I 



I 



Browne — The Ethnography of Oantmna and Lettennullen. 267 



Lough Corrib, and occupied Galway itself. At what period the 

 OTlahertys got possession of lar Connaught is not certain, but it 

 seems to have been somewhere about the tenth century. O'Donovan 

 says that "the Shoyces or Joyces^ settled in the district of Partry, 

 west of Lough Mask, near the O'Elahcrtys, in the middle of the 

 thirteenth century, although the O'Flahertys themselves had no 

 jurisdiction there or anywhere west of Lough Corrib until after a.d. 

 1235." At this period, owing to the poorness of the soil, lar Con- 

 naught was probably very sparsely inhabited. In the thirteenth 

 century the Anglo-Normans entered upon the scene. Their first appear- 

 ance on the scene was when William Fitz Adhelme (De Burgo) led a 

 mixed force of Irish and English into lar Connaught. From that 

 time forth they took advantage of local dissensions to acquire more and 

 more power, until, in 1225, Hugh O'Flaherty, who had joined the 

 sons of Roderick 0' Conor against Hugh, King of Connaught, who was 

 leagued with the English, was defeated and compelled to give iip the 

 islands in Lough Corrib to Hugh O'Connor, shortly after having 

 been taken prisoner in Galway, where he had held out for a time. 

 The O'Flahertys were then driven out of Moy Seola, and took posses- 

 sion of lar Connaught, which henceforth became the seat of the tribe, 

 and where they afterwards became as powerful as they had been in 

 Moy Seola. It seems likely that the southern and sterile part of the 

 ■district, including this group of islands, had been uninhabited, or 

 almost so, before this time, the only people we get mention of in 

 lar Conauglit being the O'Flahertys and the Joyces before referred to. 

 There seems to have been no new element introduced into the popu- 

 lation since then. 



The "Annals of the Four Masters " record that Morogh M'Hugh 

 lived in the Castle of Lettermullen in 1584, but nothing more. There 

 are no M'Hughs on the islands now. Nothing more seems to be known 

 of the islands until of late years. During the Famine the people had 

 suffered very heavily, and at that time the first regular roads were 

 traced out. 



The islands have lately been brought into fuller communication 

 with each other and the outer world by the building of the chain of 

 causeways. These were built in the following order : — The causeway 

 from Garumna to Lettermullen as a relief work in 1886. That from 

 the mainland to Lettermore in 1891, and the final link in the chain, 

 that from Lettermore to Garumna, in 1897. 



1 A Welsh Tribe. 



