Faha townland, Feakle

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RobOHalloran
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Faha townland, Feakle

Post by RobOHalloran » Thu Dec 17, 2020 10:32 pm

Hi,

I’m researching the history of Faha townland in Feakle. It was formerly known as Fahy and, in the Tithe Applotmemt books, it seems to encompass neighbouring townlands of Corbehagh, Acres, Drumandoora, Derryfadda. Were they split out into separate townlands later?

I wondered if anyone had a particular knowledge of this area on the Clare/Galway border (which includes part of the Sliabh Aughty mountains)? I’d welcome any thoughts in particular on Fahy/Faha.

Fahy might also have been connected with the ‘lost parish’ of Frenagheragh.

Many thanks,

Rob

Sduddy
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Joined: Sun Sep 26, 2010 10:07 am

Re: Faha townland, Feakle

Post by Sduddy » Sat Dec 19, 2020 10:40 am

Hi Rob

Yes, looking at the information on the civil parish of Feakle (http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclar ... feacle.htm) I can see that Scolp, Knockathunna, Lower Corbeha, Rieskmore, Derryfaddha, Upper Corbeha, Dromindura, Lanaught, Acres and Fahy Halloran were considered to be subdivisions (or sub-denominations) of Faha.
Parishes in Ireland tended to be much larger than parishes in England*, and so, in the making of the Ordnance Survey map, 1842, it was decided that the smaller unit of Townland would be recognised as the basic unit. Decisions were made as to which places would be deemed townlands, and which not. Griffith’s Valuation,1856, is based on the 1842 Ordnance Map and on these “official” townlands. Looking at Griffith’s Valuation (on the same site), I can see that Acres, Corbehagh, Derryfadda, Drumandoora, Fahy, Knockatunna, Lannaght and Scalp made it into the map and onto the official list, but Rieskmore and Fahy Halloran did not – those two places must have been subsumed into one (or two) of the other townlands. A Paper Landscape: The Ordnance Survey in Nineteenth Century Ireland, by J. H. Andrews, (1993), has this piece on pp 56,57:
The rest of his [Colby’s] instructions were chiefly concerned with matters of organization and with various measures for securing accuracy. Chains and Theodolites were to be frequently checked, the dates of the work and the names of the surveyors were to be recorded, and a formidable range of documents was to be listed and preserved. Especially rigorous precautions were to govern the Survey’s dealings with Griffith’s boundary department. An officer and two sappers were to perambulate each boundary in company with Griffith’s representative and boundaries pointed out by the latter were to be visibly demarcated where necessary. The character of the boundary and the names of the persons present at the perambulation were to be recorded in a ‘boundary remark book’ and this information was to be digested after the survey, with more exact notes of bearings and distances, in a document known as a boundary register.
In spite of all this officialdom, people went on using the placenames they had always used, and Fahy Halloran is referred to by Ger Madden in his book, Sliabh Aughty Ramble (2010). Reading the piece, I can see that you are familiar with the information in it:
November 25: On the Galway border of the parish of Killanena there is a townland called Faha, Faithche Uí Ailmhurain – O’Halloran’s field or open meadow. According to Very Rev John Canon Clancy PP who served in Killannena for a short time in the 1920’s, and wrote a Short History of the Parish of Killanena (1963), Faha was part of the lost parish of Frenagherta. The name appears in Pelham’s Map of 1770.
Restoration work was carried out on the ruins of the 15th century church in Faha graveyard by East Clare Heritage in the early nineties. Only a portion of the east gable has survived. Tradition has it that a local man named “Mac Gabhann” was ordained here by Bishop Oliver Plunkett during penal times.
Writing about the antiquities in the parish of Feakle, in his Odnance Survey Letters (1839), John O’Donovan is a bit dismissive of the ruins of the chapel in Faha:
Of the Parish of Feakle.
Tulla, 22nd November 1839.
Dear Sir, the next Parish I have visited is the wild and extensive one called Feakle a name which is well known throughout Ireland through the facetious poem of Bryan Merriman …[a description of some antiquities here] …There is nothing else of any interest to the antiquarian in this Parish but a small Church and graveyard in the Townland of Fahy north, but this I have not visited, having been informed that it is modern and in a rude pointed style.

The Antiquities of County Clare, Edited and indexed by Maureen Comber, Clasp Press, 1997.
The townland of Faha is in the civil parish of Feakle, but in the Roman Catholic parish of Caher Feakle, also called Killinena: https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0768. A transcription of the registers, which have survived, is available under “Donations” : http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclar ... ex_bmd.htm. There is a huge gap in the records in the 1840s, but it is great that the records for 1842 have survived, giving us an idea of the large population in that area before the Great Famine.

