Donegal and Scotland

Westport, County Mayo, and a beautiful place it is. My grandmother and her siblings left at the beginning of the 20thC as their parents had died of typhoid, a result of the famine and poverty.

One of my Grandfather's and all his people were from Westport, a generation back they were solely Irish speaking. Most of the people say Westport but often the home of sorts was in a nearby townland.
If you can find the family townland, the wilder west is still one of the few places in Ireland left where the old family home and bit of land is often still known to be found, if lucky there might be a bit of wall left or even a foundation stone that was built by your ancestors.
Means quite a lot to find something like that, because you know then part of the place is part of you, because back then a hundred and more years back it's more than likely they were in that area for many centuries.
Billy Connolly found some of his ancestors in Galway and he found the foundation stones of the old family home. I know how he felt it is priceless thing to find physical evidence of the past that part made you.
from around 7 minutes.
If he knew a bit more about how the Irish names were anglicized, he would have known that his friend sings about his old family name that often became Connolly from those parts, as it was not Conneelly originally either, that too is an anglicized from the original, not even that phonetically close as is often the case. The anglicization purpose was purposely to disguise and hide the past.

In case any of you didn't know, the census for 1901 and 1911 is online and searchable.
leave the townland out if not known and try different spellings of names as all were sadly anglicized one way or another, some having no context what so ever, just given a English sounding name by some official and sadly often by the anglicizing priest.
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search/
 
One of my Grandfather's and all his people were from Westport, a generation back they were solely Irish speaking. Most of the people say Westport but often the home of sorts was in a nearby townland.
If you can find the family townland, the wilder west is still one of the few places in Ireland left where the old family home and bit of land is often still known to be found, if lucky there might be a bit of wall left or even a foundation stone that was built by your ancestors.
Means quite a lot to find something like that, because you know then part of the place is part of you, because back then a hundred and more years back it's more than likely they were in that area for many centuries.
Billy Connolly found some of his ancestors in Galway and he found the foundation stones of the old family home. I know how he felt it is priceless thing to find physical evidence of the past that part made you.
from around 7 minutes.
If he knew a bit more about how the Irish names were anglicized, he would have known that his friend sings about his old family name that often became Connolly from those parts, as it was not Conneelly originally either, that too is an anglicized from the original, not even that phonetically close as is often the case. The anglicization purpose was purposely to disguise and hide the past.

In case any of you didn't know, the census for 1901 and 1911 is online and searchable.
leave the townland out if not known and try different spellings of names as all were sadly anglicized one way or another, some having no context what so ever, just given a English sounding name by some official and sadly often by the anglicizing priest.
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search/
Jim i do not know what the lyrics are in that song but i can swear listening to it i can understand it but could not if asked, strange feeling, brilliant song.
 
Jim i do not know what the lyrics are in that song but i can swear listening to it i can understand it but could not if asked, strange feeling, brilliant song.

Christy Moore used to sing it in English, just the chorus in Irish, the ballad in English is the' The two fishermen Conneellys"
Listen to the two side by side and hear of the loss of the Two Conneellys and of the every day use of Irish as it was for most in Ireland right up until just over a hundred years ago.
 
Christy Moore used to sing it in English, just the chorus in Irish, the ballad in English is the' The two fishermen Conneellys"
Listen to the two side by side and hear of the loss of the Two Conneellys and of the every day use of Irish as it was for most in Ireland right up until just over a hundred years ago.
:cry:powerful thanks for that Jim!!
 
So many tales and stories and no doubt myths about the coast and Island people of the West coast, you would not know what was what, but the movie documentary 'Man of Aran' is likely as close as most will likely can get to know now of the Irish who once fished the Atlantic swells in the way the drowned Connelly brothers of the ballad did.

