Qualla: Letterard

Letterard: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 6 February 1921, four young men climbed into a boat at Letterard and pushed off for Roundstone, across Bertraghboy Bay. They were Old IRA volunteers, headed to a battalion meeting during the Irish War of Independence, and the meeting was urgent enough to make the crossing in difficult weather. A violent storm caught them midway. The boat foundered off Inishlaken Island. All four drowned. A memorial stone now stands near the mole at Moyrus beach, set into ground that looks out toward the water that took them. It is the kind of stone you can walk past without noticing - until you read the names.

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Letterard: High Ground in Two Languages

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The word Letterard, in Irish, means 'high area' - and the townland is in fact set on elevated land on the Errismore peninsula in west Connemara, in the parish of Moyrus, just north of Carna. Bertraghboy Bay opens to the west, with Roundstone visible across it on clear days. To th...

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Letterard: From Eight Hundred to One Hundred

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Before the Great Famine struck Ireland in 1845, Letterard had a population of roughly 800 people. By the end of the famine, that number had collapsed to just over a hundred. Today the population stands at 103 - essentially the same number that survived the famine, two centuries o...

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Letterard: A Sean-nos Singer and a Maine Senator

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For a small townland, Letterard has produced a remarkable cast. Johnny Mhairtin Learai MacDonnacha became one of the great sean-nos singers - the old, ornamented, unaccompanied Irish singing tradition - and his recordings travelled as far as Scotland, where the related Gaelic sin...

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