Daniel O'Connell at Derrynane
The Liberator's home
Born in Cahirciveen in 1775, raised here by his uncle Maurice — "Hunting Cap" O'Connell — Daniel inherited Derrynane and ran his political campaigns out of it for forty years. He won Catholic Emancipation in 1829 by getting himself elected for Clare in 1828 as a Catholic, which he was not legally allowed to be. Westminster blinked. He died in Genoa in 1847 on his way to Rome. His heart went to the Irish College there. His body came home to Glasnevin. The house and 320 acres around it have been a national park since 1967, when de Valera himself opened it to the public.
A monastery, a tide, and a grave
Abbey Island
At the far end of Derrynane Strand, joined to the mainland by a sandbar that the tide swallows twice a day, sits Abbey Island. The ruins are of a small early-Christian monastery, possibly sixth-century, certainly there by the 12th. O'Connell's wife Mary is buried in the abbey graveyard, by his choice — he wanted her where he could walk to her. Cross at low water. Check the tide before you go. The sandbar comes back in faster than you expect.
9th-century in the field above the bay
Loher Stone Fort
Drive up the lane behind the village toward Coad and you arrive, abruptly, in the 9th century. Loher is a circular cashel — a drystone ringfort about 25 metres across, with the foundations of two houses inside its wall, one rectangular and one round. It was excavated and consolidated by the OPW in the 1980s. It sits at 200 metres above sea level, looking south to Scariff Island and west to the Skelligs. There is no ticket office. There is no tea room. There is a stile and a sign and the wind.
Older writing than any in the house
The Ogham stones at Derrynane
In the grounds of Derrynane House — the same grounds the Liberator walked — three Ogham stones lean against a wall by the chapel. Ogham is the earliest written form of Irish, the notched alphabet of the 4th to 7th centuries, carved along the edge of standing stones. The Derrynane stones were brought in from elsewhere on the estate in O'Connell's time. He liked them. He left them where you can still see them.
Genoa to Glasnevin, by sea
The Liberator's funeral
When O'Connell died in 1847, the news came back to Derrynane before the body did. His heart had been removed in Italy at his own request and sent to Rome. The rest of him was carried home by ship, met at Cobh, and brought up to Dublin for the largest funeral the country had then seen. Local memory holds that his coffin was rowed across Derrynane harbour by his own boatmen on the way to the boat for Cobh. Whether the barge story is true to the letter or the heart, the people of Caherdaniel believe it, and that counts for something.