Lough Rynn before the 1700s

The MacRaghnaills

For a thousand years, Lough Rynn was home to the MacRaghnaill (Reynolds) clann. The first MacRaghnaills to settle there were a branch of the Conmaicne people who arrived from the present Dunmore in County Galway in the first quarter of the sixth century. The Conmaicne settled first in Magh Réin (Fenagh), and gradually spread through all of south Leitrim. The settlers became known as the Conmaicne Réin and comprised a number of clanns including ‘Muintir Eolais’ (MacRaghnaills), Muintir Cearbhalláin (O'Mulvey), and Cinel Luacháin (MacDarcy). Each quickly moved to establish a distinct territory, and soon Muintir Eolais/ MacRaghnaills held sway in an area that covered ‘all the level portion of County Leitrim south of Sliabh an Íarainn’, including the area around Mohill and Lough Rynn.

The MacRaghnaills made Lough Rinn their main seat, and it remained so until around 1570, when they used a castle on an island on Lough Scur as their principal castle.

Like other clanns in the area, the MacRaghnaills devoted much of their time to defending and holding on to their land and their cattle. The Annals of the Four Masters makes several references to the exploits of the MacRaghnaills, recording many incursions and battles between them and their neighbours. In 1253, the entire country of Muintir Eolais was plundered by a coalition of O’Reillys, O’Connors, and O’Farrells. Battles ensued, centred around Carrigallen, Cloone and Annaduff. Eventually, MacRaghnaill regained his castle and defeated O’Reilly in a ‘fierce battle where many were slain’.

In 1367 MacRaghnaill, O’Connor and MacTiernan, accompanied by a troop of gallowglasses (mercenary soldiers, mostly from Scotland), attempted to take Moylurg in Roscommon but returned ‘without having gained booty or consideration’. MacRaghnaill’s later defeat is recorded with some regret, for he was ‘a good, rich and affluent man’.

When the battles were nearer home and when Lough Rynn proved unsafe, the MacRaghnaills had friends at the nearby monastery in Mohill[2]. On occasion, they sought refuge there as they retreated from battle or escaped from siege.

The oldest reference to whiskey in Ireland, written in 1405, relates how the ‘water of life’ became the ‘water of death’ for a potential chieftain, Richard MacRaghnaill: Risderd Mag Ragnaill, eligible for the chieftainship of the Muinter Eolais, entered into rest after drinking ‘water of life’ to excess; it was deathly water to him.

Major battle and death of Turlough O’Connor, King of Connaught

In 1345, Lough Rynn was the scene of a major battle during which Turlough O’Connor, King of Connaught met his death. Turlough had come to Rynn to assist Tadhg MacRaghnaill against the Clann Murtough but was shot by an arrow as he retreated west towards Annaduff. The Annals of the Four Masters record the deed:

Turlough, son of Hugh, son of Owen O’Connor, King of Connaught was killed in Autumn by one shot of an arrow at Fidh Doradha (Fedora, near Annaduff, Mohill) in Muintir Eolais after he had gone to Loch Airinn to aid Teigh MacRaghnaill against the descendants of Muirchertach Muimhneach O’Connor. The Clann Murtough and some of the Muintir Eolais pursued him as far as Fidh Doradha and killed him at Gurtín na Spideoiga. For a long time before, there had not fallen of the Gaels any one more lamented than he. Hugh, son of Turlough was inaugurated King in his place.

At the time of his death, Turlough had reigned for 21 years. According to the Annals of Clonmacnoise, ‘there was not a greater exploit done by an arrow’ since the killing 900 years earlier of the great High King of Ireland, Niall of the Nine Hostages. (It was the major event in an otherwise bountiful year: the Loch Cé Annals note that ‘this was the best year that had ever come for nuts, and the produce of the earth, and of cattle, and of trees and herbs’.) Many of the remaining accounts record a litany of feuds and wars mingled with treachery and pestilence. After which they may well have consoled themselves with a drop of whiskey, though the perils of over-imbibing were clear. The oldest reference to whiskey in Ireland, written in 1405, relates how the ‘water of life’ became the ‘water of death’ for a potential chieftain, Richard MacRaghnaill:

Risderd Mag Ragnaill, eligible for the chieftainship of the Muinter Eolais, entered into rest after drinking ‘water of life’ to excess; it was deathly water to him.

Under threat

Following decades of continuous feuding, Lough Rynn castle was finally destroyed in 1474 during ‘a great war between Mag Ragnaill and the posterity of Maelsechlainn Mag Ragnaill’. Thereafter, the MacRaghnaills appear to have lost their independence. They were forced to submit to O’Rourke in 1526, when Ó Ruairc ‘made a great hosting into Muinter Eolais, obtaining power over every region of the land and at last forcing them against their will to yield him pledges and hostages’.

From the mid-1500s, the clann way of life was under serious threat. An increasingly powerful English administration was slowly but surely extending its influence and dominion. In a visit to Mohill in 1540, the ‘Saxons’ destroyed the monastery and beheaded the guardian and several of the friars. By 1590, the English government forces were actively routing the local clanns. In March that year, ‘an immense army’ fought against the forces of O’Rourke and MacRaghnaill. After spending the night in Mohill they made away with 1,000 cattle–a major blow to the wealth and health of the clann. This practice by the English of swooping down on villages to take their cattle was a common one and is described in one of the best accounts of the time written by a Captain of the Spanish Armada, Francisco de Cuellar. De Cuellar had been shipwrecked off the Sligo coast and was given shelter by O’Rourke in north Leitrim. He describes the living conditions of the people:

They live in huts made of straw. The men have big bodies . . . and are as agile as the deer. They eat but one meal a day, and that at night, and their ordinary food is bread of an oaten kind and butter. They drink sour milk . . . but no water, although it is the best in the world. On feast-days they eat meat, half-cooked, without bread or salt. They dress in tight breeches and goatskin jackets cut short but very big. Over all they wear a blanket or cloak and they wear their hair down to their eyes. Most of the women are pretty but ill-dressed. They wear nothing but a shift and a cloak over it and a linen cloth, much-folded on their heads and tied in front.

De Cuellar also remarks on the Irish propensity for continuous war with the English and with each other:

Their great bent is to be robbers and to steal from one another, so that not a day passes without a call to arms among them. For when the men of one village learn that there are cattle or anything else in another village, they go at once armed at night and shouting war-cries to kill one another.

The line of independent chieftains terminated with Brian O'Rourke, lord of Breffni and Minterolis. He renounced his allegiance to Elizabeth I and allied himself with Pope Sixtus V and the King of Spain. However, he ended up having to flee to Scotland, where he was taken prisoner, brought to London and executed as a traitor. His last request was to be hanged in the Irish fashion, by a rope made of twisted willow.

The Plantation of Leitrim

In 1565, the MacRaghnaill and O’Rourke lands were formed into a county named Leitrim by Sir Henry Sidney, the new ‘baronies’ following the original clann borders. Today’s borders were refined in 1583. Once their lands were confiscated, the Chieftainship of the MacRaghnaills and the clann’s way of life was destroyed. It was expunged forever after 1620, when the English government engaged in a systematic clearance of Irish lands and began to replace the indigenous Irish with loyal English settlers.