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Who would ever have thought, that in 1969 our quaint village played host to some of the biggest names in Hollywood? I bet you never realised that your neighbour over the road once partook in a Walt Disney adventure film starring Kurt Russell, Glen Corbett and Alfred Burke? Yes ‘Guns in the Heather’ was primarily shot on location in St. Flannan’s College Ennis, Corkscrew Hill, Corofin, Kilfenora… and Quin!

It was based on the novel by Lockhart Amerman and the plot centred on spies chasing an American exchange student, Russell, and his friend Dawson across the land of Ireland to unearth the secret of Boyne Castle Co. Meath. Evidently, vital information concerning the whereabouts of an Eastern Bloc defecting scientist was held here.

To give you but a flavour of the action – the film opens with a car chase as a mortally wounded Irish underworld character is followed by spies. That scene ends on the school grounds of St. Flannans as the ‘baddies’ not wishing to draw attention to themselves, won’t enter the school gates. (Look out for Hubie Armstrong from Cullane in the opening hurling scene). The wounded man seeks an American exchange student, Rich Evans, and with dying breath informs him that he must look in ‘my room at Boyne Castle’. And, so begins a rollercoaster of car chases and espionage.

Barry and Paul Conroy recall how at that time the actors couldn’t stay in their parent’s hotel Ballykilty Manor, as renovations were taking place. A number of scenes were shot on the Manor grounds where the pitch and putt course once stood. Great canvas tents were erected for the camera crew, which doubled up for catering. This was done by the D’Auria family (or Enzo’s as we know them) who came from Ravello in Italy. Thereafter Enzo was a cook for many of Disney’s films. Barry also remembers the excitement of filming as a car was burnt out on their avenue!

Can’t you imagine the talk in the local pubs that night!

The scene pertaining to Quin concerns our main actors arriving to the village, having spent hours outrunning their pursuers. There’s a wonderful cinematic shot looking through the eye of the bridge towards Quin Abbey, as hungry and cold we observe them as they cross a wooden bridge from the Abbey side. They make their way to Marlborough’s house on the main street and here they steal a steak and kidney pie that’s cooling on the windowsill – but they are decent boys as they leave the price of it. The attached photo taken after filming ended, shows Kieran, Barry and Paul Conroy standing on the wooden structure that was created for the film. Paddy Hassett (R.I.P.) may be standing to their right with another boy.

Locals Pat Henchy and Mary Halpin were chosen to partake as ‘extras’ in the film. Pat was just fifteen years old when on a Sunday afternoon he attended Quin hall for an audition. They were recruiting local people as extras and he thought it might be ’a bit of an adventure’. A number of other locals were also in attendance, and Pat remembers he gave in his details and was subsequently called up. He has happy memories of going to the railway station in Ennis and boarding a train with the other ‘extras’. Their journey eventually brought them out to the tailrace at Ardnacrusha power station (built in 1929). He sat on the train for the duration of the trip and home again – and did so for three to four days as filming took place on the train’s carriages. As part of the action, two men had to jump off the train while it was in motion – thus the ‘extras’ were needed to make the scene look authentic.  All the ‘actors’ were fed in Ardnacrusha and the catering was out in the open. He recalls sitting in a carriage with a woman called Leslie Mc Crum, whose husband was manager of Braid’s factory in Ennis. Pat was paid some money, ‘it was a lot more than I’d get on any other day’. Many months later he went to see it in the Gaiety cinema in Ennis, and recalls how the patrons burst into laughter as an aerial shot in the opening scene showed a Clare County Council steamroller grace the screen.

Mary Halpin too remembers that time fondly, “I met Kurt Russell and had a few words with him in the Old Ground Hotel.” She even earned the nickname ‘the model’ (she claims Malachy christened her) as a result of her days acting in ‘The Guns in the Heather.’ She was sorry when it ended after a few weeks.

It’s a film of intrigue and suspense and you will be captivated by the scenes from Sixmilebridge, Kilkishen and Quin. One to watch over Christmas!