Worth watching the Man of Aran, if only because of how early it is and does show the dress of islanders.
While commercial whaling had stopped that was in recent times to the movie only 15 years before not 50 or a hundred years as some eager supposed truth sayers / revision are keen to state. I've no idea who was picked and their skills, but plenty of Mayo people alive then would have had the knowledge and some still do.
Parts were dramatized and cleaned up to the even harder reality of Island life at the time.
Contrary to ignorant comments on youtube and other websites stating such as no whaling or shark fishing ever happened in Ireland or Irish waters.
Oh yes they did and on a commercial scale, while the basking shark or whale shark are not sharks of the Hollywood scare movie, I'd like to see people who have never been near one not get a first fright close up. They are the likely monsters of St Brendan and crew in his currach are supposed to have talked of.
I recall a fella from Dublin up in Glasgow, pints after a Celtic match thought he was taking the laugh from me about twenty years ago, thought I was the ignorant insane fool, no such things as whales or sharks in Ireland, he stated for fact to his laughing buddies only one or two I could see not quite as cocksure.
Hardly blame him in hindsight. I'd sadly guess most in Ireland never even knew we had a whale or a shark around our own coast until recent times, let alone several species of each, sadly another aspect of our own culture and knowledge of our own natural resources wiped clean from common memory and mindset and left with ignorance in its place.

The fishermen were that proficient at hunting coastline whales they became near extinct to the near coast, and they were using thrown harpoon spears and Currachs as in this film.
Fin whales mainly but also Blue whales, humpbacks, sperm whales, minke whale and basking shark and others no doubt.

From 1934
 
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So many tales and stories and no doubt myths about the coast and Island people of the West coast, you would not know what was what, but the movie documentary 'Man of Aran' is likely as close as most will likely know now of the Irish who once fished the Atlantic swells in the way the drowned
Connelly brothers of the ballad did.
Likely parts were dramatized and cleaned up to the even harder reality of life there at the time.
The fishermen were that proficient at hunting coastline whales they became near extinct to the near coast, and they were using thrown harpoon spears and Currachs!
From 1934
I will watch that in the morning when i come back from doing the school run. Thanks Jim you're a source of good education and knowledge.HH
 
So many tales and stories and no doubt myths about the coast and Island people of the West coast, you would not know what was what, but the movie documentary 'Man of Aran' is likely as close as most will likely can get to know now of the Irish who once fished the Atlantic swells in the way the drowned Connelly brothers of the ballad did.

Worth watching the Man of Aran, if only because of how early it is and does show the dress of islanders.
While commercial whaling had stopped that was in recent times to the movie only 15 years before not 50 or a hundred years as some eager supposed truth sayers / revision are keen to state. I've no idea who was picked and their skills, but plenty of Mayo people alive then would have had the knowledge and some still do.
Parts were dramatized and cleaned up to the even harder reality of Island life at the time.
Contrary to ignorant comments on youtube and other websites stating such as no whaling or shark fishing ever happened in Ireland or Irish waters.
Oh yes they did and on a commercial scale, while the basking shark or whale shark are not sharks of the Hollywood scare movie, I'd like to see people who have never been near one not get a first fright close up. They are the likely monsters of St Brendan and crew in his currach are supposed to have talked of.
I recall a fella from Dublin up in Glasgow, pints after a Celtic match thought he was taking the laugh from me about twenty years ago, thought I was the ignorant insane fool, no such things as whales or sharks in Ireland, he stated for fact to his laughing buddies only one or two I could see not quite as cocksure.
Hardly blame him in hindsight. I'd sadly guess most in Ireland never even knew we had a whale or a shark around our own coast until recent times, let alone several species of each, sadly another aspect of our own culture and knowledge of our own natural resources wiped clean from common memory and mindset and left with ignorance in its place.

The fishermen were that proficient at hunting coastline whales they became near extinct to the near coast, and they were using thrown harpoon spears and Currachs as in this film.
Fin whales mainly but also Blue whales, humpbacks, sperm whales, minke whale and basking shark and others no doubt.

232ddccbe62eb1925c1f3ddf9bc90b41.png.jpg
 
My Granda and his 2 brothers came over from westport in the late 40s.He settled in Inchinnan working on the farms and his 2 brothers left to go down south,was the last time he seen them.
 
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