The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 33, February 13, 1841

by Various

THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.

Number 33.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1841.

Volume I.

CAHIR CASTLE, COUNTY OF TIPPERARY

To a large portion of our readers it will be scarcely necessary to state, that the little town of Cahir is in many respects the most interesting of its size to be found in the province of Munster, we had almost said in all Ireland; and that, though this interest is to a considerable extent derived from the extreme beauty of its situation and surrounding scenery, it is in an equal degree attributable to a rarer quality in our small towns—the beauty of its public edifices, and the appearance of neatness, cleanliness, and comfort, which pervades it generally, and indicates the fostering protection of the noble family to whom it belongs, and to whom it anciently gave title. Most of our small towns require brilliant sunshine to give them even a semi-cheerful aspect: Cahir looks pleasant even on one of our characteristic gloomy days. As it is not, however, our present purpose to enter on any detailed account of the town itself, but to confine our notice to one of its most attractive features—its ancient castle—we shall only state that Cahir is a market and post town, in the barony of Iffa and Offa West, county of Tipperary, and is situated on the river Suir, at the junction of the mail-coach roads leading respectively from Waterford to Limerick, and from Cork by way of Cashel to Dublin. It is about eight miles W.N.W. from Clonmel, and the same distance S.W. from Cashel, and contains about 3500 inhabitants.

The ancient and proper name of this town is Cahir-duna-iascaigh, or, the circular stone fortress of the fish-abounding Dun, or fort; a name which appears to be tautological, and which can only be accounted for by the supposition that an earthen Dun, or fort, had originally occupied the site on which a Cahir, or stone fort, was erected subsequently. Examples of names formed in this way, of words having nearly synonymous meanings, are very numerous in Ireland, as Caislean-dun-more, the castle of the great fort, and as the Irish name of Cahir Castle itself, which, after the erection of the present building, was called Caislean-na-caherach-duna-iascaigh, an appellation in which three distinct Irish names for military works of different classes and ages are combined.

Be this, however, as it may, it is certain that a Cahir or stone fort occupied the site of the present castle in the most remote historic times, as it is mentioned in the oldest books of the Brehon laws; and the Book of Lecan records its destruction by Cuirreach, the brother-in-law of Felemy Rechtmar, or the Lawgiver, as early as the third century, at which time it is stated to have been the residence of a female named Badamar. Whether this Cahir was subsequently rebuilt or not, does not appear in our histories as far as we have found; nor have we been able to discover in any ancient document a record of the erection of the present castle. It is stated indeed by Archdall, and from him again by all subsequent Irish topographers, that Cahir Castle was erected prior to the year 1142 by Conor-na-Catharach O’Brien, king of Thomond. But this is altogether an error. No castle properly so called of this class was erected in Ireland till a later period, and the assertion of Conor’s having built a castle at Cahir is a mere assumption drawn from the cognomen na-Catharach, or of the Cahir or Fort by which he was known, and which we know from historical evidences was derived not from this Cahir on the Suir, but from a Cahir which he built on an island in Lough Derg, near Killaloe, and which still retains his name. The true name of the founder of Cahir Castle, and date of its erection, must therefore remain undecided till some record is found which will determine them; and in the meantime we can only indulge in conjecture as to one or the other. That it owes its origin, indeed, to some one of the original Anglo-Norman settlers in Ireland, there can be little doubt, and its high antiquity seems unquestionable. As early as the fourteenth century, it appears to have been the residence of James Galdie (or the Anglified) Butler, son of James, the third Earl of Ormond, by Catherine, daughter of Gerald, Earl of Desmond—whose descendant Thomas Butler, ancestor to the present Earl of Glengal, was advanced to the peerage by letters patent, dated at Dublin the 10th November 1543 (34 Henry VIII.) by the title of Baron of Cahir.

In the subsequent reigns of Elizabeth and the unfortunate Charles I, Cahir Castle appears as a frequent and important scene in the melancholy dramas of which Ireland was the stage, and its history becomes a portion not only of that of our country generally, but even in some degree of that of England.

It will be remembered, that, when by the battle of the Blackwater in 1598 the English power in Ireland was reduced to the lowest state, and the queen felt it necessary to send Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, with an army of more than 20,000 men—the largest body, as the Four Masters state, that had ever before come into Ireland since the time of Strongbow—to subdue the rebels, that unfortunate favourite, neglectful of the instructions imperatively given to him that he should prosecute the Ulster rebels, and plant their strongholds with garrisons, marched into Munster, where the only deed of importance he achieved was the taking of Cahir Castle, and the forcing of the Lord Cahir and some other disaffected noblemen of Munster to submit, and accept the queen’s protection. The only favourable result of this misguided enterprise, as Morrison acquaints us, “was the making a great prey of the rebels’ cattle in those parts; he cast the terror of his forces on the weakest enemies, whom he scattered and constrained to fly into woods and mountains to hide themselves.” But these weak rebels did not remain long inactive, or exhibit weakness in attack; and the earl’s journey back to Dublin towards the end of July was marked by a series of disasters that sealed his doom; or, as the Four Masters remark, “The Irish afterwards were wont to say that it were better for the Earl of Essex that he had not undertaken this expedition from Dublin to Hy-Conell Gaura, as he had to return back from his enterprise without receiving submission or respect from the Geraldines, and without having achieved any exploit except the taking of Cahir-duna-iasgach.”