Visit YouTube and search for ‘The secret of Boyne Castle’ uploaded by Chris Johnson.

Happy Christmas,

Siobhán O’ Sullivan

What did the Anglo Normans ever do for us?

We are well aware of the impact of the Anglo-Norman invasion on our history, the undermining of Gaelic society and the replacement of our native structures. Poor old Diarmuid MacMurrough takes a lot of blame for all of this, despite the fact that Henry II in England had already sought and had been given approval by Pope Adrian to invade and civilise us. Henry was just waiting to finish his war in France before sorting us out!

Anyway, in they came, conquered, settled, married and eventually becoming more Irish than even ourselves, ‘níos gaelaí ná na Gaeil féin’! But besides building towns and castles, robbing our women (and probably taking our jobs!), what did the Anglo-Normans do for us – if anything?

Well, for one, they gave us a whole new suite of names, both forename and surname, to choose from.

The Norman influence on Irish surnames

Following the invasion of 1169, a large number of Anglo-French first and last names entered into Ireland. Many, such as Power, Browne, Fleming, Joyce, Burke, Barry, Costello, Nagle, Nugent, D’arcy, Roche and Walsh/Welsh/Wallace, are nowadays considered Irish and are commonly found in Clare. So, too, are those with the Fitz prefix such as Fitzmaurice, Fitzgerald, Fitzgibbon and Fitzpatrick which most people would regard as Irish as the shamrock. Fitz, meaning ‘son of’, can be considered the Norman version of Mac (it derives from the Latin/French ‘fils de’, meaning ‘son of’). Burke came from de Burgh, Roche from de Roiste, Power from de Paor.

In 1366, a law was passed that “Every Englishman do use the English language, and be named by an English name, leaving off entirely the manner of naming used by the Irish.” This was introduced to dissuade the settlers from adopting Celtic prefixes or forms of surname. It didn’t have much affect as many settler families added Mac or ‘O’ and Norman names evolved into an Irish form (eg McHenry, McArthur).

In 1465 a law was passed enacting “that every Irishman that dwells betwixt or amongst Englishmen in the County of Dublin, Myeth, Vriell, and Kildare … shall take to him an English Surname of one town, as Sutton, Chester, Trym, Skryne, Corke, Kinsale; or colour, as white, blacke, browne; or arte or science, as smith or carpenter; or office, as cooke, butler ….”

Many of the trades of the early medieval period such as Archer, Butler, Cooper, Carpenter, Draper, Skinner, Tanner found their way into our surnames. Other introductions from this period came from the mercenary soldiers who accompanied the Norman invasion: Walsh (meaning Welsh), Joyce and Fleming (from Flemish mercenaries) are examples.

Incidentally, the Normans usually took their surnames from the place of their family origins. So, D’arcy originates in Arcy in Normandy. De Clare originates in Clare in Suffolk where the Anglo-Norman family were based. While De indicated their place of origin, Le was used to describe them, eg Le Poer meant ‘a poor person’.

De Burgh – Burke – from a placename in Suffolk, France

Le Botilier – Butler – Occupation bottle steward

De Barra – Barry – from an estate in Wales

Le Waleys – Walsh – the Welshmen

De Angulo – Costello/Nangle – from Nangle Pembrokeshire

What of their influence on forenames?

 Many of the Normans forenames introduced here were of a biblical or European saintly origin.

 In 1922, Reverend Patrick Woulfe wrote extensively on the topic of Irish name origins as follows:

In the same manner Norman and English names became current in Irish families during the thirteenth and subsequent centuries. These have now almost completely supplanted the old Gaelic names. The names borne by the Normans and by them introduced into Ireland, were of three kinds :

 (1) names of Scandinavian origin which their ancestors had carried with them to Normandy ;

(2) names of Germanic origin which the Frankish conquerors had brought across the Rhine and which had ousted the old Celtic and Latin names from France ; and

(3) Biblical names and Latin and Greek names of saints,, which the Normans began to adopt about the beginning of the eleventh century.