Sheila

*In Soupers and Jumpers: The Protestant Missions in Connemara 1848-1937, by Miriam Moffitt (2008), the author says that people in England, who sent money to the missions in Ireland, could never understand the missioner complaining that he had trouble getting around his parish. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/evan ... r-1.921338

RobOHalloran
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Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2019 11:12 pm

Re: Faha townland, Feakle

Post by RobOHalloran » Sat Dec 19, 2020 10:43 pm

Hi Sheila that’s massively helpful! I’d picked up some of these references but not all - really useful to have the parish/townland distinction explained.

Thanks again!

Rob

Jimbo
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Re: Faha townland, Feakle

Post by Jimbo » Wed Feb 24, 2021 8:22 pm

Hi Rob,

Faha got a mention in a February 2020 issue of The New Yorker magazine with its mini-book review of This is Happiness by Niall Williams:
This is Happiness book review in The New Yorker.jpg
This is Happiness book review in The New Yorker.jpg (117.48 KiB) Viewed 21580 times

Was very surprised to read about "Faha, a village in western Ireland" in The New Yorker as was familiar with the name from searching for the missing Civil War soldier Thomas McNamara from Glandree. Faha townland in Feakle is quite close to Glandree townland in Tulla.

So I clipped the review and bought the book a few months later. Well, the Faha in This is Happiness is a fictional village in the far west of Clare and not in Feakle Parish at all. However, I really enjoyed reading the book and highly recommend. Although fiction, the book does provide some interesting and funny insights on Irish life during the 1950's in a small village.

There was no mention of the book last year on the Clare Library website, probably due to lockdown, but now I see that the "Clare County Library is delighted to announce Clare Reads…This is Happiness by Niall Williams as part of both the Ireland Reads and the Keep Well campaigns. Clare Reads aims to encourage everyone in the county to read a designated book connected with the county during the month of February. This is a new project for Clare County Library and encourages reading for pleasure". Their review of the book is here: https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/libra ... _reads.htm

The American and European editions have different book covers. I have no idea why the European edition (see link above) would have a rabbit on the cover. Perhaps it was purely a marketing decision by the publishers.

I'd say most libraries would have purchased copies of the book. But you might want to buy your own as to mark a few passages. As one WP reviewer's comment at the back of the book stated "halfway through, I realized that if I didn't stop underlining passages, the whole book would be underlined. . ."

My favorite passage in This is Happiness, slightly abbreviated below, relates to the narrator's grandfather and his storytelling:
Once he got going, my grandfather's way of telling a story was to go pell-mell, throwing Aristotle's unities of action, place and time into the air and in a tumult let the details tumble down the stairs of his brain and out his mouth. He had grown up in an age when storytelling was founded on the forthright principles of passing the time and dissolving the hours of dark. In Faha's case, this was a dark permanently tattooed with a rain that insisted on its own reality, trying to get into the house anyway it could . . . [read the book] . . . And because in Faha, like in all country places, time was the only thing people could afford, all stories were long, all storytellers took their, and your, and anyone else's, time, and all gave it up willingly, understanding that tales of anything as aberrant and contrary as human beings had to be long, not to say convoluted, had to be so long that they wouldn't, and in fact couldn't, be finished this side of the grave, and only for the fire gone out and the birds of dawn singing might be continuing still.

Sduddy
Posts: 1826
Joined: Sun Sep 26, 2010 10:07 am

Re: Faha townland, Feakle

Post by Sduddy » Wed Jun 29, 2022 9:24 am

Hi Rob

Congratulations on the publication of your article, “The O’Hallorans (Uí Allmhuráin) of Fahy: Landholding and lineage in late medieval Thomond,” in The Other Clare, Vol. 46 (2022). The postman brought me The Other Clare yesterday and I recognised your name immediately and read your article, and I am in awe of your knowledge of late medieval history of Clare. I see that you were already deep into your research before you began to focus on the townland of Faha, but I was totally unaware of that when I replied to your post, of course, so I was probably giving you some stuff that you already had. It was interesting to read:
A subsequent tribute imposed on lands acquired by the McNamaras from their vanquished Úi Bhloid rivals is contained in the Suim Tigernais Meic na Mara (‘the McNamara Rental’). At the very end of the schedule of rents applied to Tuath Echtge is a reference to a land unit called Faithche Úi Allmhuráin (O’Hallorans’ green).
What a find that was!

Sheila

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