Archive News
The author who has put Connemara on the map
Date Published: {J}
Author and artist Tim Robinson probably knows more about Connemara than any other living person – although that’s not a claim he’d make.
But having spent most of his life exploring the geography, placenames, history, folklore, flora and fauna of this part of Galway, both land and sea, and having just published his third book on Connemara, he has accumulated a vast array of knowledge on the area.
“As you dig deeper, you could probably write three books about any small place,” he says of the Connemara Trilogy project. “Places reveal more and the details grow in size as you study them.”
His first book, Connemara: Listening to the Wind focused on Roundstone and its environs. The second, Connemara: The Last Pool of Darkness explored the area from Killary around the coast of Clifden, taking in various islands on the way.
This latest, Connemara: a Little Gaelic Kingdom focuses on the Gaeltacht area of South Connemara and in it, he links people and place in a way that appears seamless.
“I try to make the writing expressive of my own excitement about the place and the beauty of the place,” he explains.
Maybe it’s because Tim Robinson is not a formally trained historian, or a geographer, or a biologist that he is able to convey both the small detail and the big picture in his books. He also possesses a flawless eye for detail and the ability to realise the importance of the stories he has heard over the years.
Born in Yorkshire, he studied maths at Cambridge, after which he taught in Istanbul for three years, then worked as an artist in Istanbul, Vienna and London.
“A slight interest, started off by [the film] Man of Aran”, brought Tim and his wife Máiréad to the Aran Islands in 1972.
“It was so fascinating in so many aspects. The flora, the fauna, the folklore, the language . . .” he recalls.
“Not a great deal had been written about it, so a lay person like me could write about it. Then a local person suggested I should map it.”
He did and later produced detailed maps of Connemara and the Burren, published by his own company, Folding Landscape, which won him widespread praise.
But, Tim who moved to Roundstone in 1984, describes cartography as “a detour in my life”.
“I produced three maps so I do not describe myself as a cartographer. I would describe myself as a writer and as a visual artist.”
His last map, of Connemara, was published in 1990 and since then he produced his acclaimed two-volume work, Stones of Aran. He has also written essays on a variety of places and cartography generally.
“I had thought I’d come to the end of writing about Connemara, but then I started looking at place names that I had written on cards over the years,” he says of the Connemara Trilogy project.
The placenames had been collected for the maps, for which he recounted their details factually.
“But I realised that, with books, I could go in a literary direction,” he says of his decision to embark on this project.
The three books have probably taken about nine or 10 years to write, but “a lot of the material had been knocking about in my head”, he says.
Connemara: A Little Gaelic Kingdom is the last to be written, although it’s actually the second part of the trilogy. That’s because it proved to be his greatest challenge.
The first book, on Roundstone and surrounding areas, he found easy to structure. The second, on the Atlantic coast, “and the community’s natural interface with the coast, composed itself”.
“But I didn’t know how to go about the middle bit, because of the topography of Rosmuc and Ceantar na nÓileán and the Carna Peninsula,” he says referring to the scattering of islands of South Connemara.
He eventually solved this by writing the book in three parts.
“My starting point was with Pearse in Rosmuc, following the roads and houses there and writing about the various people who were influenced by him. And then I talk about Pearse’s opposites, namel
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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