Early mountaineering in Ireland

 'Although Irish mountaineers were prominent in the early development of Alpine climbing, mountaineering in Ireland did not take a firm root until recently. (mid 20th C)

    The Irish Alpinists did not neglect their homeland hills, but they treated them principally as practice grounds for the Alps, and their attentions did not give rise to a vigorous school of local climbers as was the case in Great Britain...'

This statement by Pyat & Robson (IMC Journal Vol 1) is accurate but only up to a point.  It fails to mention the people on the island, not Alpinists or mountaineers in a strict sense, who nevertheless were 'hillwalking' and climbing Irish hills during the 19th C.  It also ignores the clubs and organisations that encouraged 'rambling' and 'hiking' in the outdoors without claiming to be 'mountaineering' clubs.

Here, I'll look at the written evidence of people who were hillwalking and climbing during the 19th Century.  Further on I'll look at the clubs and organisations that seemed to encourage such activities among their members.

Poets and writers mentioned their enjoyment of mountains and mountain scenery (Brian Merriman, Mary Tighe) but the earliest written record of a specific climb seems to have been written by Caesar Otway after his visit to Donegal in 1822 when he climbed Muckish.  The account was published in 1839 in his book 'Sketches in Ireland''. (see below)

Mary Burtchell was a resident of Graiguenamanagh, Co Kilkenny and records in a diary entry for 16th Aug 1845 that she climbed the nearby Brandon Hill.  No great feat of mountaineering, it does indicate her interest in venturing into relatively wild upland terrain and she went, again, to the higheset point in Co Kilkenny on 9th Sep 1850.  She gives no further information on her trips.

Brandon Hill

In 1849, a Waterford man, ( a member of the Mackesy family) wrote a detailed account of a two-day venture into the Comeragh Mountains in which he gives a detailed account of his journey with a description of the terrain and many of the lakes and cooms --

        Let us ascend. Aye, it is very steep, and the day is bright and hot ; but take it quietly—you have        only a two-mile walk before you. For a part of the way the grass is pleasant, and we can go straight onwards. But ever as we climb, the heath and ling become tougher and taller, the grass thinner, the stones more numerous, the dried-up channels of the winter floods more deep and  frequent ; so that we can no longer hold a direct course, but must deviate into many a zig-zag;  and still, as we surmount each swelling knoll, the dark Coum above seems to recede, and the way  to lengthen before us.  (Dublin University Magazine 1849).

(for full account see IMEHS Journal Vol 5; forthcoming)

There were other residents who made significant expeditions to Greater Ranges abroad but don't seem to have recorded any such activity in their homeland.  John Palliser is likely to have hiked in the Comeraghs and William Spotswood Green in the Kerry mountains.

Of course, some of the very fanous Irish Alpinists undertook some climbing at home and this will be looked at soon.

Caesar Otway's climb of Muckish:

But the lofty cloud- compelling Muckish was near Ards, and on this pig's back I was determined to mount-there will be no limits to vision from it; I shall see all Donegal, and Innishowen, and Tyrone; I shall see Derry, the brave devoted city, the joy of the whole Protestant world, under my feet; I shall see the fine land-locked Lough Swilly, the deep indented waters of Mulroy. In short, I shall see what I have ever had a passion for seeing, a wide and outstretched view, from a mountain.

 So, in spite of the fervours of a July day, and joined in the daring enterprise by some of the younger part of the family at Ards, we set forth to climb the mountain, and here it was literally climbing. There are some lofty mountains you can ride to the top of. To the craggy height of Snowdon, Welsh tourists, as I am informed, ascend in carriages; but rest assured this facility was not possible to us; for actually in many places we had to catch hold of the heath and and rock to help us in the ascent; and so steep and downright was the mountain, that a stone of any size could be hurled from the top to the bottom. Thus amusing ourselves rolling down  the compact silicious rock, and observing the noise, velocity, smoke, and flashes of fire that were elicited in the momentum of the descent, at last, after near four hours' exertion, we arrived at the summit of our ambition.

 I ran, covered with perspiration and panting with heat, to mount the topmost ridge; and just as we arrived there, just as we had cast our eyes around, and began to feast on the immense vision of earth and ocean beneath us, a vast murky cloud from the Atlantic, big with sleet and moisture, enveloped us as well as the whole top of the mountain as with a night-cap, and made every thing so dark, indistinct, and dreary, that we could scarcely see one another : besides, it was attended with such a cold, cutting breeze, that we, who were all with pores open under the process of perspiration, felt as if the Cacodemon of the mountain, in revenge for his invaded solitari- ness, had risen in anger, and armed with a scythe, had rushed on to cut us asunder-to retreat, there- fore, was the best policy. ......

 But I, whose curiosity was more intense than that of my friends, in spite of a cold and driving sleet, and fearless of a fever, still lingered behind, and hastily observed that on the top of this lofty mountain, which at a distance appears so acute and linear in its ridge, there was a plain of some acres, on which grew in luxuriance that species of saxifrage, so great an ornament to our gardens, called London pride. I also took time to observe, that on the north-western side of the elevation where it stands exposed to the driving sleet and tempest, and saline spray of the great Atlantic, even the white quartz rock is decomposed, and has been con- verted by the agency of the elements into beds of minute sand, as white as the driven snow-this the proprietor of the mountain rolls down the side of the hill in canvas bags, and exports to Dumbarton in Scotland

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