Chapter 7

                            It is 1602, the dawn of the Seventeenth century, that sees the first McGlynns settling in Donegal.  In that year; as a direct result of a particularly severe famine; Eoin MagFhloinn, who was patriarch of an extended family, left the Galway coast with his family, cattle, and their belongings, to start a new life in the north.

      In January of that year an old comrade-in-arms; still involved in the uprisings; had arrived and spent some time with Eoin¹.  He was one of a small band fleeing north after the rout at Kinsale² who had arrived, with some returning MagFhloinns, for rest and to take an indirect route home.  They had discussed the situation and it was obvious that reprisals with the usual destruction and theft, by those now with the upper hand, would follow.  Eoin had been told of good land available in the Lough Swilly area, within the relative security of the Gaelic north-west³.  Although they were vulnerable on the Galway coast, Eoin decided that they would await developments and see if Hugh O'Neill"s armies would re-group and return south. 

      An early question arises as to how Eoin could be on intimate terms with someone who knew of lands in the north and why clan Connell lands in Tyrconnel (modern County Donegal) would be available to him.

      For generations the young MagFhloinn had left the women, children, and older folks to tend the cattle while they went off seasonally to small wars and raids - as a way of life as much as to collect cattle and booty.  They certainly would have held; before the mid 1590s; the O'Donnell of Tir-Connail and the O'Neill of Tir-Eoin as their deadly enemies, as both raided Connacht when it suited.  There are three points in the 1590s that cannot be considered with any certainty.  Firstly, when the MagFhloinns put their allegiance behind the Ulster faction.  Secondly, when Eoin succeeded as the chieftain - elected by the laws of tanistry so condemned by English observers.  Lastly, what relationship he had to the old chief of the sept⁴ - the election was within four generations of the family group.  There is nothing recorded for such a minor clan and there is no oral tradition.

      The known contact the MagFhloinn made with the men of the north, although it may only have been a cementing of previous friendships, stems from the Battle of the Yellow Ford.  As this was such an important element in the establishment of the McGlynns in Donegal it is of interest to look at this battle, though the involvement of a small sept in the four and a half thousand foot of the Irish is not mentioned in the chronicles.

      In the early August of 1598, the O'Neill spies brought him news of large masses of troops heading north.  Marshal Sir Henry Bagnal, at the head of the largest and most experienced force of veteran English ever to fight in Ireland, was marching towards Blackwater to lift the siege of Portmore.  It was then his intention to move onwards and crush the O'Neill and the O'Donnell strongholds.  O'Neill hastily summoned O'Donnell and McWilliam to aid him in cutting off the English and giving battle before they reached Blackwater.  Hugh Roe O'Donnell joined O'Neill on the 9th of August with the clans of  Tyrconnell and Connacht, including the MagFhloinn and a contingent of mercenary Scots.  The Irish army numbered four thousand five hundred foot and six hundred horse, whilst the English fielded the same number of foot with five hundred experienced horse and field artillery.

      The Irish drew up their main body about a mile south of  Portmore on a narrow flat section of land flanked by wood and bog.  The English route ahead was over wooded hills and then through the narrow pass of a small discoloured stream, flowing from the bogs and known as Beal-an-atha-buildhe; the mouth of the yellow ford.  This was to be the test of the army that O'Neill had trained and organised, it's men now drawing their mantles round to sleep in the open, where they would fight.  The English meanwhile billeted for the night in Armagh.

      The English left Armagh before dawn on the 10th of August and by sunrise were winding though the wooded hills, in columns of three with bugles ringing, on a bright clear day.  The sun was glinting on the corslets and the pikes of the foot as their banners fluttered gaily in the early morning breeze.  Suddenly a hail of lethal musketry, from the five hundred motionless men that the O'Neill had positioned in the woods on either side of the track, cut down the oncoming front ranks.  These lightly armed men fought a guerrilla action, as they were driven back to the plain by Bagnal, at a high price in English blood.  The other two divisions of English were lining up on the plain in accepted military fashion to face the wild Irish.

