By – Pat Lynch

 Kanturk, Co.Cork

The Old Court  is to the Kanturk man what the Clock Tower is to the son of Youghal or The West Gate to the native of Clonmel.  It is at once a landmark a reference point in walking, cycling, motoring and even flying; a focal point, a meeting place – particularly for lovers – an unfailingly appropriate backdrop for local stage shows, and an inevitable subject for scenic postcards.  Pre-eminently, it is an historic monument without equal in Ireland from Dingle to Donegal.

For the greater part of four centuries it has featured in virtually every aspect of the life of the Kanturk district in particular, and, generally, in a number of aspects of the life of the Duhallow area.  Occasionally, in old time and in new, it has figured in all-Ireland affairs.  On three separate occasions it has been the centrepiece of what might be termed international negotiations.  Invariably, mention of it has invoked irresistible nostalgia for exiles, a somewhat indefinable pride for Allow-siders, and a frank curiosity, often followed by profound interest, for visitors.

 Peeping from its encircling woodlands scarcely a mile down river from the town, the grey-stoned castle was said, by the historian Smith, in 1750, to be “the finest ever erected by an Irish chieftan”.  When Smith penned his report the castle had stood for one hundred and forty-nine years.  Now, well over two hundred years later, it seems just as indestructible.

Its plan is an oblong of one hundred and twenty feet by eighty, flanked at each angle with a square and embattled tower; the main building four storeys high, the windows small but numerous, and the window cases, the coignes, and the battlements all of hewn stone.

 So went the record of “The Old Court” in the “Parliamentary Gazeteer of Ireland” and there is not a Kanturk man of the past or the present who would find fault with the detail.

For generations, fact and fancy have been interwoven in the tales that have been spun about the castle.  Around the firesides of Duhallow the yarn that it was built by seven masons all of whom were named John vied with the myth that the builders recruited every passer-by and forced him or her to labour in the construction of the fortress.  And, according to that version, when the slave labourers dropped dead from exhaustion they were given the most peremptory and convenient of burials by the expedient of enclosing the bodies in the great castle walls.  That human blood was mixed with the mortar to ensure a really binding bond between the stones was yet another invention of the shanachies.  Even John C Deady, the gifted “Poet of Duhallow” contributed to the spreading of the legend when he hurriedly put together some doggerel lines at the urgent entreaty of Tadgh a Slios, the ballad singer, in The Market Square of Kanturk on a fair-day.

 “Theres a ruin hoary,

Of ancient glory,

That proudly soars o’er

Allow’s tide.

In days of yore

One McCarthy Mor,

With lime and gore,

Built that court of pride”.

 The Old Court was not, in fact, built by The McCarthy Mor, but John C Deady or any other writer or speaker on the subject ought not to stand condemned on the scors of historical accuracy in the matter.  The truth is that the tangled skein of the succession in the great clan Carthy and the inter-action, over a few centuries of those whom we might call the McDonagh-McCarthys would be difficult for many people to unravel.  Add to this the contention that was mounted, at one stage about “The Lordship of Duitche Ella” and two who claimed, at another stage, that they were the true inheritors of the title and estates of “The Mor” – add those confusing happenings and claims to the difficulties of following the line of inheritance and any man would be excused from being able to say who “The McCarthy Mor” was and who he was not when the big castle at Kanturk was commenced in 1600.

The castle, as every Kanturk school boy knows, was never completed, but the stout walls and four corner towers were built by Dermot McOwen MacDonagh.  He was, by birth and breeding, one of the McCarthy’s and he would be entitled to use the McCarthy surname but did not, apparently, do so.

 Who was this Dermot McOwen MacDonagh (McCarthy)?  What manner of man did he prove to be?  Why did he commence, at Kanturk, the building of a castle believed to be the finest ever erected by an Irish Chieftan?  Why did he not finish the work?  Finally, what became of him?

 Dermot McOwen MacDonagh could trace his line back to the founder of the famous clan Carthy.  The founder of the clan, in the first half of the eleventh century, was Carthach, the Prince of Desmond and son of Justin the King of Muster.  The McCarthy’s were among the most warlike opponents of the English even before the coming of Strongbow in 1172.  Thirteen years after the Norman invasion, there was a Dermod Mor na Cille Bain McCarthy who, in his late eighties, was stated to have been murdered by English settlers in Cork.  His son, Donal Mor na Curradh McCarthy led his forces against the English of Munster and defeated them at Limerick in 1196.

