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Connemara

Connemara (Conamara ) is a region on the Atlantic coast of western County Galway, in the west of Ireland. The area has a strong association with traditional Irish culture and contains much of the Connacht Irish-speaking Gaeltacht, which is a key part of the identity of the region and is the largest Gaeltacht in the country. Historically, Connemara was part of the territory of Iar Connacht (West Connacht). Geographically, it has many mountains (notably the Twelve Pins), peninsulas, coves, islands and small lakes. Connemara National Park is in the northwest. It is mostly rural and its largest settlement is Clifden.

Etymology
"Connemara" derives from the tribal name Conmhaicne Mara, which designated a branch of the Conmacne, an early tribal grouping that had a number of branches located in different parts of Connacht. Since this particular branch of the Conmacne lived by the sea, they became known as the Conmacne Mara (sea in Irish is muir, genitive mara, hence "of the sea").

Definition
One common definition of the area is that it consists of most of west Galway, that is to say the part of the county west of Lough Corrib and Galway city, contained by Killary Harbour, Galway Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Some more restrictive definitions of Connemara define it as the historical territory of Conmhaícne Mara, i.e. just the far northwest of County Galway, bordering County Mayo. The name is also used to describe the Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking areas) of western County Galway, though it is argued that this too is inaccurate as some of these areas lie outside of the traditional boundary of Connemara. There are arguments about where Connemara ends as it approaches Galway city, which is definitely not in Connemara – some argue for Barna, on the outskirts of Galway City, some for a line from Oughterard to Maam Cross, and then diagonally down to the coast, all within rural lands.

The wider area of what is today known as Connemara was previously a sovereign kingdom known as Iar Connacht, under the kingship of the Ó Flaithbertaigh, until it became part of the English-administered Kingdom of Ireland in the 16th century.

Geography
Connemara lies in the territory of Iar Connacht, "West Connacht," within the portion of County Galway west of Lough Corrib, and was traditionally divided into North Connemara and South Connemara. The mountains of the Twelve Bens and the Owenglin River, which flows into the sea at An Clochán / Clifden, marked the boundary between the two parts. Connemara is bounded on the west, south and north by the Atlantic Ocean. In at least some definitions, Connemara's land boundary with the rest of County Galway is marked by the Invermore River otherwise known as Inbhear Mór (which flows into the north of Kilkieran Bay), Loch Oorid (which lies a few kilometres west of Maam Cross) and the western spine of the Maumturks mountains. In the north of the mountains, the boundary meets the sea at Killary, a few kilometres west of Leenaun.

The coast of Connemara is made up of multiple peninsulas. The peninsula of Iorras Ainbhtheach (sometimes corrupted to Iorras Aithneach) in the south is the largest and contains the villages of Carna and Kilkieran. The peninsula of Errismore consists of the area west of the village of Ballyconneely. Errisbeg peninsula lies to the south of the village of Roundstone. The Errislannan peninsula lies just south of the town of Clifden. The peninsulas of Kingstown, Coolacloy, Aughrus, Cleggan and Renvyle are found in Connemara's north-west. Connemara includes numerous islands, the largest of which is Inis mór which is the biggest island, County Galway Inis mór; other islands include Omey, Inishark, High Island, Friars Island, Feenish and Maínis.

The territory contains the civil parishes of Moyrus, Ballynakill, Omey, Ballindoon and Inishbofin (the last parish was for a time part of the territory of the Clann Uí Mháille, the O Malley Lords of Umhaill, County Mayo), and the Roman Catholic parishes of Carna, Clifden (Omey and Ballindoon), Ballynakill, Kilcumin (Oughterard and Rosscahill), Roundstone and Inishbofin.

History
The main town of Connemara is Clifden, which is surrounded by an area rich with megalithic tombs.

The famous "Connemara Green marble" is found outcropping along a line between Streamstown and Lissoughter. It was a trade treasure used by the inhabitants in prehistoric times. It continues to be of great value today. It is available in large dimensional slabs suitable for buildings as well as for smaller pieces of jewellery. It is used for the pendant for the Chief Scout's Award, the highest award in Scouting Ireland.

Clan system
Before the Tudor and Cromwellian conquests, Connemara, like the rest of Gaelic Ireland, was ruled by Irish clans whose Chiefs and their derbhfine were expected to follow the same code of honour also expected of Scottish clan chiefs.

In his biography of Rob Roy MacGregor, W.H. Murray described the code of honour as follows, "The abiding principle is cast up from the records of detail: that right must be seen to be done, no man left destitute, the given word honoured, the strictest honour observed to all who have given implicit trust, and that a guest's confidence in his safety must never be betrayed by his host, or vice versa. There was more of like kind, and each held as its kernel the simple ideal of trust honoured... Breaches of it were abhorred and damned... The ideal was applied 'with discretion'. Its interpretation went deeply into domestic life, but stayed shallow for war and politics."

The east of what is now Connemara was once called Delbhna Tír Dhá Locha, and was ruled by Kings who claimed descent from the Delbhna and Dál gCais of Thomond and kinship with King Brian Boru. The Kings of Delbhna Tír Dhá Locha eventually took the title and surname Mac Con Raoi (since anglicised as Conroy or King).

The Chief of the Name of Clan Mac Con Raoi directly ruled as Lord of Gnó Mhór, which was later divided into the civil parishes of Kilcummin and Killannin. As was common practice at the time, due to the power they wielded through their war galleys, the Chiefs of Clan Mac Conraoi also fulfilled their duty to be providers for their clan members by demanding and receiving black rent on pain of piracy against ships who fished or traded within the Clan's territory. The Chiefs of Clan Mac Conraoi were accordingly numbered, along with the Chiefs of Clans O'Malley, O'Dowd, and O'Flaherty, among "the Sea Kings of Connacht". The nearby kingdom of Gnó Beag was ruled by the Chief of the Name of Clan Ó hÉanaí (usually anglicised as Heaney or Heeney).

The Ó Cadhla (Kealy) clan were the rulers of West Connemara. Like the Chiefs of Clan Ó Cadhla clan, the Chiefs of Clan Mac Conghaile (Conneely) also claimed descent from the Conmhaícne Mara.

During the early 13th century, but all four clans were displaced and subjugated by the Chiefs of Clan Ó Flaithbertaigh, who had been driven west from Maigh Seola into Iar Connacht by the Mac William Uachtar branch of the House of Burgh, during the Hiberno-Norman invasion of Connacht.

According to Irish–American historian Bridget Connelly, "By the thirteenth century, the original inhabitants, the clans Conneely, Ó Cadhain, Ó Folan, and MacConroy, had been steadily driven westward from the Moycullen area to the seacoast between Moyrus and the Killaries. And by 1586, with the signing of the Articles of the Composition of Connacht that made Morrough O'Flaherty landlord over all in the name of Queen Elizabeth I, the MacConneelys and Ó Folans had sunk beneath the list of chieftains whose names appeared on the document. The Articles deprived all the original Irish clan chieftains not only of their title but also all of the rents, dues, and tribal rights they had possessed under Irish law."

During the 16th century, but legendary local pirate queen Grace O'Malley is on record as having said, with regard to her followers, ("Go mb'fhearr léi lán loinge de chlann Chonraoi agus de chlann Mhic an Fhailí ná lán loinge d'ór") ("Better a ship filled with MacConroy and MacAnally clansmen, than a ship filled with gold").

Even though she has traditionally been viewed as a icon of Irish nationalism, Grace O'Malley, in reality, sided with Queen Elizabeth I against Red Hugh O'Donnell and Aodh Mór Ó Néill during the Nine Years War. Even though O'Donnell and O'Neill were seeking primarily to end the religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Ireland by the English Queen her officials, O'Malley almost certainly considered herself completely justified under the code of conduct in siding with the Crown of England against them.

The feud began in 1595, when O'Donnell re-instated the Chiefdom of Clan MacWilliam Íochdar of the completely Gaelicised House of Burgh in County Mayo, which had been abolished under the policy of surrender and regrant. Instead, however, of allowing Clan a Burc to summon a gathering at which the nobles and commons would debate and then choose one of the derbhfine of the last chief to lead them, O'Donnell instead chose to appoint his ally Tiobóid mac Walter Ciotach Búrca as Chief of the Name. By passing over the claim of her son Tiobóid na Long Búrca to the Chiefdom, O'Donnell made himself a permanent and very dangerous enemy out of his mother's former ally; Grace O'Malley. The latter was swift to retaliate by launching an English-backed regime change war, in which she fought against Hugh Roe in order to wrest the White Wand of the Chiefdom away from Tiobóid Mac Walter Ciotach and give it to her son. She was joined in this by the Clan O'Flaherty and the Irish clans of Connemara who followed their mantle.

