Why St Gobnait, Ballyvourney and Knocknagree?

Three years ago (September 2003) my husband Tim and I visited Ireland for two weeks. We had meant to hire a car and dash around catching a quick glimpse of everything, but found Cork, where the Herlihys originated, so fascinating that we skipped northern Ireland from lack of time.

We were directed to Ballyvourney and Knocknagree in County Cork by Tim's relative Pat Herlihy. Here is an excerpt from his writings on the Herlihy family to explain why we went there:

"...William Herlihy wrote an obituary for his grandfather David in 1670 and claimed that his family had been in Ballyvourney since before the time of Christ. This is poetic time, not actual. But it shows William's understanding of the ancient derivation of his ancestors.

St Gobnait came to Ballyvourney in 550AD and the Herlihy chief gave land to her to build a convent. The Irish FolkLore Society recorded several testimonies about it in the 1950's and an historian of the 18th century says that the then rulers of the parish gave land to St. Gobnait. She kept bees and saved the people from plague. But in the many years since then some of the associations of the pagan feast of Imbolc on 1st February have become attached to her and her feast on 11th February. Six or so of the more important members of the family group were now living in raths - small embanked and enclosed farmsteads within sight of each other. The distribution of these can still be seen on today's maps and the concentration is still in the east of the parish with the convent close to the centre of the settled area. There are signs of iron working in the convent to suggest a flourishing institution. The climate was milder now, farming flourished and the living was good. I suspect that iron was now readily available for tools as well as weapons and a coulter plough [with a knife at the front] would have permitted ploughing of grassland for the first time and an increase of food production.

After 600AD the historical period of written records gradually emerges. The arrival of Christianity produced a magnificent achievement in art and the preservation of ancient literature. Eventually Vikings plundered the richer monasteries from 800AD. But one reminder of the riches of the time remains in that it is possible to see a rich reliquary containing the arm of St. Lachtain in the National Museum in Dublin and this was originally kept in Kilnamartyra. There was also a gold statue of St. Gobnait. In the annals there are references to a tribe called the Muscraige in the area along the southern slopes of the mountains from Ballyvourney to Cork. To the south is an ancient tribe called the Corcu Loigde and to the north the Ciarriage. And between these older peoples were groups of a new and growing confederation of rulers who called themselves the Eoganaght. So Ballyvourney was a small unit in Muscraige Mittaine but the convent had thrived and the ruling family were becoming transformed into hereditary guardians of the whole parish for the church - to come under the lordship of the Bishop of Cloyne when dioceses were instituted around 1000AD.

In the 11th century a Romanesque church was constructed and it seems likely that someone took the pilgrimage to Compostella. Each family group in Ireland took the name of a grandfather as a surname and the leaders of Ballyvourney became O'Iarlath in place of the old tribal name. This became lost. There was a great antiquarian movement to research the past but unfortunately this was usually subverted by contemporary rulers to give quasi- historical justification for their current claims. The Normans invaded Ireland in 1166 - 100 years after conquering England. They conquered Muskerry at first before loosing the western part of it after the battle of Callan in 1261. O'Flynn ruled Muskerry then and had castles at Macroom and in Kilnamartyra but Ballyvourney was partly out of his jurisdiction as church lands. One authority on family names has suggested that the O'Herlihys moved in from the Uaithne tribe near the Shannon estuary about this time. These were another ancient Irish tribe. But I think not; there are too many clues and likelihoods to accept it.

The climate worsened in the early 14th century and the Black Death of 1348 was only the beginning of a whole series of epidemics. Population decreased and there was a regrowth of woodland. But the records of the diocese of Cloyne contain the first mention of the name O'Herlihy as priests and church officers from 1417 onwards. The O'Flynns were superseded by a branch of the MacCarthy dynasty but the erenaghs [Herlihys, Healys and Longs] were not ousted for they had the protection of the church. One Herlihy became a Bishop of Ross, attended the Council of Trent, was imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth in the Tower of London and eventually retired to a cabin above Macroom. He is buried in Kilcrea Abbey.

During the Elizabethan wars O'Sullivan of Beare conducted an epic retreat from Kerry to the north and passed through Ballyvourney on his second day, fighting off attacks from MacCarthy enemies from Carrigaphooca castle.

Cromwell passed through Cork in 1649. But he left his generals to crush the local peoples. They took off the roof of the church to suggest desolation and hid the golden statue of St. Gobnait and other of her relics. The Colthurst family took over the parish as the new rulers. Many Herlihys remained as tenants for a time but were gradually forced out over the next 200 years. William Petty surveyed all the confiscated lands of Ireland in his Down Survey and there records 6 Herlihys owning lands in the parish. All were forfeit. The 6" Ordnance Survey maps of 1850 show some small fields with rounded boundaries interlocked with others of similar shape. The boulders in the walls suggest ancient construction and they are likely to be the small areas of "arable" recorded by Petty for 1650. It is possible to se that by then some settlement had spread into the western parts of the parish. David Herlihy, the chief of the parish, attempted to continue some of the traditional ways and held a court of poetry at his house - a poor remnant of the great bardic schools of the middle ages. And several of his family were priests. But before long he was banished and fled to Glen Flesk, over the hills to the north, where O'Donoghue held out against the newcomers for many years. His grandson, William composed a poem on his death that claimed ancient association with the older Erainn peoples of the south west, albeit in the muddled historic understanding that was the best knowledge of the time. Over the next 200 years the Colthursts became an important family in Co. Cork [George Colthurst owns Blarney castle], the forests were cut down for cash and much land was reclaimed to support the
growing, if desperately poor, population, in large rectangular fields.

Sometime, probably late, in the 18th century our branch of the family had to leave Ballyvourney and move to the even poorer land to the north of the Derrynasaggart Mountains called Slieve Luachra. It had been devastated in the Elizabethan wars. A flourishing monastery in Nohoval had been destroyed and the surrounding inhabitants had fled. Into this meagre land came several men with the family name. William rented a farm of 100 acres and had two sons, Pad and Jer. Pad was born in 1797 and his descendants lived in his half of the farm until it was sold in 1975. Jer's children all left for the five continents of the world. William [eventually] and Jerry for Chicago, Patrick for New Zealand, Jim for London, Catherine's family for Washington state, John to Africa [died in the Boer war] and Humphrey to India. Jer's older children were born before or over the famine years [1850] and are not recorded. But the area they grew up in
contained some of the best musicians and poets of the time - composing and playing traditional tunes. Owen Roe O'Sullivan died in 1784 in Knocknagree after being beaten up by the thugs of a local middleman. Padraig O'Keefe, the blind fiddler of the 1950s would have been taught by those who played in the farmers' houses a generation before. But by 1900 the families had mostly scattered, for a second time and now throughout the world."

Knocknagree is the town nearest the area of Upper Nohaval, where we found Pad and Jer's farmhouses still standing, and the ruins of a hut beside the graveyard at Upper Nohaval where someone told me Pad lived at one time as guardian of the graveyard (maybe in old age?).