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THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.

    NUMBER 4.      SATURDAY, JULY 25, 1840.      VOLUME 1.

[Illustration: CAISLEAN-NA-CIRCE, OR THE HEN'S CASTLE.]


Our prefixed illustration gives a near view of one of the most
interesting ruins now remaining in the romantic region of Connemara, or
the Irish Highlands, and which is no less remarkable for its great
antiquity than for the singularly wild and picturesque character of its
situation, and that of its surrounding scenery. It is the feature that
gives poetic interest to the most beautiful portion of Lough Corrib--its
upper extremity--where a portion of the lake, about three miles in
length, is apparently surrounded and shut in by the rocky and precipitous
mountains of Connemara and the Joyce country, which it reflects upon its
surface, without any object to break their shadows, or excite a feeling
of human interest, but the one little lonely Island-Castle of the Hen.
That an object thus situated--having no accompaniments around but those
in keeping with it--should, in the fanciful traditions of an imaginative
people, be deemed to have had a supernatural origin, is only what might
have been naturally expected; and such, indeed, is the popular belief. If
we inquire of the peasantry its origin, or the origin of its name, the
ready answer is given, that it was built by enchantment in one night by a
cock and a hen grouse, who had been an Irish prince and princess!

There is, indeed, among some of the people of the district a dim
tradition of its having been erected as a fastness by an O'Conor, King
of Connaught, and some venture to conjecture that this king was no other
than the unfortunate Roderick, the last King of Ireland; and that the
castle was intended by him to serve as a place of refuge and safety, to
which he could retire by boat, if necessity required, from the
neighbouring monastery of Cong, in which he spent the last few years of
his life: and it is only by this supposition that they can account for
the circumstance of a castle being erected by the O'Conors in the very
heart of a district which they believe to have been in the possession of
the O'Flahertys from time immemorial. But this conjecture is wholly
erroneous, and the true founders and age of this castle are to be found
in our authentic but as yet unpublished Annals, from which it appears
certain that the Hen's Castle was one of several fortresses erected, with
the assistance of Richard de Burgo, Lord of Connaught, and Lord Justice
of Ireland, by the sons of Roderick, the last monarch of the kingdom. It
is stated in the Annals of Connaught, and in the Annals of the Four
Masters, at the year 1225, that Hugh O'Conor (son of Cathal Crovedearg),
King of Connaught, and the Lord Justice of Ireland, Richard De Burgo,
arriving with their English at the Port of Inis Creamha, on the east side
of Lough Corrib, caused Hugh O'Flaherty, the Lord of West Connaught, to
surrender the island of Inis Creamha, Oilen-na-Circe, or the Hen's
Island, and all the vessels of the lake, into Hugh O'Conor's hands, for
assurance of his fidelity.

From this entry it would appear that the Hen's Island, as well as the
island called Inis Creamha, had each a castle on it previously; and this
conclusion is strengthened by a subsequent entry in the same Annals, at
the year 1233, from which it appears that this castle, as well as others,
had been erected by the sons of Roderick, who had been long in contention
for the government with Cathal Crovedearg, and his sons Hugh and Felim,
and had, during these troubles, possessed themselves of O'Flaherty's
country. On the death of Hugh O'Conor, who was treacherously slain by
Geoffry De Mares, or De Marisco, in 1228, they appear to have again
seized on the strongholds of the country, that of the Hen's Castle among
the rest, and to have retained them till 1233, when their rival Felim
O'Conor finally triumphed, and broke down their castles. This event is
thus narrated in the Annals of the Four Masters:--

"1233. Felim, the son of Charles the Red-handed, led an array into
Connaught. Cormac, the son of Tomaltagh (Lord of Moylurg), went to meet
him,