Irish clan chief, historian, and refugee in Habsburg Spain Philip O'Sullivan Beare later went on the record as a very harsh critic of Niall Garbh O'Donnell, Tiobóid na Long Búrca, Grace O'Malley, and other members of the Gaelic nobility of Ireland who similarly launched regime change wars within their clans with English backing. Having the benefit of hindsight regarding the long-term fallout from Tiobóid na Long Búrca's uprising against his Chief and many others like it nationwide, O'Sullivan Beare wrote, "The Catholics might have been able to find a remedy for all these evils, had it not been that they were destroyed from within by another and greater internal disease. For most of the families, clans, and towns of the Catholic chiefs, who took up arms in defense of the Catholic Faith, were divided into different factions, each having different leaders and following lords who were fighting for their estates and chieftaincies. The less powerful of them joined the English party in the hope of gaining the chieftainship of their clans, if the existing chieftains were removed from their position and property, and the English craftily held out that hope to them. Thus, short-sighted men, putting their private affairs before the public defence of their Holy Faith, turned their allies, followers, and towns from the Catholic chiefs and transferred to the English great resources, but in the end did not obtain what they wished for, but accomplished what they did not desire. For it was not they, but the English who got the properties of and rich patrimonies of the Catholic nobles and their kinsmen; and the Holy Faith of Christ Jesus, bereft of its defenders, lay open to the barbarous violence and lust of the heretics. There was one device by which the English were able to crush the forces of the Irish Chiefs, by promising their honours and revenues to such of their own kinsmen as would seduce their followers and allies from them, but when the war was over the English did not keep their promises."

Religious persecution
Before the Suppression of the Monasteries was spread to Connemara, the Dominican Order had a monastery about 2 mi to the north of what is now Roundstone (Cloch na Rón).

During the centuries of religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Ireland that began under Henry VIII and ended only with Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the Irish people, according to Marcus Tanner, clung to the Mass, "crossed themselves when they passed Protestant ministers on the road, had to be dragged into Protestant churches and put cotton wool in their ears rather than listen to Protestant sermons."

According to historian and folklorist Seumas MacManus, "Throughout these dreadful centuries, too, the hunted priest -- who in his youth had been smuggled to the Continent of Europe to receive his training -- tended the flame of faith. He lurked like a thief among the hills. On Sundays and Feast Days he celebrated Mass at a rock, on a remote mountainside, while the congregation knelt on the heather of the hillside, under the open heavens. While he said Mass, faithful sentries watched from all the nearby hilltops, to give timely warning of the approaching priest-hunter and his guard of British soldiers. But sometimes the troops came on them unawares, and the Mass Rock was bespattered with his blood, -- and men, women, and children caught in the crime of worshipping God among the rocks, were frequently slaughtered on the mountainside."

According to historian and folklorist Tony Nugent, several Mass rocks survive in Connemara from this era. There is one located along the boreen named Baile Eamoinn near Spiddal. Two others are located at Barr na Daoire and at Caorán Beag in Carraroe. A fourth, Cluain Duibh, is located near Moycullen at Clooniff. Tim Robinson has written of a fifth Mass rock, located in the Townland of "An Tulaigh", which also includes two holy wells and, formerly, a Christian pilgrimage chapel dedicated to St. Columkille, who is said in the oral tradition to have visited the region. The Mass rock was built from several of the many boulders scattered by glaciers around Lough Clurra and is named in Irish "Cloch an tSagairt" ("Stone of the Priest"), but which was formerly marked as "Druid's altar" and dolmen on the old Ordnance Survey maps.

After taking the island in 1653, the New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell turned the nearby island of Inishbofin, County Galway, into a prison camp for Roman Catholic priests arrested while exercising their religious ministry covertly in other parts of Ireland. Inishmore, in the nearby Aran Islands, was used for exactly the same purpose. The last priests held on both islands were finally released following the Stuart Restoration in 1662.

One of the last Chiefs of Clan O'Flaherty and Lord of Iar Connacht was the 17th-century historian Ruaidhrí Ó Flaithbheartaigh, who lost the greater part of his ancestral lands during the Cromwellian confiscations of the 1650s.

After being dispossessed, Ó Flaithbheartaigh settled near Spiddal wrote a book of Irish history in Neo-Latin titled Ogygia, which was published in 1685 as Ogygia: seu Rerum Hibernicarum Chronologia & etc., in 1793 it was translated into English by Rev. James Hely, as Ogygia, or a Chronological account of Irish Events (collected from Very Ancient Documents faithfully compared with each other & supported by the Genealogical & Chronological Aid of the Sacred and Profane Writings of the Globe). Ogygia, the island of Calypso in Homer's The Odyssey, was used by Ó Flaithbheartaigh as a poetic allegory for Ireland. Drawing from numerous ancient documents, Ogygia traces Irish history back before Saint Patrick and into Pre-Christian Irish mythology.

Simultaneously, however, Máirtín Mór Ó Máille, who claimed descent from the derbhfine of the last Chief of the Name of the Clan O'Malley and Lord of Umhaill as well as kinship with the famous pirate queen Grace O'Malley, ran much of Anglo-Irish landlord Richard "Humanity Dick" Martin's estates from his residence at "Keeraun House" and the surrounding region, which are still known locally as "the demesne" (An Diméin), as a "middleman" (ceithearnach).

From the rock known as "O'Malley's Seat (Suístín Uí Mháille) at the mouth of the creek known as An Dólain near the village of An Caorán Beag in Carraroe, Ó Máille also ran, with the enthusiastic collusion of his employer, one of the busiest smuggling operations in South Connemara and regularly unloaded cargoes smuggled in from Guernsey. Like many other members of the Gaelic nobility of Ireland before him, Ó Máille was a legendary figure even in his own lifetime, entertaining all guests with several barrels of wine and feasts of roasted sheep and cattle, which were always fully eaten before having to be salted.

This arrangement continued until around 1800. While hosting Rt.-Rev. Edmund Ffrench, the Dominican Warden of Galway and future Roman Catholic Bishop of Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora, however, Máirtín Mór Ó Máille presided over an accidental breach of hospitality. As Warden Ffrench's visit was on a Friday, the Friar's was only eating fish and seafood. When one of the household servants of Máirtín Mór accidentally poured a meat gravy upon his plate, the future Bishop understood that it was unintentional and graciously waved the plate away. The future Bishop's cousin, Thomas Ffrench, however, was less forgiving and demanded satisfaction. This resulted in a duel during which Máirtín Mór was mortally wounded.

Sir Richard Martin, who had not been in Connemara at the time, was shocked and angry to hear of his middleman's death, saying, "Ó Máille preferred a hole in his guts to one in his honour, but there wouldn't have been a hole in either if I'd been told of it!"

Meanwhile another branch of the Gaelic nobility, who claimed descent from the derbhfine of the last O'Flaherty Chiefs, similarly lived in a thatch-covered long house at Renvyle and acted as both clan leaders and "middlemen" for the Anglo-Irish Blake family of Galway City, who were granted much of the region under the Acts of Settlement in 1677. This arrangement continued until 1811, when Henry Blake ended a 130-year-long tradition of his family acting as absentee landlords and evicted 86-year-old Anthony O'Flaherty, his relatives, and his retainers. Henry Blake then demolished Anthony O'Flaherty's longhouse and built Renvyle House on the site.

Direct British rule
Even though Henry Blake later termed the eviction of Anthony O'Flaherty in Letters from the Irish Highlands, as "the dawn of law in Cunnemara" (sic), the Anglo-Irish Blake family, who remained in the region until the 1920s, are recalled in Connemara, as, "famously bad landlords" with an alleged sense of sexual entitlement regarding the female tenants on their estates and as enthusiastic supporters of the anti-Catholic activities of the local Irish Church Missions, which, "caused much unrest and bitterness".

Local Irish folklore accordingly glorifies a local rapparee known as Scorach Ghlionnáin, who was allegedly born illegitimately in a seaside cave in the Townland of An Tulaigh. He is said to often and successfully have stolen from the Blake family and their land agents and given to the poor, until enlisting in the British Army and losing his life in the Crimean War. The Blake family are also said in the local oral tradition to have been permanently banished from the region by a curse put on them by a local Roman Catholic priest who dabbled in Pre-Christian sorcery. Elsewhere in Connemara, Anglo-Irish landlord John D'Arcy (1785-1839), who bankrupted both himself and his heirs to found the town of Clifden, is recalled much more fondly.

In 1843, Daniel O'Connell, the mastermind of the successful campaign for Catholic Emancipation, held a 'Monster Meeting' at Clifden, attended by a crowd reportedly numbering 100,000, before whom he spoke on repeal of the Act of Union.

Connemara was drastically depopulated during the Great Famine in the late 1840s, with the lands of the Anglo-Irish Martin family being greatly affected and the bankrupted landlord being forced to auction off the estate in 1849:

"As that year of 1847 had been the worst of several consecutive years of famine, it was to be understood that those missing tenants had abandoned their holdings to crowd into the workhouses or the emigrant ships to the New World, or they were dead; in any case they no longer infested the ground, which was left as a blank canvas on which Capital could paint a fair and profitable landscape."

