Qualla: Saint Macdara's Island https://qualla.com/saint-macdara-s-island 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/z/saint-macdara-s-island-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Saint Macdara's Island https://qualla.com/saint-macdara-s-island Saint Macdara's Island: Introduction https://qualla.com/saint-macdara-s-island/ Photo credit Megdotcom, CC BY-SA 4.0. For as long as anyone can remember, fishermen passing Saint Macdara's Island have dipped their sails three times. Three times for the saint, three times for the Trinity, three times for the seafarers who would not come home unless the gesture was made. The custom belongs to the people of Carna, six kilometres east across the water, and to anyone else who lives by the rhythms of the Connemara fishing fleet. On a sixty-acre granite island, in a tenth-century stone church whose roof has been cut to look like wooden shingles, Saint Sinach Macdara is still considered the patron saint of those who go to sea here - and he is still asked, every year on the sixteenth of July, to bless the boats that pass below his church.

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Image: Megdotcom | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/2/z/saint-macdara-s-island-wp/gc2z-saint-macdaras-island-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Saint Macdara's Island: A Church That Imitates Wood https://qualla.com/saint-macdara-s-island/ Photo credit Megdotcom, CC BY-SA 4.0. Saint Sinach Macdara is believed to have built a wooden church on the island in the sixth century. By the tenth century the wooden building was gone, replaced by the stone structure that still stands. What makes the church remarkable is not just its age but a single architectural...

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Image: Megdotcom | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/2/z/saint-macdara-s-island-wp/gc2z-saint-macdaras-island-a-church-that-imitates-wood.mp3 0:06 2 full Saint Macdara's Island: Pilgrimage and Drowning https://qualla.com/saint-macdara-s-island/ Photo credit Megdotcom, CC BY-SA 4.0. Every 16 July - Feile Mhic Dara, the Feast of Macdara - local people make the crossing for a Mass and a blessing of boats, including the famous Galway hookers that still work this coast. The pilgrimage is older than written records. There is no pier on the island. Pilgrims land w...

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Image: Megdotcom | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/2/z/saint-macdara-s-island-wp/gc2z-saint-macdaras-island-pilgrimage-and-drowning.mp3 0:06 3 full Saint Macdara's Island: The Saint, the Statue, and the Archbishop https://qualla.com/saint-macdara-s-island/ Photo credit Megdotcom, CC BY-SA 4.0. A wooden statue of Saint Macdara was once venerated on the island - or perhaps on the nearby mainland - with the kind of devotion that the Archbishop of Tuam, at some point, found suspect. In an act of iconoclasm, he ordered the statue buried. Iconoclasm has a long history in Chr...

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Image: Megdotcom | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/2/z/saint-macdara-s-island-wp/gc2z-saint-macdaras-island-the-saint-the-statue-and-the-archbishop.mp3 0:06 4 full Saint Macdara's Island: Granite in the Atlantic https://qualla.com/saint-macdara-s-island/ Photo credit Megdotcom, CC BY-SA 4.0. The island itself is granite - sixty acres of hard, weathered Connemara granite rising from the Atlantic off Carna. From the air it appears small, lonely, almost incidental against the much larger mainland coastline. From the water it is the shape that determines the day. Sailors...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/2/z/saint-macdara-s-island-wp/gc2z-saint-macdaras-island-granite-in-the-atlantic.mp3 0:06 5 full