Qualla: Caher Island

Caher Island: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Towel401, CC BY-SA 4.0. Its Irish name is Cathair na Naomh - the City of the Saints - and the title is older than any written record of the place. Hermit monks settled Caher Island sometime in the seventh century, building stone enclosures, a small chapel, and the carved slabs that still rise from the grass today. The monks are long gone, but every August, on the Feast of the Assumption, currachs and small boats cross the breaking water from Inishturk to land pilgrims at Portatemple. They walk the same loops the monks walked. Then the weather closes, and the island returns to its silence.

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Image: Towel401 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Caher Island: The City of the Saints

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ridiculopathy, CC0. Caher lies between Clare Island and Inishturk, off the County Mayo coast, a low green shape rising out of the Atlantic with cliffs on its western side and a gentle slope facing east. It has no harbour, no pier, no permanent residents. What it has, instead, is one of the most inta...

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Image: Ridiculopathy | CC0

Caher Island: The Pirate Queen's Vengeance

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ridiculopathy, CC0. Caher belongs to the world of Grace O'Malley - Gráinne Mhaol, the sixteenth-century chieftain whose galleys ranged the Mayo coast and whose fortresses still stand on Clare Island and at Carrickkildavnet. After she was widowed in 1565, tradition says, O'Malley took a shipwrecked s...

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Image: Ridiculopathy | CC0

Caher Island: Reaching Portatemple

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. El Comandante assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Getting to Caher is not casual. The standard approach is by currach or small boat from Inishturk, swinging in from the east to the rocky landing the charts mark as Portatemple. It is not, by any honest reading, a safe harbour - heavy Atlantic swells can break through even on calm...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. El Comandante assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Caher Island: The Assumption Pilgrimage

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MickReynolds, CC BY-SA 4.0. On the fifteenth of August every year, the Feast of the Assumption brings pilgrims out to Caher. They walk a station route past the chapel ruins, the cross-slabs, the old enclosure walls, stopping to pray at each. The tradition has been kept here in some form for centuries, survi...

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Image: MickReynolds | CC BY-SA 4.0