The Sean nós song Johnny Seoighe is one of the few Irish songs from the era of the Great Famine that still survives. The events of the Great Irish Famine in Connemara have since inspired the recent Irish-language films Black '47, directed by Lance Daly, and Arracht, which was directed by Tomás Ó Súilleabháin.

The Irish Famine of 1879 similarly caused mass starvation, evictions, and violence in Connemara against the abuses of power by local Anglo-Irish landlords, bailiffs, and the Royal Irish Constabulary.

According to Tim Robinson, "Michael Davitt, founder of the Land League... visited An Cheathrú Rua [in 1879] and... found that the tenantry was reduced to eating the seed-potatoes on which the next seasons crop depended. In January 1880 after another tour of Connemara, he reported that the Poor Law Unions of the coastal areas were providing no outdoor relief (i.e. road-building schemes, etc.), and that the people faced starvation in the months before the summer. Not only was potato-blight prevalent, but it seems the kelp market had failed, and for most small tenants of the coastal areas it was the price they got for their kelp that paid the rent."

In response, Father Patrick Grealy, the Roman Catholic priest assigned to Carna, selected ten, "very destitute but industrious and virtuous families", from his parish to emigrate to America and be settled upon frontier homesteads in Moonshine Township, near Graceville, Minnesota, by Bishop John Ireland of the Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Paul.

In 1880 efforts by landlord Martin S. Kirwan to evict his starving tenants resulted in "The Battle of Carraroe" (Cath na Ceathrú Rua), which Tim Robinson has dubbed, "the most dramatic event of the Land War in Connemara." During the famous battle, Mr. Fenton, the landlord's process server, arrived to serve evictions with the protection and support of an estimated 260 officers of the Royal Irish Constabulary. They were met by the violent resistance of an estimated 2000 members of the local population. Tim Robinson writes, "Local Seanchas has it that there were many unfamiliar faces in the crowd – the dead, come up from the Old graveyard at Barr an Doire to protect the homes of their descendants, it was said." ("Tá sé sa seanchas áitiúil go raibh éadain strainséartha le feiceáil sa slua – na mairbh a bhí tagtha aníos as an tseanreilig i mBarr an Doire le seantithe a muintire a shábháil, ceaptar.") After escalating violence forced him to retreat to the RIC barracks before completing the third eviction, Mr. Fenton wrote a letter to the land agent at Roundstone (Cloch na Rón); announcing his refusal to serve more evictions.

According to historian Cormac Ó Comhraí, between the Land War and the First World War, politics in Connemara was largely dominated by the pro-Home Rule Irish Parliamentary Party and its ally, the United Irish League. At the same time, though, despite an almost complete absence of the Sinn Fein political party in Connemara, the militantly anti-monarchist Irish Republican Brotherhood had a number of active units throughout the region. Furthermore, many County Galway veterans of the subsequent Irish War of Independence traced their belief in Irish republicanism to a father or grandfather who had been in the IRB.

The first transatlantic flight, piloted by British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown, landed in a boggy area near Clifden in 1919.

War of Independence
At the beginning of the Irish War of Independence, the IRA in Connemara had active service companies in Shanafaraghaun, Maam, Kilmilkin, Cornamona, Clonbur, Carraroe, Lettermore, Gorumna, Rosmuc, Letterfrack, and Renvyle. The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), on the other hand, was based at fortified barracks at Clifden, Letterfrack, Leenane, Clonbur, Rosmuc, and Maam.

IRA veteran Jack Feehan later recalled of the region at the outbreak of the conflict, "In South Connemara from Spiddal to Lettermullen the brewing (of poitín) was very strong and it went out as far as Carna. The people there were against the RIC more or less because they used to search for poitín, save in the Leenane area where the tourists came and Clifden were there were tourists and people who wanted to be friendly to law and good money."

According to both historian Kathleen Villiers-Tuthill and former West Connemara Brigade IRA O/C Peter J. McDonnell, one of the IRA's most valuable intelligence officers during the ensuing conflict was Letterfrack native Jack Conneely, who had served as a Sergeant in the Royal Engineers during the First World War. Following the Armistice, Conneely had returned to Connemara and accepted a position as the driver for the Leenane Hotel. Due to his war record, Conneely was trusted completely by oblivious Special Constables of the Black and Tans. Crown security forces often requested rides from Conneely, who covertly used the opportunity to ask questions about secret military operations during the drive. On one occasion, two Special Constables accepted a ride to Leenane from Conneely without realizing that they were sitting the whole time next to crates filled with guns and ammunition. After dropping both men off, Conneely delivered the arms shipment to a safe house along Killary Harbour, where the arms were picked up and carried by sea to the IRA in County Mayo.

But the national leadership of the Irish Volunteers was so dissatisfied by the inefficiency and internal squabbling of the IRA in Connemara that, in September 1920, Brigade Commandant Peter McDonnell was summoned to a secret meeting at Kilmilkin with IRA Chief of Staff Richard Mulcahy, who promoted MacDonnell on the spot to Officer Commanding of the West Connemara Brigade.

Burning of Clifden
The assassination of 14 British Intelligence officers from the Cairo Gang in Dublin on Bloody Sunday, was followed by the arrest and court-martial of Connemara-native Thomas Whelan for high treason and the first degree murder of Captain B.T. Baggelly at 119 Lower Baggot Street. Whelan, however, was a Volunteer in the IRA's Dublin Brigade but was not involved with Michael Collins' Squad, which had carried out the assassinations that morning. Therefore, in a break from typical IRA practice in such trials, Whelan recognized the court, pled not guilty, and accepted the services of a defense attorney, who introduced the sworn testimony of multiple alibi witnesses who stated that Whelan had attended a late morning Mass and had been seen to receive Holy Communion in Ringsend on Bloody Sunday. Despite this testimony and the efforts of the Archbishop of Dublin and of Monsignor Joseph MacAlpine, the parish priest of St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in Clifden and Irish Parliamentary Party political boss of the surrounding region, to save his life out of a firm believe that he had not been involved in Captain Baggelly's assassination, Whelan was found guilty and subjected to execution by hanging on 14 March 1921.

In retaliation, Peter J. McDonnell and the West Connemara Brigade decided to follow the IRA's "Two for One" policy by assassinating two Royal Irish Constabulary officers in Whelan's birthplace of Clifden, which until then had been, according to Rosmuc IRA commander Colm Ó Gaora, "gach uile lá riamh dílis do dhlí Shasana", ("ever single day that ever was, loyal to England's law").

According to Peter McDonnell, the night of 15 March 1921 was selected, "to go into Clifden, get grub, and have a crack at the patrol." At the time, between 18 and 20 policemen were always stationed in the town. After finding the police had returned to barracks, the IRA withdrew temporarily, spent the night at, "the little lodge of Jim King near Kilcock" (sic), and, on the evening of 16 March 1921, the patrol reentered Clifden from the south. A party of six IRA men then approached RIC Constables Charles Reynolds and Thomas Sweeney near "Eddie King's Pub". McDonnell later recalled, "I saw two RIC against Eddie King's window and they noticed us. One of them made a dive for his gun as I passed and we wheeled and opened up. They were shot." As both officers lay dying, the IRA men were seen to bend over them and remove their weapons and ammunition, before withdrawing from the scene with other RIC Constables in pursuit.

Peter Joseph McDonnell later recalled, "They had a rifle and a revolver, fifty rounds of ammo, and belts and pouches." Canon Joseph MacAlpine was immediately summoned and gave both Constables the Last Rites before their deaths.

Believing that an attack on their barracks was imminent, the Clifden RIC sent out a request for assistance over Clifden's Trans-Atlantic Marconi wireless station. In a British war crime that is still known as "The Burning of Clifden" and in response to the request, a trainload of "Special Constables" from the Black and Tans arrived via the Galway to Clifden railway in the early hours of St Patrick's Day, 17 March 1921. While making a half-hearted search for Sinn Féin supporters, the Tans committed arson and burned down fourteen houses and businesses. Other Clifden residents later testified about being beaten and robbed at gunpoint and were granted compensation by the courts. John J. McDonnell, a decorated former sergeant major in the Connaught Rangers during World War I, was shot dead by security forces; most likely for the incorrigibly bad luck of having the same surname as the O.C. of the IRA West Connemara Brigade. Local businessman Peter Clancy was shot in the face and neck, but survived. Before leaving the town, British security forces left graffiti outside Eddie King's pub, "Clifden will remember and so will the RIC", as well as, "Shoot another member of the RIC and up goes the town".

The Kilmilkin ambush
In the Irish folklore of Connemara, it was often said that one of last battles in a successful struggle for Irish independence would be fought in the hills near Kilmilkin. The IRA West Connemara Brigade's ambush of a Royal Irish Constabulary convoy on 21 April 1921 was later seen as the fulfilment of that legend.

