The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 19, November 7, 1840

by Various

THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.

Number 19.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1840.

Volume I.

GARRY CASTLE, KING’S COUNTY.

Among the many singular characters who figured in Ireland during the last century, by no means the least remarkable was Thomas Coghlan, or Mac Coghlan, the last descendant of a long and ancient family, the ruins of whose fortalice are the subject of the sketch at the head of this article, at least as they appeared some five or six years ago. This extraordinary personage may justly be regarded as the last of the Irish tanistry, as well from his pertinacious adherence to the habits and maxims of that defunct institution, as from his being until his death possessed of the princely domains of his race, almost unimpaired by the many confiscations and revolutions which have swept away so many proud names from the records of Ireland, thus uniting in himself the influence of traditional rank, of such magical weight here, with the influence of territorial possessions, of such magical weight every where. Although for many years a member of the Irish Parliament, as representative for the King’s County, the laws which he assisted in making were not at all the laws which he administered. At home every thing was on the patriarchal system, in all respects conformable to the laws and regulations of the Brehons—himself the grand centre of all authority, his will the fountain of all justice, and his own hand in most cases the administrator of his judgments. Such being the Mac Coghlan, or “the Maw,” as he was more generally and rather whimsically designated, it is little wonder that he should live in the fondest remembrance of a people so deeply attached to old names and old ways as the Irish all over the King’s County generally, but particularly in that district of it anciently known as the Mac Coghlan’s country, now the barony of Garry Castle, so called from the castle before alluded to, the ruins of which stand beside the road leading from Birr to Banagher, and about half a mile from the latter town.

These interesting remains consist of the tall square keep seen in the accompanying view, and the mouldering walls of some outer buildings, the entire enclosed in a considerable area, with round towers at the corners, and entered by a fortified gateway. They seem to be of some antiquity, this having been the site, at all events, of the house of the Mac Coghlans from the earliest periods, until the more peaceful circumstances of the nation permitted them to abandon their narrow and gloomy security for the beautiful residence of Kilcolgan, an erection of the seventeenth century, the naked ruins of which now form the chief feature in the landscape to the traveller by the Grand Canal before he reaches Gillen. I am not aware that any records exist to furnish a clue to the history of Garry Castle, nor have I been able to meet any one able to give me any information about it, beyond the usual tirade about Oliver Cromwell, who seems doomed to bear on his back the weight of all the old walls in Ireland. One very old man, who in his youth had been, I believe, a servant of the Maw, was the only person in fact who seemed to know more about it than that it was “an ould castle, an’ a great place in the ould times.” From him I gathered a good many anecdotes of his former master, of which the following partly bears upon the present subject, and gives rather a good illustration of a class of persons not unfrequently met with, who occasionally support most extraordinary pretensions by methods still more extraordinary, claiming to be proficients in all the forgotten lore of past ages, and even in their rags hinting at powers, the possession of which would be rather enviable. The story is an odd one, but I tell it exactly as I heard it.

“I had business into Banagher one day when I was a gossoon, and just as I came to the bill over Garry Castle, I saw a great crowd moving up the road forninst me. ‘Lord rest the sowl that’s gone,’ says I, crossin’ myself, for by course I thought it was a corpse goin’ to All Saints’ churchyard; but when it came nearer, and I saw the Maw in the front with a whole crowd of gentlemen, some that I knew and more that I didn’t, and ne’er a corpse at all with them, I made bould to ax Father Madden what might be the matther.

‘Why, my boy,’ says he, ‘there’s some gentlemen come all the ways from Dublin to consther what’s written on the big stone over the hall chimley in the ould castle beyant, and the rest of us are going to have the laugh at their ignorance.’

‘’Deed, your riv’rince,’ says I, ‘an’ it’s the fine laugh we’ll have in airnest, for sure the smallest gossoon in the country could tell them ’twas written by the Danes long ago, and that it’s an enchantment.’