Go find yourself a horse in Glann!

 

(Nephin from up near Glann)

There is a video linked here to FB which may or may not work, but the photo gives you an idea what it's like

Video from up in Glann

The video here (if you can see it) was taken by my Aunt Mary over in County Mayo. It's a high valley up on the shoulder of the Ox Mountains on the Mayo/Sligo border. Locally it's called Glann.

As children, on our holidays at Granny Gillard's, we used to look up at those heather covered mountains, but I never realised anyone lived up there. But as you'll see from the view at the end, Glann is genuinely up in the (admittedly low) clouds of Connacht.

And I never realised till this year that we had any connection with the place. I had heard that there was a phrase directed at many a bachelor farmer in Bonniconlon and Rathreedane "You'll have to go and get yourself a horse from Glann!". This was a reference to the proverbial strength and leg-power of the women from Glann, who were strong, determined and perhaps a bit fearsome. I doubt that the phrase was ever used in their presence.

So imagine my surprise when I found out that my own Great-grandmother, Nellie Gallagher was one of FOUR sisters who came down the mountains from Glann in the late 19th century to find husbands in the less-forbidding townlands of the plains. I suppose also that so few people lived up in Glann that potential husbands were not that numerous.

I made a trip to Attymas, the nearest village of any size to Glann (and also a place with a lot of my cousins and second and third cousins). Aunt Mary said that in the past you could take a cart from Bonniconlon to Attymas but then it was "Shanks's Pony" the rest of the way, up the steep stony tracks to the high valley. My Google Maps directed me to cycle up one particular stony 'boreen' that didn't even go up the mountainside, but showed me that no bicycle had ever set tread on it before. I ended up with a new scar or two. But high above me I could see tracks going up the mountainside, and as I now know but didn't know then, the valley on top of the mountain is Glann. There is nothing so grand as a village, just a scatter of a few houses. I think there used to be twelve, but even now five houses up there are occupied. 

And I learned something else from my aunt, who taught school, including Gaelic, in the village for more than 40 years. She said the map name is often written as Glanduff, which conventionally would mean 'Dark Valley'. But cartographers lose much in their anglicisations, and the actual Gaelic name is "Gleann dha ghuth", which means 'The valley of the two voices'. And why? Well you'll see there are rocky cliffs in the valley so at Glann there are excellent echoes. In fact my aunt remembers that when they climbed up there once the children entertained themselves with shouting for the echoes.

And for me, the place now has all kinds of echoes of a different kind.