The Truce
Shortly after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921, Connaught IRA commanders Peter J. McDonnell, Jack Feehan, and Michael Kilroy had a meeting with Michael Collins at the Gaelic League headquarters. McDonnell later recalled, "There was a conference on and he (Collins) had arranged to meet us. Jack had been in Dublin as he was the Divisional Quartermaster and he told us why we should accept the Treaty for we out of ammunition and the only choice we had was to accept the Treaty. All he wanted himself, Collins said, was to accept the Treaty for six months, get in arms, and then we could tell the British to go to blazes. We couldn't carry on the fight for we had no hope of carrying it out successfully. I represented West Connemara, was Brigade O/C and Deputy O/C of the Division; Jack Feehan was Divisional Quartermaster; Michael Kilroy, O/C Western Division there. We told Collins we didn't agree with what he said and he didn't say much."

In the lead up to the Irish Civil War, Pro-Treaty rallies were held in Clifden, Roundstone, and Cashel, while a massive anti-Treaty rally was addressed by Eamon de Valera at Market Square in Oughterard on 23 April, 1922.

Following the anti-Treaty IRA's occupation of the Four Courts in Dublin on 13 April, 1922, however, local anti-Treaty IRA units took action to raise money by simultaneous armed robbery of the post offices in Ballyconneely, Clifden, and Cleggan on Good Friday. Furthermore, after Anglo-Irish landlord Talbott Clifton fled the country following a gun battles against local anti-Treaty IRA members, his home at Kylemore House was requisitioned and barricaded against expected attack by soldiers from the newly founded Irish Army. Mark O'Malley later recalled that he deeply regretted that the anti-Treaty IRA never found Mr. Clifton's supply of guns and ammunition, which were widely believed to be hidden nearby.

Hostilities
Renvyle House was burned down by the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War, but later rebuilt by Oliver St John Gogarty and turned into a hotel.

Irish language, literature, and folklore
The population of Connemara is 32,000. There are between 20,000–24,000 native Irish speakers in the region, making it the largest Irish-speaking Gaeltacht. The Enumeration Districts with the most Irish speakers in all of Ireland, as a percentage of population, can be seen in the South Connemara area. Those of school age (5–19 years old) are the most likely to be identified as speakers.

Writing in 1994, John Ardagh described "the Galway Gaeltacht" of South Connemara, as a region, "where narrow bumpy roads lead from one little whitewashed village to another, through a rough landscape of green hills, bogs, and little lakes, past a straggling coast of deep inlets and tiny rocky islands." Due the many close similarities between the landscape, language, history, and culture of West County Galway with those of the Gàidhealtachd of Scotland, the Connemara Gaeltacht during the Victorian era was often called "The Irish Highlands". Connemara has accordingly wielded an enormous influence upon Irish culture, literature, mythology, and folklore.

Micheál Mac Suibhne (c. 1760–1820), a Connacht Irish bard mainly associated with Cleggan, remains a locally revered figure, due to his genius level contribution to oral poetry, Modern literature in Irish, and sean-nós singing in Connacht Irish. Mac Suibhne was born near the ruined Abbey of Cong, then part of County Galway, but now in County Mayo. The names of his parents are not recorded, but his ancestors are said to have migrated from Ulster as refugees from the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.

He spent most of his life in Connemara and is said to have been a heavy drinker. Micheál Mac Suibhne and his brother Toirdhealbhach are said to have moved to the civil parish of Ballinakill, between Letterfrack and Clifden, where the poet was employed as a blacksmith by an Anglo-Irish landlord named Steward. It is not known whether Mac Suibhne ever married, but he is believed to have died in poverty at Fahy, near Clifden, around the year 1820. His burial place, however, remains unknown.

In 1846, James Hardiman wrote of Micheál Mac Suibhne: "By the English-speaking portion of the people, Mac Sweeney was the 'Bard of the West.' He composed, in his native language, several poems and songs of considerable merit; which have become such favourites, that there are few who cannot repeat some of them from memory. Many of these have been collected by the Editor; and if space shall permit, one or more of the most popular will be inserted in the Additional Notes, as a specimen of modern Irish versification, and of those compositions which afford so much social pleasure to the good people of Iar-Connacht." In his "Additional Notes to Iar or West Connacht" (1846), Hardiman published the full texts of Abhrán an Phúca, the Banais Pheigi Ní Eaghra (commonly known under the English title "The Connemara Wedding"), and Eóghain Cóir (lit. "Honest Owen"), a mock-lament over the recent death of a notoriously corrupt and widely disliked land agent. Following the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War, Professor Tomás Ó Máille collected from the local oral tradition, edited, and published all of Micheál Mac Suibhne's poems in 1934.

After emigrating from Connemara to the United States during the 1860s, Bríd Ní Mháille, a Bard in the Irish language outside Ireland and sean-nós singer from the village of Trá Bhán, Isle of Garmna, composed the caoine  Amhrán na Trá Báine. The song is about the drowning of her three brothers after their currach was rammed and sunk while they were out at sea. Ní Mháille's lament for her brothers was first performed at a ceilidh in South Boston, Massachusetts before being brought back to Connemara, where it is considered an Amhrán Mór ("Big Song") and remains a very popular song among both performers and fans of both sean-nós singing and Irish traditional music.

During the Gaelic revival, Irish teacher and nationalist Patrick Pearse, who would go on to lead the 1916 Easter Rising before being executed by firing squad, owned a cottage at Rosmuc, where he spent his summers learning the Irish language and writing. According to Innti poet and literary critic Louis de Paor, despite Pearse's enthusiasm for the Conamara Theas dialect of Connacht Irish spoken around his summer cottage, he chose to follow the usual practice of the Gaelic revival by writing in Munster Irish, which was considered less Anglicized than other Irish dialects. At the same time, however, Pearse's reading of the radically experimental poetry of Walt Whitman and of the French Symbolists led him to introduce Modernist poetry into the Irish language. As a literary critic, Pearse also left behind a very detailed blueprint for the decolonization of Irish literature, particularly in the Irish language.

During the aftermath of the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War, Connemara was a major center for the work of the Irish Folklore Commission in recording Ireland's endangered folklore, mythology, and oral literature. According to folklore collector and archivist Seán Ó Súilleabháin, residents with no stories to tell were the exception rather than the rule and it was generally conceded in 1935 that there were more unrecorded folktales in the parish of Carna alone than anywhere else in Western Europe.

One of the most important tradition bearers the Commission recorded in Connemara or anywhere else was Éamon a Búrc. Before his repertoire of tales was recorded and transcribed, a Búrc had emigrated to America and lived in Graceville, Minnesota and in the Connemara Patch shantytown in the Twin Cities while working for the Great Northern Railway of James J. Hill. After returning lamed to his native Carna, Éamon a Búrc became a tailor and was recorded by Séamus Ó Duilearga and Liam MacCoisdeala in 1935 at the home now owned the Ó Cuaig family. According to folklorist Seán Ó Súilleabháin, "Éamonn a Búrc was possibly the most accomplished narrator of folktales who has lived into our time. His artistry is at once evident in any of the tales which fill the two thousand pages of manuscript recorded from him by Mac Coisdeala. One of his hero tales, Eochair, mac Rí in Éirinn, recorded in October 1938, filled twenty-two Ediphone cylinders, that is, over 26,000 words." Furthermore, according to Irish-American historian Bridget Connelly, the stories collected in Irish from Éamon a Búrc are still taught in University courses alongside Beowulf, the Elder Edda and the Homeric Hymns.

Joe Heaney a legendary seanchai and sean-nós singer in Connacht Irish, is said to have known more than 500 songs – most learned from his family while he was growing up in Carna.

After hearing Heaney’s first public performance in Dublin of a famous work of Christian poetry about the Crucifixion of Jesus from the Connemara oral tradition, Máirtín Ó Cadhain wrote, "In Caoineadh na dtrí Muire he brings home to us the joys and sorrows of Mary with the intimacy and poignancy of a Fra Angelico painting."

The Féile Chomórtha Joe Éinniú (Joe Heaney Commemorative Festival) is held every year in Carna.

Sorcha Ní Ghuairim, a Sean-nós singer and writer of Modern literature in Irish, was also born in Connemara. Initially a newspaper columnist termed ‘Coisín Siúlach’ for the newspaper The Irish Press, where she eventually became the editor. She also wrote a regular column for the children's page under the pen name ‘Niamh Chinn Óir’. Her other writings included a series of children's stories titled Eachtraí mhuintir Choinín and Sgéal Taimín Mhic Luiche. With the assistance of Pádraig Ó Concheanainn, Sorcha also translated Charles McGuinness' Viva Irlanda for publication in the newspaper. Their translation was subsequently published under the title Ceathrar comrádaí in 1943.