      Bagnal at the head of his division, and backed with cavalry, charged the lightly armed Irish troops.  The Irish had dug spike lined pits in front of their positions and covered them with wattle and grass.  Many of the English cavalry realised their mistake too late and plunged with their horses into the spike lined trap, so perishing without striking a blow.  Bagnal pressed on with his attack on the entrenchment that the Irish had stretched across the pass, and pounded it with his field artillery.  His troops managing to breach part of the line, with heavy loss, and come to grips with the defenders.

      The first main body of the Irish was now brought into action and fell upon the English to the sound of the Scot's pipes.  This would have been the body that included the sept of the Mag Fhloinn.  The O'Neill; at the head of a company of horse; charged forward to seek out Bagnal, but there was to be no single combat as Bagnal had been shot by an unknown marksman and died with a musket ball in his brain.

      Bagnal's division broke under the savage onslaught of the Irish and was put to rout.  Adding to the confusion at this point a cartload of gunpowder exploded amongst the English ranks with devastating effect, while the Irish cavalry bore down on Brooke's and Fleming's horse.  At the forefront of the battle, the swords and axes of the heavily armed gallowglasses⁵ cut through the English foot and captured all their cannon.  The cries of  "England and St George" turned into death shrieks as the Irish foot completed the rout of the arrogant flower of the English army, and captured the Royal Standard.

      Nearly three thousand dead were left by the English on the battlefield and the Irish captured twelve thousand gold pieces, thirty-four standards, and all the field artillery.  It was the finest set-piece battle victory of the Irish and made Hugh O'Neill name famous throughout the courts of Europe.

      An unimportant outcome to the history of the Nation⁶, but of consequence to the MagFhloinn in that it gave Eoin and his sept acceptance with the fierce clans of the Tyrconnell.  So, four years later; in 1602; it was decided that after their meagre harvest was gathered the MagFhloinn would make the two-hundred-odd mile journey north.  It had been an unusually wet spring and summer even for the west coast of Ireland and the harvest was accordingly poor.  The famine in the spring, as in the previous year, had been hard and promised to be worse in the following year; especially taking into account the political situation.  Eoin and his sept met one night around the fire⁷, and after discussing the alternatives, the decision was made to head north.

      On a cold misty morning in early October they packed up and struck out northwards over the bleak boulder-strewn land for the Maumturk Mountains.  The following day, about noon, the peaks were just visible in the wind blown drizzle as they passed in their shelter with the limb of Lough Corrib to the east.  They now headed north by west up the broad valley until, fairly late in the day, they made camp in the shelter of the rising ground at it's head.  A watery sun tried to break through the clouds as they drove the herd over the watershed, down to the shores of Killary Sea Lough, and turned northeast up the Erriff Valley.

      They travelled along the right bank of the Erriff, for about ten miles, to the fork in the river where the drove road turned north to Westport.  At this point they kept their north-easterly route, parallel to the Partry Mountains, and wrapped their mantles about them as the short break in the weather turned again to driving rain.  Having spent the night on the higher ground, in the morning they surveyed the ten miles of boggy plain that lay before them.  To the north they could see the smoke from the morning cooking fires of Castlebar, but on their proposed route to the north-east they could see only lochans and small streams dotting the soft wet ground.  Many English writers had been disparaging about the primitive sleds used by the Irish instead of wheeled carts but it was over this soft terrain that it excelled.  They set off early across the plain but it took them all day, pulling themselves and their beasts out of bog and stream, to wearily reach a night camp near the clachan of Kiltamagh. 

      The next morning they kept to the higher ground on the south of the River Moy, joining the drove roads that led to Sligo Town.  Three uneventful days passed as they trudged along in the incessant rain through Swinford, Bellachy, Tobercurry, and Collooney until they reached the outskirts of Sligo on the seventh night of their exhausting journey.  Passing through the town they made their camp near Colgagh Lough and rested for a couple of days, visiting the town for news.  One of the families remained here with relatives, rather than face the onward journey into the unknown.

