Around the Ring The Iveragh Peninsula: A cultural atlas of the Ring of Kerry

Reviewed by Tom Kennedy on 8 Jan 2010

The Iveragh Peninsula in Kerry has a lot to offer, but back in the 16th century, when Cromwellian soldiers were being paid off with land, the surveyor, William Petty, was inclined to play down the benefits. The fact that so many ex-soldiers gave up their seized holdings undoubtedly helped Petty to amass a quarter of a million acres in South Kerry, land that eventually became the Lansdowne Estate.

How Petty managed to take over so much land is one of the chapters in this comprehensive book describing just about every aspect of the Iveragh Peninsula, from how it was raised up from the desert edge of a Devonian shore to what sort of people came to live there. Petty, although one of the most interesting characters in Irish history, was certainly not the first to arrive, and, as some legends have it, Skelling Michael was the final resting place for Ír, son of Milesius, who had been killed as an unwelcome invader from the south by the Tuatha Dé Danann. Right from the beginning ,invasions of one sort or another have been part of Iveragh's history, and if we go back far enough, we can even look upon a trail of steps left in Valentia slate by the world's first four footed animal known to have crawled up onto land.

The people who arrived a long time later also left their marks, and the Iveragh Peninsula is packed with prehistoric sites. Ring forts, standing stones, and twenty megalithic tombs, and all, it seems, built by the southern seafarers who became the Irish. We can see the forts, but in many other ways a lot of this ancient culture has survived in the Iveragh Peninsula. About fifty pages of this book are devoted to exploring the music, the folklore and the inherited traditions of Iveragh. More than likely, the songs recorded from the ninety-four year old Padraig Ó Beaglaoich of Killorglin in 1959, like many others, would not have sounded all that strange to the ears of several generations before.

On language, Seán Mac an tSíthigh, in his section of the book, notes that in 1851 almost 90 per cent of the Iveragh population spoke Irish. The spoken culture, he writes, managed to survive undiluted throughout most of the peninsula until well into the 17th century, but the collapse, when it came was abrupt. Seán gives a telling quote, in which a farmer, growing up in the 1880s risked a beating if caught speaking Irish at school. Spoken Irish on Inveragh, observes Seán, "has been reduced to a few small pickets in its western extremities." A strange end for people who would have been familiar with two or three languages. Seán Mac an tSíthigh notes how visitors from Spain in the 16th century were struck by the number of people who had a proficiency in Spanish.

The old connection between Iveragh and the south was probably never really broken, and when Daniel O'Connel's father, who was a merchant living at Carhan, close to Cahersiveen, was referred to as a smuggler, his 'crime' is likely to have been illegal trading with Spain.

The stand off between locals and the usurpers was a constant feature of life, and in another section of the book, William J Smith describes how surveying and mapping had a significant role in changing attitudes to land. The view, for owners at least, became blatently materialistic, and the people who worked the land became, in effect, nothing more than property. It seems hard to believe that in the 19th century tenants on the Lansdowne estate had to get the landlord's permission to marry. In his section on the Lansdowne Estate, Gerard J Lyne describes how in the 1850s the agent, 'Master Towney' fined and evicted tenants who broke the marriage rule.

Understandably, this kind of arrogance led to trouble, and in Iveragh, Leo O'Shea describes how Donncha 'cable' O'Leary is remembered for his stand against eviction. When the sheriff, bailiffs and constabulary arrived at his slated house on 10th January 1887, Donncha resisted the wreckers as a crowd gathered to cheer him on. Unlike many other evictions taking place in the area, this barbaric scene was photographed, and there is a striking picture of Donncha, as he stands for the camera, blood-stained and bandaged after emerging from his house. Donncha's stand marked a turning point, and the population around Ballinskelligs celebrated with a brass band procession.

Donncha had earned his nickname while working for the Transatlantic Cable Company, for at that time, the first links were being made with America. The Iveragh Peninsula's position, as one of the most westerly points of Europe, made it the ideal starting point, and Donncha, as one of the local recruits, became known as 'cable" when he took a dive to recover an end that had fallen overboard.

As Denis Linehan in his section writes, by the end of the 19th century there were six transatlantic cables running out from stations at Valentia, Ballinskellings, and Waterville. By 1900 there were more than 40 telegraphers at work handling 3,000 messages a day. Transmitting messages was expensive, and when the New York Herald received the King of Prussia's 1,000 word speech in 1871, they were presented with a bill for $5,083. Competition eventually brought these costs down to about a shilling a word, and business boomed to such an extent that a housing estate with running water, tennis courts and all the other mod cons was built at Waterville.

In a way it was strange that Iveragh, noted for its splendid isolation, would become next stop to America, and not just for transatlantic cables. Years before the telegraph, Valentia had been marked down as a potential steam packet port, and Colin Rynne described how by 1825 there was already an Act of Parliament in place for a mail boat service to Halifax, and ten years later plans were made for a rail link back to Dublin. However, for many years the plans gathered dust, and it was not until 1893 that Valentia could lay claim to being the most westerly railway station in Europe. Like so many other branch lines, this one got the chop in the 1960s, and while the tracks are gone, lifted in 1962, the tunnels and bridges ar least were allowed to remain as features of the Inveragh landscape.
As with The Hook Peninsula,, Atlas of Cork City, and Wexford, a town and its landscape, Cork University Publishing has to be congratulated yet again for producing another impressive treasure chest of local information.