Qualla: Ballyconneely https://qualla.com/ballyconneely en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Ballyconneely https://qualla.com/ballyconneely Ballyconneely: Introduction https://qualla.com/ballyconneely/ The story locals tell, when asked where the Connemara pony came from, goes like this. Sometime in the centuries when Spanish ships still ran the Atlantic coast of Ireland, one of them broke up on the rocks near Slyne Head. Arabian horses, kept aboard for Iberian buyers, swam ashore. They found the small native ponies grazing the windbeaten grass and bred with them. What came out of that meeting was the Connemara pony - hardy enough for the bog and the cliff, but with desert blood somewhere in the line. The legend is older than the pedigrees can prove. It is the kind of explanation that gets handed down because it makes a kind of romantic sense, even if the genetic truth is more prosaic.

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/2/z/ballyconneely-wp/gc2z-ballyconneely-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Ballyconneely: A Village With Many Names https://qualla.com/ballyconneely/ The nineteenth-century antiquarian John O'Donovan documented at least five spellings of the village's name - Ballyconneely, Baile 'ic Conghaile, Ballykineely, Ballycunneely, Balyconneely - none of them quite settled. An Post's Placenames Branch later recorded yet more variants. T...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/2/z/ballyconneely-wp/gc2z-ballyconneely-a-village-with-many-names.mp3 0:06 2 full Ballyconneely: The Pony Show and the Bog Beyond https://qualla.com/ballyconneely/ Every July, the Ballyconneely pony show brings the surrounding county into the village. Livestock is exhibited, a travelling funfair sets up, and Connemara ponies - some of them champions from as far away as Britain and the United States - are paraded and judged. Three miles east...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/2/z/ballyconneely-wp/gc2z-ballyconneely-the-pony-show-and-the-bog-beyond.mp3 0:06 3 full Ballyconneely: Botanists and Smokehouses https://qualla.com/ballyconneely/ In 1975, a team of Dutch botanists arrived at Ballyconneely to study the lakes and water chemistry of the area. They continued their work across Ireland until 2010 - thirty-five years - because Ireland's post-Ice Age landscape preserved something the Netherlands had long since dr...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/2/z/ballyconneely-wp/gc2z-ballyconneely-botanists-and-smokehouses.mp3 0:06 4 full Ballyconneely: Sounds of First Contact https://qualla.com/ballyconneely/ Locals will sometimes mention, with the casual pride of people standing on contested historical ground, that the Marconi wireless station built nearby in 1905 sent the first commercial transatlantic wireless message - to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia in 1907. The detail belongs to t...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/2/z/ballyconneely-wp/gc2z-ballyconneely-sounds-of-first-contact.mp3 0:06 5 full