Ballyboyle and its island in Donegal Bay

A tale of two townlands...

This story is in two parts. Unfortunately, there is no way to link them together. The first part, if it has a geographic base, it is Ballyboyle, a townland on the wild Atlantic coast of Donegal, Ireland’s north-western corner. The second part takes us to Corglass, a fairly out-of-the-way place in the north midlands of Ireland, where the three provinces of Ulster, Leinster and Connacht meet.

Ballyboyle was one of the home places for the leaders of a people who were first documented as a distinct extended kinship group or 'sept' about a thousand years ago. Over the course of the following centuries, they had other places as well, but for the moment, Ballyboyle can stand for them all. These people shared a strong identity, and attachment to the place they lived in. They believed themselves to be descended from a common ancestor, Baoighal, from whom they took their surname Ó Baoighill (descendant of Baoghal) . But we know the identities of only a few of them as individuals, and that usually in connection with some tragedy or misfortune.

Though never especially powerful outside their own domain, as a social and political unit this group prospered and persisted for over half a millennium, but by 1700 it had ceased to exist.

To our eyes these people and their neighbours might appear primitive – they had little by way of advanced technology compared to the highest standards of the time, they did not create great cities or even towns, their administrative and political systems inhibited them from evolving modern and progressive institutions.

But they had a vibrant culture and traditions, underpinned by elaborate rules, rights and responsibilities that defined how they governed themselves and interacted with their neighbours. In the absence of a centralised authority, they valued the strength and dominance to overcome enemies and to take advantage of opportunities to extend power and influence, but also generosity, loyalty and aesthetic sensibility.

If you search for Ballyboyle on www.townlands.ie, the comprehensive database of Irish townlands, you may not find it. And if you enquire in the neighbourhood where it is, your request may not be recognised. Not because it doesn't exist, for it does. But www.townlands.ie in a rare moment of inaccuracy has rendered it as Ballydoyle, and the people who live there call it Ballyweel .

In a way, it's apposite that the 'official' name should fade into obscurity, like the people it originally represented, for in the original Gaelic, it is Baile Uí Bhaoighill, O'Boyle's settlement or home, - the locals' pronunciation captures the phonetics of the Gaelic more accurately.

To go to Ballyboyle, click here

Corglass, the focus of the second part of the story, is the home of a single nuclear family. For at least 150 years, they survived and prospered by diligent attention to farming their few acres. At each generation, most had to leave to make a living elsewhere, broadening the spread of the family. Intermarriage with neighbouring families brings in new stories into the tapestry. This is the world so intimately described by novelist John McGahern, who was born and reared nearby, and who returned to live there, in the belief that "the best of life is life lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything". But it is easy to romanticise this way of life. It was no rural idyll. It required hard and unrelenting toil to rise above a basic subsistence level, but over the course of a couple of centuries they succeeded in restoring the dignity and prosperity they had lost in the destruction of the Gaelic world.

In Ballyboyle, the first part of the story, we are dealing with the broad sweep of historical events, and only rarely can we see the individual people and personalities involved. In Corglass, the second part, we are dealing with the minutiae of life, the rites of passage of births, marriages and deaths, and so we can get some glimpses of their lives.

What they both have in common is that both describe a way of life that is gone forever. The world of Ballyboyle collapsed in war and dispossession; that of Corglass has disappeared by the slow erosion of the impinging modern world. All that survives is the name they both share, though even that is obscured by language. The inhabitants of Ballyboyle called themselves Ó Baoighill, those in Corglass were Boyle. But the Ó Baoighill disappear into the dark recesses of history about the year 1700; the Boyles only emerge into the light of records and documents after 1800.

That missing century means that there is no way to connect Corglass to Ballyboyle. We can speculate that among the people who looked to the chieftain in Ballyboyle as their leader are the ancestors of the Boyles of Corglass, but we can never confirm the link.

To go to Corglass, click here

Get in touch...

Let me know if there's anything you'd like to amend, add or adapt.

I'd particularly like to hear from family members about any anecdotes, reminiscences or observations to include here.

And please let me know about errors, omissions and updates.

I'm sorry, but I'm not available to undertake any genealogical research. I've done my bit!

About me

I'm Sean Boyle (Terence1 > John2 > John3 > Patrick4 > Patrick 5). I was born in Monaghan, Ireland in 1951 and have lived in London since the mid-1970s. I'm married to Anne Conoulty and we have two (now adult) children. Digging up the ancestors for over twenty years has enabled me to put my interest in history into practice, and having now retired from my work as an organisational psychologist, I've found the time to put this website together. It has been an engrossing, and sometimes frustrating, journey. If you find something of interest here, that will have made it all the more worthwhile.

To see where I fit into the wider Boyle picture, go to the Corglass site.