Running Away To Home

The house is in ruins now, a corrugated metal roof set incongruously atop the crumbling walls of stone gathered from the mountainside some 200 years ago and placed one atop another to build a home on this remote farm near the top of the Gap of Dunloe near a place called Coimín Sléibhe.

Mrs. Moriarty's House

Labeled as “The Gap Cottage” on maps from the 1830’s and referred to in local lore as “Saint Patrick’s Cottage” this was the place, according to legend, from which St. Patrick drove the last of the snakes from Ireland. A series of photographs, undated but perhaps from the turn of the century mostly label the home as “Mrs. Moriarty’s house”, and it is this designation that is most intriguing. Our great grandmother, Johanna Moriarty, was born in the Gap of Dunloe in 1850. Her family had lived in the Gap for many generations, and it’s of course impossible not to speculate that the people in the photographs might be our family. Photographs taken over the years of what appears to be the same house are not dated, street names and numbers did not exist in rural communities, and surviving records from the time are vague, so current attempts at identifying the people in the photographs are purely speculation.

Bill & Sue Brinkert in front of Mrs. Moriarty's House (2018)

Families no longer live this high in the Gap, most having sought a better or more hospitable life lower on the mountain or somewhere more distant. The only visitors this high on the mountain now are red, orange, and purple sheep, spray painted with spots of identifying color (yours are purple, mine are orange), and the trap and pony men who carry tourists to the top of the Gap for spectacular views of the Black Valley and beyond.

Our trap and pony driver was Joe Coffey who recommended that if we wanted to learn more about the families that lived here, we should go down to Kate Kearney’s Cottage and talk to Sean Coffey (the current proprietor) and he could put us in touch with a woman by the name of Mary Coffey who knew a lot about the families in the area. I asked if Sean and/or Mary were related to him and Joe said “Not that I know of, but ask Mary, she will probably tell you different”. (We did, and they are).

Bill & Cathy and Bill & Sue in the Gap Dunloe

Kate Kearney’s Cottage is another house surrounded by legend and lore, and it is here that things get interesting. The following excerpt is from the Gap of Dunloe website (www.gapofdunloe.com)

“As with many an interesting history, the story of Kate Kearney’s Cottage begins with strong drink—and an even stronger woman. Kate Kearney was a woman of exceptional beauty and character who lived in Kerry in the years before the Great Famine of 1845 to 1849. The legend began in a cottage at the eastern edge of the McGillycuddy Reeks mountains and has captured the popular imagination ever since. It was at this síbín that Kate distilled a particularly potent form of poitin, called Kate Kearney’s Mountain Dew. So strong that it could not be drunk without at least seven times its own quantity to temper it, this Mountain Dew was illegal, but Kate ignored the law and continued to create her special liquor and sell it to tired travellers in need of reviving."

Kate Kearney's Cottage (2018)

Unfortunately the “mountain dew” concoction of goat’s milk and poitin (homemade whiskey) is no longer served at Kate Kearney’s Cottage, but the legend and the cottage business continues.

A fixture in the Gap now for over 150 years, Kate Kearney’s Cottage was actually built by Donal Mór Moriarty in 1849 at the entrance to the gap at a place called Doirín an Chuileann. The house was eventually handed down by Donal Mór Moriarty and his wife Julia Burke to their daughter Mary Moriarty, who married another Moriarty who lived in a house at the top of the Gap at a place called Coimín Sléibhe.

So, backing up a few years,  a John Moriarty was born in approximately 1795 and married Ellen Burke in 1815. They lived in a house at the top of the Gap in a place called Coimin Sléibhe, and had two sons, both redheads, named Daniel (Donal Ruadh) Moriarty and John (Sean Ruadh) Moriarty. Daniel grew up and eventually married Catherine Barry. They had a son named John in 1850 who eventually moved down the mountain and married Mary Moriarty, daughter of Donal Mór Moriarty and Julia Burke. Mary and John inherited Kate Kearney’s cottage from Mary’s parents and continued to operate it as a Public House (Pub). 

The other brother John (Sean Ruadh) Moriarty also moved down the mountain and he married a woman by the name of Mary Ferris. In 1850 they had a daughter named Johanna Moriarty who eventually married a man also from the Gap named Jeremiah Meara. Jeremiah and Johanna had a daughter on April 1, 1878 and named her Mary Josephine Meara. This is our grandmother.

Moriarty Family Tree (detail)

Both Sean Coffey, and Mary Coffey are descendants of Mary and John Moriarty. Sean continues to run Kate Kearney’s Cottage and Mary, now retired, spends much of her time there. Sean and Mary were extremely warm, gracious and hospitable, and from the first moment we met, treated us like family, which it turns out, we are.

Bill and Sue with Sean Coffey and Mary Coffey Coghlan

When we first contacted Mary Coffey and we told her we that we were descendants of both the Moriartys and Mearas, she was thrilled to meet us., both of these names having been prominent in The Gap for many generations. Mary has done extensive genealogy research and is a wealth of information on the Gap of Dunloe. It is Mary who provided us with the information that connects our family to hers. According to Sue, who is far more proficient in these matters than I, Mary Coffey is a 4^thcousin, and Sean is a 4^thcousin, once removed. Kate Kearney’s Cottage is filled with photographs of the Gap, the Moriartys, and the many families who lived here. All the lives in this once isolated community were intimately intertwined for generations, and Mary Coffey seemingly knows all the connections.

Our sister Sue has painstakingly compiled an extraordinary family history complete with interconnected family trees, birth and death dates, marriages, and personal stories, maps and details of peoples lives. I suggest you contact Sue to find out more. As I said eight years ago, in my original search through the shadows and ghosts of this small corner of Ireland, if it weren’t for Sue’s extraordinary ability to discover and document our family heritage, we would be a family without much history.