moment the boat began to fill… ‘The sheep started to swim and the men and women clung to each other. Some of them swam to the bank. I thought then of my bag of wool, and I threw it out of the boat in the water, and I threw myself out and I sat on the wool…..’ She kept a grip on the boat which ‘was going up and down like a pendulum. I saw Jacky Uí Choscartha struggling in the water with two women, and they pulled him down, and I didn’t see him after that until I saw his corpse.
‘I saw a boat coming from Menlo, a rowboat, and they took myself and my bag of wool out of the water….I’d have drowned only for that. Jacky Uí Choscartha was after taking two women to the bank, and the girl he was going to marry was in the water, and when he went out the third time to save her, two women grabbed him, and pulled him down..’
In the summer of 1978, the actual boat, probably named Caisleán Nua, was discovered by the Galway Sub Aqua Club, 100 yards upriver from Menlo Pier. Marine surveyor Trevor Northage reported that the boat was ‘just over 10m in length….now disintegrating, but the poor quality of the timber from which she was made is still very evident.’
Next week: Ó Raifteirí’s time in south Galway.
NOTES: * In the years 1937-39 the Irish Folklore Commission invited all the senior national schools in the State, to collect stories and memories from their parents and grandparents, yielding 750,000 of local history and oral traditions. A remarkable source of research today.
I am leaning heavily on The Annaghdown Drowning Tragedy: Oral Tradition and Genealogical Notes by Paul Greaney in the current Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, volume 73 2021.
Listen to Tom Kenny and Ronnie O'Gorman elaborating on topics they have covered in this week's paper and much more in this week's Old Galway Diary Podcast.