While living at Inverin, Connemara during the Emergency, however, Calum Maclean, the brother of highly important Scottish Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean, was appointed by Professor Séamus Ó Duilearga (1899–1980) as a part-time collector for the Irish Folklore Commission (Coimisiún Béaloideasa Éireann). From August 1942 to February 1945, Maclean sent a considerable amount of lore in the local Conamara Theas dialect of Connaught Irish to the Commission, amounting to six bound volumes. From March 1945 Maclean was employed as a temporary cataloguer by the Commission in Dublin, before being sent to the Scottish Gàidhealtachd to collect folklore there as well, first for the Irish Folklore Commission and later for the School of Scottish Studies.

While interned during the Second World War in the Curragh Camp by Taoiseach Éamon de Valera, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, a Post-Civil War IRA member from An Spidéal, became one of the most radically innovative writers of Modern literature in Irish by writing the comic and modernist literary classic Cré na Cille.

The novel is written almost entirely as conversation between the dead bodies buried underneath a Connemara cemetery. In a departure from Patrick Pearse's idealization of the un-Anglicised Irish culture of the Gaeltachtaí, the deceased speakers in Cré na Cille spend the whole novel continuing the quarrels from when they were still alive: gossiping, backbiting, flirting, feuding, and scandal-mongering.

According to William Brennan, the manuscript for Cré na Cille was turned town by the first publisher to whom it was submitted, allegedly for being too reminiscent of the bawdy writings of James Joyce. Máirtín Ó Cadhain, however, was not put off. "In 1949", according to Brennan, "the Irish Press serialized it nationally over seven months, and the following year, the boutique publisher Sáirséal agus Dill released a bound version. The book became the talk of the Irish-speaking world. Young Irish speakers read it aloud to their illiterate grandparents — in Galway, according to one writer, college students passed the thrice-weekly Irish Press installments from hand to hand, and scrounged to buy the book when it appeared in stores."

Cré na Cille is widely considered a masterpiece of 20th-century Irish literature and has drawn comparisons to the writings of Flann O’Brien, Samuel Beckett and James Joyce.

Through Cré na Cille and his other writings, Máirtín Ó Cadhain became a major part of the revival of literary modernism in Irish, where it had been largely dormant since the execution of Patrick Pearse in 1916. Ó Cadhain created a literary language for his writing out of the Conamara Theas and Cois Fharraige dialects of Connacht Irish, but he was often accused of an unnecessarily dialectal usage in grammar and orthography even in contexts where realistic depiction of the Connemara vernacular wasn't called for. He was also happy to experiment with borrowings from other dialects, Classical Irish and even Scottish Gaelic. Consequently, much of what Ó Cadhain wrote is, like the poetry of fellow Linguistic experimentalist Liam S. Gógan, reputedly very hard to understand for a non-native speaker.

In addition to his writings, Máirtín Ó Cadhain was also instrumental in preaching what he called Athghabháil na hÉireann ("Re-Conquest of Ireland"), (meaning both decolonization and re-Gaelicisation). In an interview before his death, Ó Cadhain said, "If we lose the Irish language, we lose our native literature, we’ll be finished as a people. The vision that every generation of Irish people had will be at an end."

With this in mind, Ó Cadhain spearheaded the 1969 founding of Coiste Cearta Síbialta na Gaeilge (English: Irish Language Civil Rights Committee"), a pressure group campaigning for social, economic and cultural rights for native-speakers of the Irish-language both inside and outside of traditional Gaeltacht areas and which repeatedly emulated the direct action and civil disobedience tactics used by the contemporary Welsh Language Society, the Northern Ireland civil rights movement, and the American civil rights movement.

One of their most successful protests involved the pirate radio station Saor Raidió Chonamara (Free Radio Connemara) which first came on the air during Oireachtas na Gaeilge 1968, as a direct challenge to both the Irish government's monopoly over the airwaves and, far more importantly, their deliberate inaction regarding Irish language broadcasting. The station used a medium wave transmitter smuggled in from the Netherlands. The Irish government responded by proposing a national Irish-language radio station RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta which came on the air on Easter Sunday 1972. Its headquarters are now in Casla.

In 1974, Gluaiseacht also persuaded Conradh na Gaeilge to end the practice since 1939 of always holding Oireachtas na Gaeilge, a cultural and literary festival modeled after the Welsh Eisteddfod, in Dublin rather than in the Gaeltacht areas. Gluaisceart also successfully secured recognition of sean-nós dance in 1977.

While employed as a Navvy, or construction worker, in 1950s England and rebuilding the cities of Northampton, Coventry, and London, following the destruction of The Blitz, Dónall Mac Amhlaigh, a native of Barna, kept an Irish-language diary describing days spent at manual labour followed by nights of Ceilidh dances and Sean-nos songs in the pubs, which he later published in 1960 as, Dialann Deoraí. It was translated into English by Valentine Iremonger and published in 1964 under the title An Irish Navvy: The Diary of an Exile.

Another figure important to Modern literature in Irish to come out of Connemara was Casla-born poet, actress, Irish-language activist, and Sean nós singer Caitlín Maude (1941-1982). According to Louis de Paor, "Although no collection of her work was published during her lifetime, Caitlín Maude had a considerable influence on Irish language poetry and poets, including Máirtín Ó Direáin, Micheál Ó hArtnéide, Tomás Mac Síomóin, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. That influence is a measure of the dramatic force of her personality, her exemplary ingenuity and commitment to the language, and her ability as a singer to embody the emotional disturbance at the heart of a song. Her collected poems are relatively slight, including incomplete drafts and fragments, but reveal a poetic voice confident of its own authority, drawing on the spoken language of the Connemara Gaeltacht but rarely on its conventions of oral composition or, indeed, on precedents in Irish poetry in either language. The best of her work is closer to the American poetry of the 1960s in its use of looser forms that follow the rhythms of the spoken word and the sense of the poem as direct utterance without artifice, a technique requiring a high degree of linguistic precision and formal control."

Maude also led the successful Gluaiseacht Chearta Sibhialta na Gaeltachta direct action campaign that forced the Irish State to open an experimental Irish-language immersion school, Scoil Santain, in the Dublin suburb of Tallaght. This experiment has been successfully duplicated in countless other English-speaking communities throughout Ireland, with an overwhelming record of success as a tool of language revival.

The Connaught Irish memoirs of Colm Ó Gaora, the former IRA company commander in Rosmuc during the Irish War of Independence, were published in 2008 under the title Mise. An English translation, under the title On the Run: The Story of an Irish Freedom Fighter, was published in Cork City by Mercier Press in 2011.

Recently, the Coláiste Lurgan, a language immersion summer college located at Inverin, has won worldwide acclaim for their Irish language covers of pop songs,including Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, Adele's Hello, and Avicii's Wake Me Up, on the TG Lurgan YouTube channel. The band Seo Linn is composed of musicians who met at the college.

Writing in 1994, John Ardagh recalled, "One night I attended a Sean Nós festival in a crowded village pub in Carraroe – local people all talking Irish, singing in turn their solo ballads, semi-improvised, with strange, almost oriental rhythms. There were microphones, videos, and girls in jeans; yet in some ways it might have been a century ago. I felt in the presence of an alien culture, so different from the world of modern Dublin; and I asked myself whether this was the true Ireland, or something today irrelevant to it. I also felt sad that the English and Irish had long ago conspired to marginalize this beautiful Celtic language."

John Ardagh also conceded, though, that the Gaeilgeoir community of Galway City, which, "today sees itself as the Gaelic capital of Ireland, and has been filling up with intellectual enthusiasts similar to those who have been leading the language revival in Dublin", benefits enormously from their proximity to the Connemara Gaeltacht. The Gaeilgeoirí of Galway City, where, "Irish is often heard in the streets," and which, "has a flourishing little Irish language theatre", often "make pilgrimages" to the rural Gaeltacht to, "drink at the fountains of its culture", attend its summer cultural festivals, and further perfect their knowledge of the Irish language by conversing with native speakers.

From a literary perspective, one of the most important Galway City Gaeilgeoir activists is Irish language poet and William Shakespeare enthusiast Muiris Sionóid, who later recalled, "It was during the following and final phase of my education at University College Galway, now NUIG, that I formed in-dissoluble friendships with a host of Irish speakers, mostly from Connemara and the Aran Islands, holidaying regularly with families there especially with that of my great friend, Michael Powell, of Eochaill, Inis Mór. During that period among those wonderfully hospitable and golden-hearted people Irish became by dint of constant loving use what I had always fervently wished it to be, my mind’s first language. Thereafter throughout my years as a teacher of Mathematics and the Sciences, and as husband and father, my love of poetry, in English and Irish and indeed in Latin and a number of other European languages, though never waning, could naturally find no outlet − until early retirement beckoned. No bard, Irish or English, had been found fit in all this while to dethrone the mighty songster of Avonside in my Kingdom of Poetry." In 2009, Sionóid published a translation of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets into Connaught Irish under the title Rotha Mór an Ghrá ("The Great Wheel of Love").

Transport
Connemara is accessible by the Bus Éireann and City Link bus services. From 1895 to 1935 it was served by the Midland Great Western Railway branch that connected Galway City to Clifden.

