Barry's Story

You might have heard of the Barrytown Novels, a trilogy by Roddy Doyle that include ‘The Commitments’, later a movie and musical. It is only recently that it struck me that ‘Barrytown’ is another name for Kilbarrack, the area in which the story unfolds.   

Kilbarrack, in Irish, is Cill Bharrog, ‘the Cell of Bharrog’ also known as Barry, Berry and Berach.  In fact there are at least 63 townlands in Ireland with ‘Barry’ or similar names.

I had come across ‘Kilberrys’ in Meath and Kildare (both ‘Barrys Towns’) and wondered if there was a connection. However I could find little locally except that both have ‘Cill Bhearaigh’ (Berach) on their ‘Welcome’ signs. There is no other mention of Barry or Berach even in the local churches.    

Who was he? I was about to give up when I discovered a historic ‘Life of Berach’ --  43-pages long!  It is part of a collection of at least 150 ‘Lives’ of pre-900 AD Irish saints that had been written or saved in the early 1600s. Suddenly I had too much to read.

Who gathered these ‘Lives’ and are they credible? 

The ‘Life of Berach’ that I found online had been copied from an old vellum book ‘belonging to the children of Brian O'Mulconry the younger’. It had been transcribed in the house of the Franciscans at Drownes, Donegal,  on Feb. 6, 1629 by the friar Michael O'Clery.

Michael had been sent back from Louvain to gather old Irish manuscripts from bardic families like the O’Mulcornrys  so that the ancient records of Irish history be preserved  from those determined to remove memories of an Irish past.  If he had not done so we would have reason to consider our pre-Norman  period  a ‘Dark Age’.    

Thanks to people like O’Clery we have such invaluable manuscripts as the ‘Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland’, a history of Ireland from earliest days until 1616. It is also known as the ‘Four Masters of Drownes’.  

As for Berach, he was born in Leitrim in the 6th century. At the age of seven he was send to study with Daigh mac Cairill in Iniskeen, Co Monaghan. He then set out on a journey home through Brega (the area between the River Dee in Louth and the Liffey) where the local king offered him a site for a hermitage.  

This was to be known as Disert Beraigh (Berach's Hermitage) but was it in Meath, or Kildare or Kilbarrack on Dublin Bay?   I can imagine it at Kilbarrack, looking out on the bay. Later a chapel built on the site was known as the Mariners’ Church, it welcomed returning sailors.

Later Barach moved on to Glendalough where he was welcomed by St Kevin and put in charge of the kitchens!  Showing hospitality was an important role and some would even say he co-established Glendalough with Kevin.  At any rate Kevin valued him so much he was reluctant to lose him when he set off towards his homeland. After many adventures he settled in his final resting place, at Cluain Coirpthe, now known as Termon Barry in Roscommon.

Thanks to the ‘Life’ I came to know Berach the person and how O’Clery and his companions saved our Irish heritage at a time when it was in danger of been cancelled.  

Are there many O’Clerys around today ?