09/07/2025
1944 was said to have passed quietly in Connemara, although there was some optimism that World War II was in its death throes.
One momentous event was heavyweight boxer Martin Thornton's feat of bringing the Irish Heavyweight Boxing Championship to Connemara.
The few homes with wireless sets locally were besieged by visitors who must have roared when Máirtín spoke Irish in the post-fight interview.
The local hero also got married in this year, to Mae Fahy, and purchased a hotel in his home village of Spiddal.
In other sports news, Snooker was growing very popular at this time, with a club in Clifden beating their rivals in Westport.
One Clifden player, P. Joyce, next competed in the 1944 Irish Snooker Championships in Dublin and acquitted himself very well.
Unfortunately Oughterard, fancied by many to go all the way in the county football championship, were beaten unexpectedly by Erin's Hope in the quarter finals.
The courts were relatively busy this year.
Amongst the crimes in Connemara was the theft of a huge number of sheep in March, many owned by Kylemore Abbey, the Industrial School, and other owners on the Kylemore mountains. A period of intensive Gardai activity followed with little success.
The judiciary were far from lenient when perpetrators were caught as shown by the hefty 3-month prison sentenced imposed on a Connemara woman for forging a £6 cheque by writing her boss’s signature.
Five men were arrested near Lettermore after a funeral where one of the men carrying the coffin was struck on the head, leading to a mass brawl.
A Moycullen man was also fined 10 shillings for purchasing and wearing a uniform from an army deserter.
Shopkeepers were under strict instructions to keep records of all items sold due to rationing and one was brought to court and charged £5 for not keeping exact records of the tea he has sold.
Economically, there was some good news.
A private company was formed to look into the prospect of reopening the lead mines at Carrowgarrew, Maam. These mines had once given employment to over 300 local people.
Some eel fishermen caught as much as £20 worth of eels per week in July.
Clifden Bay regatta was revived in the same month after a lapse of twenty-five years and proved to be a success, the local yachting club announcing its intentions to do it on a grander scale the next year.
Connemara Pony Show celebrated its twenty-first birthday in August with over 1,000 ponies entered into the various categories. The Archbishop of Tuam presented a beautiful silver perpetual challenge cup for the occasion.
By Christmas, there were huge numbers of parcels arriving through the post and fruit, tea, large sums of money and even Christmas cake commenced to arrive from friends in America although it was said that there was an acute shortage of eggs in Connemara.
There was much grumbling when the 8:30am bus service from Clifden to Galway, via Cong, was moved to the ungodly hour of 6:30am and Josie Mongan TD demanded that the Clifden-Galway railway be reopened.
Many must have agreed because in the General Election of 1944, the Fine Gael man once again headed the poll, although Fianna Fáil received a far larger share of the vote overall.
The TD spent much of his Dáil speaking time arguing for the afforestation of Connemara, which had been mooted for over two decades, and urging the building of an aerodrome for Galway.
Meanwhile in the county council chamber, one East Galway representative complained that the rest of the county was carrying Connemara on its back. Councillor O'Toole from Oughterard replied furiously that Connemara neither asked for nor wanted charity from anyone.
This insult paled when compared to a scandalous article in the Londonderry Sentinel in July, 1944 which stated:
‘The children of Connemara grew up humane and healthy, but at best a noble savage.
The problem is how to produce adults who are both humane and cultivated. At the same time infants in Connemara were tumbling about half naked on the mud floors of cabins little better than cowhouses under the eyes of mothers who knew rather less about the scientific nurture of children than about electronic physics.’
Two skeletons were found by county council workers digging in a sand pit in Leenane in 1944. They turned out to be from the Bronze Age.
A 9-year-old Oughterard boy went missing on the mountains of Shanafeistin in this year. He was discovered by a search party at 2am that night, curled up asleep beside his faithful dog 'Watch' who had remained by the side of his little master.
In a slightly unhappier story concerning a dog, a man from outside Moycullen was bitten twice by his neighbour’s dog. He reported the matter to the Garda and it ended up in court.
Although the dog owner agreed to pay his neighbour’s court costs he remarked impenitently that the plaintiff had 'aggravated the dog and the dog had brought his wrath down on him and there was a limit to the patience a dog, like a human being, had.’
On 7 June, The Minister for Supplies, Seán Lemass, announced further rationing of electricity nationally. This was a moot point for nearly of all Connemara where electricity was but a distant dream.
For more stories of life in Galway and the west of Ireland, see my book 'The Little History of Galway.' In all good bookshops or pick up a signed copy at:
https://www.etsy.com/ie/listing/1867494645/little-history-galway-ireland-colm
Pictured is a basket-maker on Inisheer, courtesy Folklore Commission.