      Partially refreshed they spent the next three days, with the wind and rain driving off the Atlantic, negotiating the coast route to Donegal Town.  Fatigued, near to collapse, it took them a further two days to herd their cattle through the Barnesmore Gap⁸ and arrive at the small clachan known as Bealach Feich;  Balleybofey.  Here, as in Sligo and Donegal towns, a few ventured in for up-to-date news.  Much to the alarm of the party the information was disastrous, as they heard that a battle was in progress around the Lough Swilly area.  It would have been with heavy hearts that they returned to camp with the portentous news.

      It is not hard to imagine their consternation as they sat at their camp fires that night discussing this startling turn of events.  They had safely transported their belongings and livestock, herding their cattle over one hundred and fifty gruelling miles of bog and muddy drove roads, to within forty miles of their goal.  Now they were faced with a dilemma.  To go forward could mean the loss of all they owned to marauding bands of vanquished, or victors of the battle, then certain death from starvation.  To return would probably end the same way.

      It was decided to head into the woods of the west, away from the threat, and so they partially retraced their steps and headed up the valley of the River Finn.  They had travelled about eight miles; left the valley floor to follow the river into the hills⁹; when some who had been struck by an outbreak of influenza, became too weak to travel.  Their strength had been sapped by rain, hunger, continual travel in fear of attack, living in the open, and now their dream was shattered.  The epidemic hitting them at such a low ebb took thirteen of their number, who died and were buried on the hillside.  Disheartened, and with some too weak to travel further, they settled here in the upper valley.  During the division of land in the late 1800s, the bones of these unfortunates were uncovered¹⁰ whilst the owner was digging and clearing a new field.  Mass was offered and they were re-buried in consecrated ground.

      The winter of 1602 would have been hard for the families.  Arriving too late to plant any crops, they set about the building of crude sod cots which they shared with their pigs and foul.  Fish were caught, birds; especially blackbirds; and hares were trapped, to supplement the meagre supplies that they had carried with them.  In those days the rabbit, introduced by the Normans, was considered a taboo.

      Local legend calls Eoin MagFhloinn, Eoin na mBa mor, or Owen of the big cattle.  His name derives from the fact that he arrived with a strain of cattle that were larger than the local stock.  Most of these legends have a basis of truth and; in this case; it is highly probable that his cattle were raided from the central area of Ireland, where the stock was far superior to the scraggy beasts of the north-west.  Eoin was most likely about thirty to forty years old; born about 1565; when he journeyed north with his brothers, cousins, and related families.

      Eoin is said to have fathered many illegitimate children on the women of the surrounding area, who were all given the surname McGlynn, and this is the reason that a large percentage of families in the Finn Valley are McGlynn or related.  This may be part of the reason but it omits to take into account the extended families that came north with Eoin.  Legend remembers only those of note and in this case it is only Eoin's name, as chieftain of the sept, that has been handed down to us.

      To place this into historical perspective we must realise that at this time the old Brehon laws still ruled the Irish way of life in the west, and that Elizabethan English; who would not, or did not understand it; found the practices disconcerting.  Under these laws women could keep their own names after marriage and divorce was not a difficulty; with a material settlement reckoned.  The prevalence of probationary marriage and voluntary affiliation (naming a father), also sat uncomfortably on the Elizabethan mind.  Naming a father was a custom whereby a woman might claim paternity for her child, at any stage of his minority, binding him to a father he may not have previously known; often the lord or chieftain.  There was also no taboo on sexual relations within degrees of affinity that were not acceptable under English law or for that matter Roman Catholic practice.  Jesuits in Ireland issued many dispensations on this score.

      The story of Eoin na mBa mor ends with the Bishop of Raphoe¹¹ asking the army to remove him, for his alleged 'lewd and lascivious' ways.  He was exiled and, under military escort, taken to Derry where he embarked on a coastal trader, to end his days in Scotland. 

      Why was his name tarnished and why was he deported?  It would not have been as stated for the simple reason that he had, what seemed under English law, many illegitimate children.  The genuine reasons are related to the events of the time.