 The first direct mention that we can trace to a “McCarthy Mor” was to Cormac Fionn McCarthy who was born in 1170 and died at the comparatively early age of forty-five.  Donal, incidentally, was the son of Dermod the victor at Limerick.  We assume that Cormac was called “Fionn” because he had a head of fair hair.  It was customary to identify people who had fair or white hair by the appellation “Fionn”.  The name of the patron saint of Cork, Fionnbar, provides an instance of the custom.  He was called Fionnbar because he had “a white head”.

According to the chroniclers the third son of Cormac Fionn McCarthy Mor was the first Lord of Duhallow.  He was Dermod McCarthy and he was succeeded by Donagh McCarthy MacDonagh, and by Cormac Oge McCarthy MacDonagh and by Donagh McCarthy MacDonagh.  So we come to the year 1486 when Donagh Oge McCarthy MacDonagh was “Lord of Ealla” or, really, Chieftan of Duhallow.  Young John Barry Mor, a Norman English Knight came on Christmas Day to plunder the lands of Duhallow.  His reward was death at the hands of Donagh Oge McCarthy MacDonagh.  The annals of the Four Masters have this laconic record of the event:

 “The Barry Mor (of Cork)

-i.e. John – the most worthy

young man of the English of

Ireland was killed on Christmas

Day by Donagh Oge McCarthy,

Lord of Ealla, he having gone

to plunder him”

 Cormac MacDonagh followed Donagh Oge McCarthy MacDonagh as “Lord of Ealla” and he, in turn, had as successor, Cormac Oge MacDonagh.  Almost forty years after a Lord of Ealla had killed a Norman-English adventurer in the act of plundering, Cormac Oge MacDonagh, also a Lord of Ealla took the field against the forces of another plunderer.  This time the robbers struck from the western side of Duhallow and at their head was the famous O’Connor Kerry.  Cormac Oge MacDonagh and his kerne and horsemen routed the men under O’Connor Kerry who was severely wounded in the battle and taken prisoner by MacDonagh.  That happening was in 1524.

 By 1585 the situation existed in which two members of the MacDonagh-McCarthy branch of the clan Carthy were claiming the title of the “Lord of Duitche Ealla”.  They were Dermond the son of Owen the son of Donagh-an-Bothair (or Donagh of the Road) son of Owen MacDonagh, and Donagh the son of Cormac Oge the son of Cormac MacDonagh.

 The records are far from clear as to which of the  contenders succeeded in establishing his claim.  What is clear is that in 1601 the Lord of Duitche Ealla was Dermot McOwen MacDonagh.  He had married one of the Fitzgibbons, a daughter of the legendary White Knight of Mitchelstown.  And we find that on August 13^th 1601 the notorious Lord Carew, then Lord President of Munster and the despoiler of the great forests of “The Pass of Kerry”, wrote to Lord Cecil the Secretary to Queen Elizabeth I.  In the course of his letter to London, Carew said that Dermot McOwen MacDonagh was “a gentleman of great land, of Florence (McCarthy’s) surname, his cousin germane in blood and married to his (Florence McCarthy’s) cousin germane.  Florence McCarthy, of course was The McCarthy Mor at that time.  It was also reported to London that Dermot McOwen MacDonagh (McCarthy) was building “a regular fortress” at Kanturk.  On receipt of news of the project of Kanturk Castle, “The Lords of Her Majesty’s Council” immediately went into conference and issued an order that the building of the castle was to stop forthwith.

Why, it may well be asked, should the work of construction on a castle in a rather remote district like Kanturk cause The Lords of Her Majesty’s Council, in London, to go into immediate session?  And why should they deem it necessary to make an “Order in Council” to stop the work?  The answer lies in the fact that “their Lordships” had also before them the following very disturbing report:

 

“You have already perceived that this cunning hyprocritical Traytor (Florence

The McCarthy Mor) hath written letters to the Arch- Traytors James fits Thomas,

Tyrone, and O’Donnell, and besides hath sent or, at least, procured letters to be

sent to the King of Spain, moving and intreating him to invade Her Majesties

Kingdom; And now for a perclose of all you shall behold. (Ne quid desit ad

summan impudentiam) that he might equal, if not exceed, the most impudent

and barbarous Traytor; his letters sent to his Holy Father the Pope . . . . . “

The letter referred to was to the Pope and it was signed by O’Neill Chieftan of Tyrone, the Earl of Desmond, by the McCarthy Mor and by Dermot McOwen MacDonagh – “Lord of Duitche Ealla”.  It informed the Pope that the government of Elizabeth was “as bad as Pharoah’s and worse to Christians than that of the Turks”.