Together with these came in a few Celtic names from Brittany, a small number of Anglo-Saxon names, some Danish and Norse names from England, and one or two British or Welsh names. These were nearly all very rare and most of them soon died out. Of the Anglo-Saxon names, only two, Edmund and Edward, survived. Alfred has been revived in recent times. At the period of the Invasion, Frankish names were by far the most popular among the Normans, but Biblical and saintly names were coming rapidly into favour.

The following is a list, in order of frequency, of the more common names borne by the early Anglo- Norman invaders, the Biblical and saintly names of Latin and Greek origin being printed in italics :

William, Robert, Richard, John, Walter, Roger, Ralph, Adam, Hugh, Henry, Thomas, Nicholas, Gilbert, Geoffrey, Elias, Peter (Piers), Osbert, Reginald, Jordan, Simon, Alan, Stephen, Philip, David, Arnold, Alexander, Laurence, Baldwin, Herbert, Martin, Maurice, Godfrey, Andrew, Alfred, James, Samson, Turstein, Warin, Ailward, Daniel, Edward, Gregory, Bernard, Benedict, Hamon, Matthias, Michael, Gerard, Gervase, Lambert, Wilkin, Patrick, Edmund, Edwin, Hubert, Ivor, Joseph, Oliver, Mark.

 The following in alphabetical order were rare :

 Abraham, Adelard, Ailmer, Antony, Augustine, Brian, Clement, Constantine, Estmund, Eustace, Everard, Gocelin, Isaac, Leonard, Luke, Matthew, Miles, Milo, Odo, Osbern, Osmund, Pagan, Ponce, Randulf, Redmund, Rodulf, Silvester, Turold, Ulf, Vincent.

 The following names only came in, or at least became popular, at a later period :

Bartholomew, Christopher, Francis, Gerald, George, Paul, Roland, Theobald.

 Women’s names among the Normans were nearly all of the Biblical or saintly class:

 Agnes, Alice, Amelina, Anastasia, Annabella, Catherine, Cecily, Christina, Dorothy, Egidia, Eleanor, Evelyn, Frances, Honora, Isabella, Johanna, Matilda, Margaret, Susanna.

 The name Mary does not seem to have come into use in Ireland before the end of the16th century. Brigid only began to be used about the same period.

 

Extracted from ‘Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall’, Patrick Woulfe 1922

Out with the old, in with the new

The Anglo-Normans also brought with them new animal species such as the rabbit and fallow deer, new foods such as wheat, orchard fruits, mutton and farming practices such as hay-making. They introduced us to continental European religious saints and practices of the Roman Church. European religious orders soon followed such as the Franciscans, Augustinians, Cistercians, Dominicans etc. These replaced the structures of the native Irish Christian Church.

Up to then, the Irish natives did not adopt the name of saints as they considered this to be placing themselves on a par with the saint. Such naming convention was reserved for those of higher status in the monasteries. This was circumvented by use of the prefix Maol or Giolla meaning follower or servant. The Normans changed all of that and it was now acceptable to be called Peter, James, Michael, John, Mary, Brigid or Margaret.

Very few of us to this day do not have either a forename or surname that is not of Norman origin. Eventually, arising from the Gaelic Revival in the late 19th century, new Irish language versions of these forenames appeared such as Séan, Seamus, Peadar, Máire, Bríd, Mícheál, Cathal and many more appeared.

The Irish Church did not condemn the practice of slave-trading by the Irish until the invasion by the Anglo-Normans and the encroachment of the Roman Church. The story of Patrick (Patricius, son of a Roman administrator), which was introduced here after the Norman conquest, presents the native Irish as uncivilised pagan slavers who needed to be brought to heel. So the Normans inadvertently gave us our native saint and a forename for a good chunk of our population for generations following.

Out with the new, in with the old

Children are rarely given these European saint names today. Authentic Gaelic forenames are much more popular. We are nevertheless, unlikely to see the demise of the Anglo-Normans surnames that were introduced here. But all of us Mikes, Jimmies, Johnnys, Paddys, Kittys, Cathys, Maggies and Bridies can thank the Normans for what they brought us!