Qualla: Rinn an Chaisleáin https://qualla.com/rinn-an-chaisleain en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/2/8/rinn-an-chaisleain-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Rinn an Chaisleáin https://qualla.com/rinn-an-chaisleain Rinn an Chaisleáin: Introduction https://qualla.com/rinn-an-chaisleain/ Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. The lease, as folk memory has it, was paid in hawks — two of them every year, delivered to the Earls of Desmond by the Norman-Irish Ferriter family in exchange for the right to hold the Blasket Islands from the end of the 13th century onward. That arrangement gives a sense of how remote Castle Point felt to medieval mainland Ireland: a place worth so little, and reached so seldom, that two birds would do for rent. The Ferriters built a small castle here on the point just west of the harbour on Great Blasket. Nothing of that castle remains above ground. What remains is a graveyard — and the names of the people who needed it.

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/2/8/rinn-an-chaisleain-wp/gc28-rinn-an-chaisle-in-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Rinn an Chaisleáin: Two Hawks a Year https://qualla.com/rinn-an-chaisleain/ Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Feiritéar — Anglicized as Ferriter — were Cambro-Norman settlers who took root on the western tip of the Dingle Peninsula not long after the Norman conquest of Ireland. By the late 13th century they held a lease on the Blaskets from the Earls of Desmond, and later from the Bo...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/2/8/rinn-an-chaisleain-wp/gc28-rinn-an-chaisle-in-two-hawks-a-year.mp3 0:06 2 full Rinn an Chaisleáin: The Soup School https://qualla.com/rinn-an-chaisleain/ Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1840, during a period when Protestant missionary societies were active in Catholic Ireland, a small school was built at Rinn an Chaisleáin using stones taken from the ruined Ferriter castle. The name that has stuck to such places — "soup school" — captures what they offered: f...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/2/8/rinn-an-chaisleain-wp/gc28-rinn-an-chaisle-in-the-soup-school.mp3 0:06 3 full Rinn an Chaisleáin: When the Sea Would Not Let Them Go Home https://qualla.com/rinn-an-chaisleain/ Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. Every Blasket Islander traced ancestry to the mainland villages of Dunquin or Ventry, and tradition demanded burial there, in consecrated ground with the family. But the sea did not always cooperate. When a death came during weeks of bad weather — and weeks of bad weather were no...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/2/8/rinn-an-chaisleain-wp/gc28-rinn-an-chaisle-in-when-the-sea-would-not-let-them-go-home.mp3 0:06 4 full Rinn an Chaisleáin: Stones for Names https://qualla.com/rinn-an-chaisleain/ Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. Some of the graves at Rinn an Chaisleáin are marked by stones — undressed slabs, slightly tilted, weather-worn. The dead here represent the categories of human suffering that medieval and early modern Catholic practice could not always accommodate within consecrated ground: the v...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/2/8/rinn-an-chaisleain-wp/gc28-rinn-an-chaisle-in-stones-for-names.mp3 0:06 5 full