 Not only did the Queen’s ministers in London, in co-operation with Lord Carew, as Lord President of Munster, insist that Dermot McOwen MacDonagh (McCarthy) would cease the building of the great castle at Kanturk, but they further sought him to “put himself under the protection of Her Majesty” and so swear loyalty to her.  And with MacDonagh they further sought that the other Duhallow chieftans, MacAuliffe and O’Keeffe should also swear loyalty.

MacDonagh, MacAuliffe and O’Keeffe had no option, if they wanted to hold on to their lands and  chieftan –ships, but to obey.  It is the measure, however, of where MacDonagh’s loyalty lay that when he was being interviewed by Carew the latter asked; “If the Spaniards invade Ireland what would you do then?”

 MacDonagh replied; “Your Lordship puts me a hard question, for it that should happen let not your Lordship trust me”.

The conversation is recorded in Carew’s correspondence to London.

Even at the very time “The Princes of the North”, Hugh O’Neill and Hugh O’Donnell, were marching south at he head of their combined army to join the Spaniards expected to land on the south coast.  The moment that the Northern army came within reasonable distance of Duhallow, MacDonagh assembled his force of five hundred fighting men – made up of three hundred kerne or fleet-footed light infantry, eighty gallow-glasses or heavily armed infantry of a special type, and one hundred and sixteen cavalry.  At the head of his men, MacDonagh marched to join O’Neill and O’Donnell and so he went with them to Kinsale.

 Kinsale, of course, was the turning point of Irish history.  The defeat of the Irish cause ensured that English dominion would obtain for many centuries.  Like other chieftans on the Irish side, MacDonagh was taken prisoner.  He spent four years in prison and on his release, in 1604, saw no point in openly opposing the Crown.  He made his peace with the English and was fully restored to his title, lands and revenues “over Keanwntirk, Lowhert and divers other lands in the greatest part of the territerie of Duhallow”.

 A rebel at heart, he continued outwardly to enjoy his estates and his power until the opportunity again presented itself for revolt.  That was thirty-seven years after his release from prison and forty years after Kinsale.  He led his fighting men, again, in The Rebellion of 1641.

 Prior to the Rebellion MacDonagh had raised a considerable sum of money on his castle in Kanturk and on his lands in Duhallow from Sir Philip Percival.  The loan provided for redemption, but the Court of Claims ruled as follows:

“The equity of redemption, which

was of no value, was forfeited by

the said Dermot (McOwen

MacDonagh) engaging with the

rebels”.

Thus, the Percival family – later to become the Earls of Egmont – came into possession of Kanturk town and castle and much else besides.  And down to present day their name and title survives in Kanturk where there are streets called Percival, Egmont Row, and Earl Street.  It should, nevertheless, be noted that irrespective of how the Percivals acquired the estates they were to prove exceptionally good landlords in the course of the years.

 

Two sons of Dermot McOwen MacDonagh fought by his side in the Rebellion of 1641.  Having lost their lands and titles and revenues the MacDonaghs survived because the people of Duhallow recognised them as their rightful chieftans.  And in the wars occasioned by the bid for power of the cowardly King James, the MacDonaghs drew their swords again to fight on the Irish side.  One of them, Colonel Charles MacDonagh, was appointed Governor of Cork by King James.

 

But James, as we know scurried out of Ireland to the safety of France, and the MacDonaghs were once more deprived of rank and consequence in the eyes of the Crown.  As usual, they retained their ranks and their consequence in the eyes of the people.

One man who was not under any illusion about the consequence of the MacDonaghs was Lord Barrymore one of the very powerful representatives of the Crown in Ireland.  He was anxious to bring MacDonagh and O’Callaghan, Chieftan of Clonmeen, over to the English side.  So we find Lord Barrymore, on October 29^th 1690, writing to London to urge that MacDonagh and O’Callaghan be brought “under the protection of the Crown”.

                                               

“It was of very great consequence to draw over people of their quality and interest who will bring with them one thousand men and at least seven or

eight hundred cows”.

The ministers of William of Orange however, rejected the application.  Lord Barrymore described MacDonagh as “Chief of the country called Duhallow between Mallow and the County Kerry”.  With O’Callaghan, he remained unrestored to his lands and his title until, as the young crusader, Emmet, was to say from the dock more than a century later “other times and other men will do justice to my cause”.