The N59 is the main area road, following an inland route from Galway to Clifden. A popular alternative is the coastal route beginning with the R336 from Galway. This is also known as the Connemara Loop consisting of a 45 km drive where one can view the landscape and scenery of Connemara.

Aer Arann Islands serves the Aran Islands from Connemara Airport in the south of Connemara also known as Aerfort na Minna.

Towns and villages
These settlements are within the most extensive definition of the area. More restrictive definitions will exclude some:

 * Barna – (Bearna)
 * Ballyconneely – (Baile Conaola / Baile Mhic Chonghaile)
 * Ballynahinch – (Baile na hInse)
 * Carna – (Cárna)
 * Carraroe – (An Cheathrú Rua)
 * Claddaghduff – (An Cladach Dubh)
 * Cleggan – (An Cloigeann)
 * Clifden – (An Clochán)
 * Clonbur – (An Fhairche)
 * Inverin – (Indreabhán)
 * Kilkerren – (Cill Chiaráin)
 * Leenaun – (An Lionán / Leenane)
 * Letterfrack – (Leitir Fraic)
 * Lettermore – (Leitir Móir)
 * Lettermullan – (Leitir Mealláin)
 * Maum – (An Mám, also Maam)
 * Oughterard – (Uachtar Ard)
 * Recess – (Sraith Salach)
 * Renvyle – (Rinn Mhaoile)
 * Rosmuc – (Ros Muc)
 * Rossaveal – (Ros an Mhíl)
 * Roundstone – (Cloch na Rón)
 * Spiddal – (An Spidéal)

Islands

 * Omey Island – (Iomaidh)
 * Inishbofin – (Inis Bó Finne) has been home to fishermen, farmers, exiled monks and fugitive pirates for over 6,000 years and today the island supports a population of 200 full-time residents.

Notable people

 * Seán 'ac Dhonncha (1919–1996), sean-nós singer
 * Nan Tom Teaimín de Búrca, a local sean-nós singer, lives near Carna in Rusheenamanagh
 * Róisín Elsafty, sean-nós singer
 * John Ford, the American film director, and winner of 4 Academy Awards, whose real name was Seán O'Feeney, was the son of John Augustine Feeney from An Spidéal, and directed the classic film The Quiet Man in nearby Cong, County Mayo.
 * Máire Geoghegan-Quinn is an Irish politician, and was the former European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science was born in Carna.
 * Claire Hanna, SDLP MP in Westminster was born here.
 * J. Bruce Ismay, Chairman of the White Star Line, which owned the Titanic, lived for part of his later life in his lodge in Connemara. Ismay was on board the Titanic when it sank but was one of the survivors.
 * Seán Mannion, a professional boxer who fought for the WBA, was born in Rosmuc.
 * Richard Martin, MP, known as "Humanity Dick", was born in Ballynahinch Castle, Ballynahinch and represented Galway in the House of Commons.
 * Michael Morris, 3rd Baron Killanin, was president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and lived at the family seat in Spiddal.
 * Patrick Nee, Rosmuc-born Irish-American organized crime figure turned Irish republican, senior member of the Mullen Gang, and mastermind of an enormous arms trafficking ring to the Provisional IRA from bases in Charlestown, South Boston, and Gloucester, Massachusetts and which paid protection money to local crime boss Whitey Bulger.
 * Sorcha Ní Ghuairim (1911–1976) was a teacher, writer of modern literature in Irish, and sean-nós singer.
 * Peter O'Toole, the noted actor of stage and screen, who achieved international stardom in 1962 playing Col. T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia, was born in Connemara in 1932, according to some accounts of his life.
 * K. S. Ranjitsinhji, Maharaja Jam Sahib of Nawanagar State in British India, was the first head of state to make an official visit to the newly founded Irish Free State, bought Ballynahinch Castle estate and visited the area every year till his death in 1932.
 * Major John Riley, an Irish Catholic soldier from Clifden, who deserted from the United States Army over anti-Catholicism in the United States and religious persecution by White Anglo-Saxon Protestant officers. Riley became a Major in the Mexican Army and the commanding officer of the highly decorated Saint Patrick's Battalion during the Mexican–American War.
 * Tim Robinson, a cartographer, has lived many years in Connemara and published books on the area.
 * Gráinne Seoige, the Irish TV presenter and journalist, who has worked for TG4, RTÉ, Sky News Ireland and the BBC, is a native of An Spidéal.
 * Síle Seoige, the Irish TV presenter and journalist. She is the younger sister of Gráinne Seoige and a fellow native of An Spidéal
 * Mairtin Thornton was a heavyweight boxer, nicknamed the "Connemara Chrusher", he was the Irish Heavyweight boxing champion in 1943, and fought Bruce Woodcock for the British heavyweight title in 1945.

Cultural references

 * Connemara Wedding is a poem written by Micheál Mac Suibhne (c. 1760–1820)
 * French singer Michel Sardou had an international hit with the song "Les Lacs du Connemara" in 1981.
 * The Irish drinking song "The Hills of Connemara" has been recorded and performed by a number of Irish and Celtic-themed bands.
 * Poet Carl Sandburg's home of 22 years in Flat Rock, North Carolina, which is now a national monument, is named after the Connemara region.
 * Conamara Chaos is a region of chaotic terrain on Jupiter's moon Europa.
 * The Connemara pony is a breed of horse native to the region. The only native pony breed in Ireland.
 * Connemara is also the name of a brand of Irish whiskey produced at the Cooley Distillery.

Annalistic references

 * 807. A slaughter was made of the Conmaicni by the foreigners.

Film and TV

 * The Quiet Man, 1952, film by John Ford
 * The Field, 1990, film by Jim Sheridan
 * Cré na Cille, 2007, film by Robert Quinn
 * The Guard, 2011, film by John Michael McDonagh
 * Black '47, 2018, film by Lance Daly
 * Arracht, 2019, film by Tomás Ó Súilleabháin

Literature

 * Mícheál Mac Suibhne, agus Filidh an tSéibhe, 1934, poetry collection, edited by Tomas Ó Maille, Dublin, Foils. an Rialtais,
 * Cré na Cille, 1949, novel, by Máirtín Ó Cadhain,
 * The Beauty Queen of Leenane, 1996, play by Martin McDonagh
 * Star of the Sea, 2011, novel by Joseph O'Connor
 * The Crow of Connemara, 2015, novel by Stephen Leigh
 * Secrets of the Lighthouse, 2015, by Santa Montefiore

title: Connemara


text:
Cushan-rishathaim

According to biblical sources, Cushan-rishathaim (כּוּשַׁן רִשְׁעָתַיִם Kūšān Riš‘āṯayim, "twice-evil Kushite") was king of Aram-Naharaim, or Northwest Mesopotamia, and the first oppressor of the Israelites after their settlement in Canaan. In the Book of Judges, God delivers the Israelites into his hand for eight years (Judges 3:8) as a punishment for polytheism. However, when the people of Israel "called to Jehovah", He saved them through Othniel, son of Kenaz (Judges 3:9).

Scholars have proposed several explanations for Biblical accounts related to this ruler.

'Cushan' or 'Chushan' may indicate Cushite origins. 'Rishathaim' means 'double-wickedness'("resha" רשע - "evil" or "wickedness" + "im" יים - doubling suffix). The latter was likely a pejorative appellation used by his Hebrew foes, rather than what this King called himself. Use of it may indicate that the Hebrews had concrete reasons to bear him a grudge, beyond the meager information given in the surviving Biblical text.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Cushan-rishathaim


text:
Eddie Albert

Edward Albert Heimberger (April 22, 1906 – May 26, 2005) was an American actor. He is known for his roles on stage and screen and received nominations for two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards.

Albert made his acting debut with the film Brother Rat (1938). He went on to receive two Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nominations for his roles in Roman Holiday (1953), and The Heartbreak Kid (1972). His other notable films roles include in Oklahoma! (1955), The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), Captain Newman, M.D. (1963), The Longest Yard (1974), and Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) He starred as Oliver Wendell Douglas in the television sitcom Green Acres from 1965 to 1971 and Return to Green Acres (1990). He also played Frank MacBride in the crime drama series Switch from 1975 to 1978. He also acted in Falcon Crest, The Carol Burnett Show and Columbo.

Early life
Edward Albert Heimberger was born in Rock Island, Illinois, on April 22, 1906, the eldest of the five children of Frank Daniel Heimberger, a real estate agent, and his wife, Julia Jones. His year of birth is often given as 1908, but this is incorrect. His parents were not married when Albert was born, and his mother altered his birth certificate after her marriage.

When he was one year old, his family moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Young Edward secured his first job as a newspaper boy when he was only six. During World War I, his German surname led to taunts as "the enemy" by his classmates. He studied at Central High School in Minneapolis and joined the drama club. His schoolmate Harriet Lake (later known as actress Ann Sothern) graduated in the same class. Finishing high school in 1926, he entered the University of Minnesota, where he majored in business. When he graduated, Albert embarked on a business career. However, the stock market crash in 1929 left him essentially unemployed. He then took odd jobs, working as a trapeze performer, an insurance salesman, and a nightclub singer. Albert stopped using his last name professionally because it invariably was mispronounced as "Hamburger".