      The bishops in all dioceses, by 1605, were royally appointed and the Reformed Church was inseparably attached to the anglicising process.  This ethos of 'civilising' the Irish, or more correctly making them English, was now well established.  In 1607/8 the plans for the plantation of Ulster were in reality the plans for colonisation, which attached strict conditions on the undertakers.  The land that they were allowed was to be settled by English or Scots, to the exclusion of the natives.  No Irish tenants were to be allowed, although lack of suitable applicants and the desire to make a profit, meant that Irish were accepted and often; as in the case of the McGlynns; simply left in situ working the land.  The illegitimisation of the Brehon laws provided convenient machinery for dispossessing those who could not be proved rebels, but were still a hindrance in the anglicisation process.

      Eoin's eviction and deportation were inevitable.  He had a high profile as a local leader, obviously living by the 'old ways', who's word held more import than any of the new authorities; church or temporal.  Given his background, the local authorities, would have suspected; or more probably known; of his involvement in the 'Nine Years' War, and at the very least he would have been considered an uncivilising influence.  There was therefore an abundance of reasons, from the new authorities' point of view, why his prestige had to be removed.

      Eoin's departure can be tentatively put within two years of 1615, and from then onwards; during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the remaining families wrestled a living from the land as their numbers increased dramatically and they spread along the Finn Valley.  As tenant farmers; under the Protestant planted landowners; they farmed as they had always done, mainly depending on their cattle.  The land was subdivided into strips, in what we know as the Rundale system, and it was mainly a communal effort where the families helped each other with the planting and harvest.  As this system was carried out without fences or walls, during the summer they practised transhumance with the children taking the cattle to the hill pastures, known as the booley, so preventing them destroying the crops.

      The names of the Scottish Protestant Planters are shown in the census of 1649, but there is no mention of the indigenous Irish tenants.  Blaeu's map¹² of 1663 is interesting as it shows, even at this date, how little the foreigners knew of west Ulster.  It is six miles between Lough Finn and the Barnesmore Gap, over mountainous land, yet it is represented by less than a mile.  This map shows that the foreigners only really accessed the area by the river valleys, and had very little knowledge of routes and tracks through hills and woods.  This is indicated by the fact that when they surveyed for the map they could not estimate the distance and relationship of areas to one another, except along river valleys.

      The number and names of the families that travelled north and settled in the valley with Eoin will never be known; but it is reasonable to assess that there were a minimum¹³ of  about ten or so families.  If we conservatively estimate that the number of families will increase by a factor of three¹⁴ every fifty years; or two generations; then each family in 1602 would now equate to seven-hundred and thirty-nine families by the year 1800.  Ten families would be 7,390 families.  General population trends in Ireland show a leap about 1640 and a doubling in the period from 1700 till 1800.

      The sustained population growth of the late 1600s would appear to be the result of the changes in diet around this time.  A large number of goats were being raised by 1600 and pig keeping was becoming more popular, although it would not flourish until the potato became widespread providing free food from the skins.  Bean cultivation was dying out by the mid-seventeenth century and the potato was adding variety to the diet, although it was used as harvested and not grown for storage.  Potatoes would not become a staple until the latter end of the seventeenth century, when they were stored for all year round use.  The potatoes that were grown at this time, such as apples and minions, were far superior to the watery though heavy cropping lumpers and cusps of the early nineteenth century.  Bread was also becoming a staple, especially in areas influenced by the Scots, but it was not wheaten bread.  The famous soda bread dates from the 1800s about the time that root crops were being introduced.  Sheep began to take on a new importance with the new English landlord system, as they did to the detriment of the cousins in the Highlands of Scotland, from the mid eighteenth century. Butter, of course, still features strongly for cooking meats and for dairy produce all through this era.

      The large population increase of the 1700s is generally attributed to marital fertility with early marriage, and the easy acquisition of a small tenancy; combined with the potato diet.  This is not so general with the McGlynns of Donegal as they were mainly raising beasts for the market. Potatoes are the only single cheap food that can support life as a sole diet, although they are deficient in vitamin A.  A fully balanced diet can be obtained by supplementing the potato with fish or milk products.  One acre of land could support a family of six eating an average of ten pounds a day, with the peelings feeding the pigs.  Access to a dairy cow or goats would give them a balanced diet.  Although this applied to McGlynns in other parts of Ireland, it was not so prevalent with those in Donegal as they were mainly raising beasts for market.