1933–1949: Early roles and military
He moved to New York City in 1933, where he co-hosted a radio show, The Honeymooners – Grace and Eddie Show, which ran for three years. At the show's end, he was offered a film contract by Warner Bros. In the 1930s, Albert performed in Broadway stage productions, including Brother Rat, which opened in 1936. He had lead roles in Room Service (1937–1938) and The Boys from Syracuse (1938–1939). In 1936, Albert had also become one of the earliest television actors, performing live in one of RCA's first television broadcasts in association with NBC, a promotion for their New York City radio stations.

Performing regularly on early television, Albert wrote and performed in the first teleplay, titled The Love Nest, written for television. Done live (not recorded on film), this production took place November 6, 1936 and originated in Studio 3H (now 3K) in the GE Building at Rockefeller Center (then called the RCA Building) in New York City and was broadcast over NBC's experimental television station W2XBS (now WNBC-TV). Hosted by Betty Goodwin, The Love Nest starred Albert, Hildegarde, The Ink Spots, Ed Wynn, and actress Grace Bradt. Before this time, television productions were adaptations of stage plays. Albert landed the starring role in the 1938 Broadway musical The Boys from Syracuse, and met Burl Ives, who had a small role in the play. The two later briefly shared an apartment in the Beachwood Canyon community of Hollywood after Ives moved west the following year. Also in 1938, Albert made his feature-film debut in the Hollywood version of Brother Rat with Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman, reprising his Broadway role as cadet "Bing" Edwards. The next year, he starred in On Your Toes, adapted for the screen from the Broadway smash by Rodgers and Hart.

On September 9, 1942, Albert enlisted in the United States Coast Guard and was discharged in 1943 to accept an appointment as a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve. He was awarded the Bronze Star with Combat "V" for his actions during the invasion of Tarawa in November 1943, when, as the coxswain of a US Navy landing craft, he rescued 47 Marines who were stranded offshore (and supervised the rescue of 30 others), while under heavy enemy machine-gun fire. During the war years, Albert returned to films, starring in ones such as The Great Mr. Nobody, Lady Bodyguard, and Ladies' Day, as well as reuniting with Reagan and Wyman for An Angel from Texas and co-starring with Humphrey Bogart in The Wagons Roll at Night. After the war, he resumed appearing in leading roles, including 1947's Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman, with Susan Hayward. From 1948 on, Albert guest-starred in nearly 90 television series. He made his guest-starring debut on an episode of The Ford Theatre Hour. This part led to other roles such as Chevrolet Tele-Theatre, Suspense, Lights Out, Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, Studio One, Philco Television Playhouse, Your Show of Shows, Front Row Center, The Alcoa Hour, and in dramatic series The Eleventh Hour, The Reporter, and General Electric Theater.

1950–1969: Leading man roles

In his first TV series, Albert portrayed Larry Tucker on the situation comedy Leave It to Larry, which ran from October 14, 1952, until December 23, 1952, on CBS. Tucker was a married man who encountered his father-in-law at work and at home. Albert had his own daytime variety program, The Eddie Albert Show, on CBS television in 1953. Singer Ellen Hanley was a regular on the show. A review in Broadcasting magazine panned the program, writing "Mr. Albert, with the help of Miss Hanley, conducts an interview, talks a little, sings a little, and looks all-thumbs a lot." Beginning June 12, 1954, Albert was host of Saturday Night Revue, which replaced Your Show of Shows on NBC. The 9:00–10:30 pm (Eastern Time) program also featured Ben Blue and Alan Young and the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra.

The 1950s also had a return to Broadway for Albert, including roles in Miss Liberty (1949–1950) and The Seven Year Itch (1952–1955). In 1959, Albert was cast as businessman Dan Simpson in the episode "The Unwilling" of the series Riverboat. In the story, Dan Simpson attempts to open a general store in the American West despite a raid from pirates on the Mississippi River, who stole from him $20,000 in merchandise. Debra Paget is cast in this episode as Lela Russell; Russell Johnson is Darius, and John M. Picard is uncredited as a river pirate. He guest-starred on various series, including ABC's The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, and the Westinghouse Studio One series (CBS, 1953–54), playing Winston Smith in the first TV adaptation of 1984, by William Templeton.

In the 1950s, Albert appeared in film roles such as that of Lucille Ball's fiancé in The Fuller Brush Girl (1950), Bill Gorton in The Sun Also Rises (1957), and a traveling salesman in Carrie (1952). He was nominated for his first Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor with Roman Holiday (1953). In Oklahoma! (1955), he played a womanizing Persian peddler, and in Who's Got the Action? (1962), he portrayed a lawyer helping his partner (Dean Martin) cope with a gambling addiction. In Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), he played a psychiatrist with an enthusiasm for farming. He appeared in several military roles, including The Longest Day (1962), about the Normandy invasion. The film Attack (1956) provided Albert with a dark role as a cowardly, psychotic Army captain whose behavior threatens the safety of his company. In a similar vein, he played a psychotic United States Army Air Force colonel in Captain Newman, M.D. (1963), with Gregory Peck. Albert acted in the 1956 special Our Mr. Sun opposite Dr. Frank Baxter directed by Frank Capra.

In 1960, Albert replaced Robert Preston in the lead role of Professor Harold Hill, in the Broadway production of The Music Man. Albert also performed in regional theater. He created the title role of Marc Blitzstein's Reuben, Reuben in 1955 in Boston. He performed at The Muny Theater in St. Louis, Missouri, reprising the Harold Hill role in The Music Man in 1966 and playing Alfred P. Doolittle in My Fair Lady in 1968. In 1962, Albert appeared as Cal Kroeger on the TV Western The Virginian in the episode titled "Impasse". In 1964, Albert guest-starred in "Cry of Silence", an episode of the science-fiction television series The Outer Limits. Albert played Andy Thorne, who along with his wife Karen (played by June Havoc), had decided to leave the city and buy a farm (a recurring theme in Albert's career). They find themselves lost and in the middle of a deserted valley, where they come under attack by a series of tumbleweeds, frogs, and rocks. Also in 1964, he guest-starred as a government agent in the pilot episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea titled "Eleven Days to Zero". Albert appeared as Taylor Dickson, a western photographer in season seven, episode 11 as “The Photographer” in Rawhide, alongside Clint Eastwood (Rowdy Yates) aired December 11, 1964.

Albert was cast as Charlie O'Rourke in the 1964 episode "Visions of Sugar Plums" of the NBC education drama series, Mr. Novak, starring James Franciscus. Bobby Diamond, formerly of the Fury series, also appeared in this episode. In 1965, Albert was approached by producer Paul Henning to star in a sitcom for CBS titled Green Acres. His character, Oliver Wendell Douglas, was a lawyer who left the city to enjoy a simple life as a gentleman farmer. Co-starring on the show was Eva Gabor as his wife Lisa. The show was an immediate hit, achieving fifth place in the ratings in its first season. The series lasted six seasons with 170 episodes. In 1968, Albert was a guest on The Carol Burnett Show episode six. He played Harvey Korman's boss in an episode of "Carol and Sis", and sang.

1970–1995: Established actor
After a four-year absence from the small screen, and upon reaching age 69 in 1975, Albert signed a new contract with Universal Television, and starred in the popular 1970s series Switch for CBS as a retired police officer, Frank McBride, who goes to work as a private detective with a former criminal he had once jailed. In its first season, Switch was a hit. By late 1976, the show had become a more serious and traditional crime drama. At the end of its third season in 1978, ratings began to drop, and the show was cancelled after 70 episodes. In 1965, the year that Green Acres premiered, Albert served as host/narrator for the telecast of a German-American made-for-television film version of The Nutcracker, which was rerun several times. The host sequences and the narration were especially filmed for English-language telecasts of this short film (it was only an hour in length, and cut much from the Tchaikovsky ballet). In 1968, he voiced Myles Standish in the Rankin/Bass animated TV special The Mouse on the Mayflower.

In 1971, Albert guest-starred in a season-one Columbo episode titled "Dead Weight" as a highly decorated retired US Marine Corps major general, and combat war hero from the Korean War, who murders his adjutant to cover up an illegal contracting conspiracy scheme. In 1972, Albert resumed his film career and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as an overprotective father in The Heartbreak Kid (1972), and delivered a memorable performance as an evil prison warden in 1974's The Longest Yard. In a lighter vein, Albert portrayed the gruff though soft-hearted Jason O'Day in the successful Disney film Escape to Witch Mountain in 1975.

Albert appeared in such 1980s films as How to Beat the High Cost of Living (1980), Yesterday (1981), Take This Job and Shove It (1981), Rooster (1982 television film), and Yes, Giorgio (1982), and as the US President in Dreamscape (1984). His final film role was a cameo in The Big Picture (1989). He also appeared in many all-star television miniseries, including Evening in Byzantium (1978), The Word (1978), Peter and Paul (1981), Goliath Awaits (1981), and War and Remembrance (1988). In 1982, Albert sang the character role of the elderly Altoum in the San Francisco Opera staging of Puccini's Turandot. In the mid-1980s, Albert was reunited with longtime friend and co-star of the Brother Rat and An Angel from Texas films, Jane Wyman, in a recurring role as the villainous Carlton Travis in the popular 1980s series Falcon Crest. He also guest-starred on an episode of the 1980s television series Highway to Heaven, as well as Murder, She Wrote, and in 1990, he reunited with Eva Gabor for a Return to Green Acres. In 1993, he guest-starred for several episodes on the daytime soap opera General Hospital as Jack Boland, and he made a guest appearance on the Golden Girls spin-off The Golden Palace the same year.

Hollywood blacklist
Eddie Albert's wife, Mexican actress Margo, was well known in Hollywood for her left-wing political leanings, but she was not a member of the Communist Party. In 1950, Margo and Albert's names were both published in "Red Channels", an anti-Communist pamphlet that sought to expose purported Communist influence within the entertainment industry. This was part of a larger trend of blacklisting motion-picture professionals whose known or suspected Communist leanings, unless they testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee to disavow any Communist affiliations.

Albert's son spoke of his parents' blacklisting in an interview published in December 1972, crediting Albert's military service during World War II with ultimately saving his career:

"My mom was blacklisted for appearing at an anti-Franco rally; she was branded a Communist, was spat upon in the streets, and had to have a bodyguard. And my dad found himself unemployable at several major studios, just when his career was gathering momentum. During the Second World War, dad joined the Navy and saw action at Tarawa, and because he came back something of a hero, he was able to get work again, but he never got as far as he should have gotten."

Albert later spoke of this period: "Everyone was so full of fear. Many people couldn't support their families, or worse, their lives were ruined and they had to go out and do menial jobs. Some even killed themselves." While Albert's career survived the blacklist, his wife, Margo, had extreme difficulty finding work.

Marriage and family
Albert married Mexican actress Margo (née María Margarita Guadalupe Teresa Estela Bolado Castilla y O'Donnell) in 1945. Albert and Margo had a son, Edward Jr., also an actor, and adopted a daughter, Maria, who became her father's business manager. Margo Albert died from brain cancer on July 17, 1985. The Alberts lived in Pacific Palisades, California in a Spanish-style house on an acre of land with a cornfield in front. Albert grew organic vegetables in a greenhouse and recalled how his parents had a "liberty garden" at home during World War I.

Albert's son, Edward, Jr. (1951–2006), was an actor, musician, singer, and linguist/dialectician. Edward Jr. died at age 55, one year after his father. He had been suffering from lung cancer for 18 months.

Activism and interests
Albert was active in social and environmental causes, especially from the 1970s onward. In 1970, Albert participated in the creation of Earth Day and spoke at one of its events in that year.

Albert founded the Eddie Albert World Trees Foundation and was national chairman for the Boy Scouts of America's conservation program. He was a trustee of the National Recreation and Park Association and a member of the U.S. Department of Energy's advisory board. TV Guide called him "an ecological Paul Revere".

He was special envoy for Meals for Millions and consultant for the World Hunger Conference. He joined Albert Schweitzer in a documentary about African malnutrition. and fought agricultural and industrial pollution, particularly DDT. Albert promoted organic gardening, and founded City Children's Farms for inner-city children, while supporting eco-farming and tree planting. Albert was also a director of the U.S. Council on Refugees.

Beginning in the 1940s, Eddie Albert Productions produced films for various US corporations, as well as documentaries such as Human Beginnings (a for-its-time controversial sex-education film) and Human Growth.

In 1971 he starred in an industrial film sponsored and promoted by a major logging and forest products concern called Weyerhaeuser Company. which emphasized the Pacific Northwest. Shot partly amid old growth timber and narrated soley by Albert, the film documented industrial methods of handling such trees for market. It also shows re-planted clear cuts and emphasized "the need for advanced lumber production in response to rapidly increasing population," according to the Texas Archive of the Moving Image.

Illness and death

Albert was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1995. His son put aside his acting career to care for his father. Despite his illness, Albert exercised regularly until shortly before his death. Eddie Albert died of pneumonia on May 26, 2005 at the age of 99 in his home in Pacific Palisades, California. He was interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, next to his late wife and near his Green Acres co-star Eva Gabor. For contributions to the television industry, Eddie Albert was honored on February 8, 1960 with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6441 Hollywood Boulevard.

title: Eddie Albert


text:
Théodore Rousseau

Étienne Pierre Théodore Rousseau (15 April 1812 – 22 December 1867) was a French painter of the Barbizon school.

Youth
He was born in Paris, France in a bourgeois family. At first he received a basic level of training, but soon displayed aptitude for painting. Although his father regretted the decision at first, he became reconciled to his son forsaking business, and throughout the artist's career (for he survived his son) was a sympathizer with him in all his conflicts with the Paris Salon authorities. Théodore Rousseau shared the difficulties of the romantic painters of 1830, in securing for their pictures a place in the annual Paris exhibition. The influence of classically trained artists was against them, and not until 1848 was Rousseau presented adequately to the public.

He had exhibited six works in the Salons of 1831, 1833, 1834 and 1835, but in 1836 his great work Paysage du Jura [La descente des vaches] was rejected by the Salon jury. He sent a total of eight further works to the Salon between 1836 and 1841; and yet none of them were accepted. Thereafter, he ceased sending work to the Salon until 1849, when all three of his submissions were accepted. He was not without champions in the press, and with the title of "le grand refusé" he became known through the writings of his friend Théophile Thoré, the critic who afterwards resided in England and wrote using the name Burger.

During these years of artistic exile Rousseau produced some of his best pictures: The Chestnut Avenue, The Marsh in the Landes (now in the Louvre), Hoar-Frost (now in America); and in 1851, after the reorganization of the Salon in 1848, he exhibited his masterpiece, The Edge of the Forest (also in the Louvre), a picture similar in treatment to, but slightly varied in subject from, the composition called A Glade in the Forest of Fontainebleau, in the Wallace Collection at Hertford House, London.

Barbizon and maturity
Until this period Rousseau had lived only occasionally at Barbizon, but in 1848 he took up his residence in the forest village, and spent most of his remaining days in the vicinity. He was now able to obtain fair sums for his pictures (but only about one-tenth of their value thirty years after his death), and the number of his admirers increased. He was still ignored by the authorities, even while his mentee Narcisse Virgilio Diaz was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1851. Rousseau was left undecorated, but was nominated and awarded the Cross soon afterwards. He would eventually become an Officer of the Legion of Honor.

At the Exposition Universelle of 1853, where all Rousseau's rejected pictures of the previous twenty years were gathered together, his works were acknowledged to form one of the best of the many splendid groups there exhibited. But, after an unsuccessful sale of his works by auction in 1861, he contemplated leaving Paris for Amsterdam or London, or even New York.

Later years

Rousseau then suffered a series of misfortunes. His wife's mental health had worsened; his aged father became dependent on him for pecuniary assistance; his patrons were few. Moreover, while he was temporarily absent with his ill wife, a youth living in his home (a friend of his family) committed suicide in his Barbizon cottage. When he visited the Alps in 1863, making sketches of Mont Blanc, he became dangerously ill with inflammation of the lungs; and when he returned to Barbizon he suffered from insomnia and became gradually weakened.

He was elected president of the fine-art jury for the 1867 Exposition; however, his disappointment at being denied the better awards may have affected his health, for in August he became paralyzed. He recovered slightly, but was again attacked several times during the autumn. In November his condition worsened, and he died in the presence of his lifelong friend, Jean-François Millet, on 22 December 1867. Millet, the peasant painter, for whom Rousseau had the greatest regard, had been much with him during the last years of his life, and at his death Millet assumed charge of Rousseau's ill wife.

Rousseau's other friend and neighbor, Jules Dupré, himself an eminent landscape painter of Barbizon, relates the difficulty Rousseau experienced in knowing when his picture was finished, and how he, Dupré, would sometimes take away from the studio some canvas on which Rousseau was laboring too long. Rousseau was a good friend to Diaz, teaching him how to paint trees, for until a certain point in his career Diaz considered he could only paint figures.

Work
Rousseau's pictures are always grave in character, with an air of exquisite melancholy. They are well finished when they profess to be completed pictures, but Rousseau spent so much time developing his subjects that his absolutely completed works are comparatively few. He left many canvases with parts of the picture realized in detail and with the remainder somewhat vague; and also a good number of sketches and water-color drawings. His pen work in monochrome on paper is rare. There are a number of good pictures by him in the Louvre, and the Wallace collection contains one of his most important Barbizon pictures. There is also an example in the Ionides collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

title: Théodore Rousseau