      Agriculture and returns generally improved although there were crop failures and famines, that were paralleled throughout Europe, in 1728/9, 1740/1, 1744/5, and 1756/7.  Around 1770 the commercialisation of the pork trade caused a reduction in the milk diet, and in turn the elevation of the potato to dangerous importance; pigs starting to be raised for rent.  The other great traditional staple of strong tea was becoming widespread at the end of the century, as the landlords concentrated their efforts on the eradication of the Rundale system.

      The type of dwelling that they lived in was governed by the politics of the time as much as the materials available.  When they arrived in 1602, Ulster was the wilderness of the untamed Gael.  It was separate in both nature and geography, being the least developed or inhabited.  In Ireland at this time there were about twenty people per square mile, and considerably less in Donegal.  The land was controlled by the Gaelic chieftains under the system of tanistry which would be outlawed by the English in 1606.  The ravages of war and the impermanence of building materials such as wood, wattle, and thatch, meant that mediaevalism in Irish architecture lasted into the mid-seventeenth century.  In general the dwellings reflected the nature of the mobile pastoral community that migrated annually to the summer pastures.

      On arrival in late 1602 they would have erected crude sod huts, much as they did at the highland pastures, to shelter themselves and their animals.  They were like most rural peasant communities in that they lived in close proximity to their stock.  These were improved in the following years, as they settled, firstly using the abundant wood to build wattle cabins with turf roofs, and later using stone and clay.

      Somewhere around 1610/20, when they had the stability of plantation tenancy, they started to build the more permanent cottages of stone in the style still seen today.  Clearance of the land gave them ample materials to build in stone, and there was a plentiful supply of turf and thatch.  Wood for the roof supports was available as the landlords cleared many of the trees for a quick cash return.  In a few generations long poles would be required to forage for bog oak to build houses, as the land took on the bare mantle it has today.  In general they built long, low, thick walled cottages (fig 1), with a much later addition of a room behind the hearth for social occasions.  Quite often one of the rooms was the byre, and could be converted into a room with a wooden partition.  Another later variation on this theme was the byre built on to the end, part of the same rectangular shape, but not connected.

      A more interesting example, because not so many specimens remain, is the stone built 'semi-secure' house (fig 2); reflecting that these were still troubled times with woodkernes and outlawed men still roaming the country.  Their capability for defence was actually quite limited and really reflected a subconscious insecurity.  The few examples that remain are usually part of a cottage, with the typical long house being attached.  The houses were built taller than the single-storey and are similar to traditional Swiss farms.  The cattle have use of the whole of the lower ground area, which meant that in summer dairy cows could be kept and still leave the scarce land for cultivation, with no fear of strays eating the crops.  In winter it also provided a crude form of central heating.  Entrance to the house was by way of open solid stone stairs, outside the building, with no internal access between floors.

      The above derelict cottages (top in the Finn Valley and bottom in Malinbeg) show the construction of a thatched roof.  The top shows the layout of the roof straps and the lower shows, on the left hand side, the exposed layers of turf; onto which was pinned the thatch.  The lower picture also shows the pins placed in the wall to tie down the thatch, instead of the more common use of large stones to keep the over-net in place. 

       This is a map centering on the first area the McGlynns settled in Donegal, near Cloghan.  This is re-inforced by the charts showing the distribution of families in 1857 and 1901 in Appendix 4.  It is from this beginning in 1602 that we see families settled in the area while others branched up the Reelan River, the Cummirk River, and down the Finn River between the 1650s and the 1850s.  Some can almost be traced by use of Christian names.  In my family's case; branches that had moved up the Reelan River and over the hills to the Owenea, met in marriage with those who had moved up the Cummirk River, when McGlynn and McGlynn married in 1891.