Galbally, County Limerick

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'Galbally'
'An Gall Bhaile

Location

WGS-84 (GPS) Coordinates:
52°25′N 8°18′W / 52.41, -8.3

Irish grid reference
R810270

Statistics

Population (2006)
- Town:
- Environs:

938
1,977

Galbally (Gall Bhaile in Irish), which means the town of the stranger or the foreigner, is a village in east County Limerick, Republic of Ireland, on the border with County Tipperary. It is located at the foot of the Galtee Mountains and at the western approach to the Glen of Aherlow. The Aherlow River, flowing down from the Galtee mountains, runs by the village, to meet the Suir at Kilmoyler a short distance north of Cahir.

Galbally is part of the ecclesiastical parish of Galbally & Lisvernane which straddles the Limerick-Tipperary border. Its sister village is Lisvernane in the Glen of Aherlow in County Tipperary. Although the Gaelic Athletic Association usually has one club in each parish, there are two in this parish (somewhat of a rarity, though not unheard of), Galbally, on the Limerick side, and Aherlow, across the border in Tipperary. While each club plays hurling to some extent, their forte is gaelic football and both clubs have won their respective county senior football championships, Aherlow winning the Tipperary title for the first time in 2006. Galbally were first-time winners of the Limerick Senior Football Championshipin 1994 and repeated the feat in 1997.

In 1994, Galbally was selected as the prettiest town in Ireland in the annual Tidy Towns competition and has won the Limerick competition nine times.

A well known folk song, "The Galbally Farmer", (with a tune also known as "Thank God we're surrounded by water"), tells of the trials suffered by a hired labourer working for the miserly farmer of the title, Darby O'Leary.

[edit] Places of interest

The graveyard contains the ruins of a thirteenth century church, on the end wall of which there are two effigies of odd human figures, one which looks like a couple, the other a single person. The graveyard bears witness to the reason for name of the village, with many of the oldest graves bearing what seem more like English names than Irish, names which still thrive in the parish: Sampson, Blackburn, Richardson, Dawson.

It is worth noting that the nearby village of Ballylanders is in fact Baile an Londraigh, or "town of the Londoner", again highlighting, toponymically at least, the immigration of the English into this area, while the precise obverse of this toponymic heritage is the case of Anglesborough, a tiny village 6 miles from Galbally, nestled right up against the foot of the mountains, and which "earned" its present name as a perverse retribution from the English surveyors for the fact that it was one of the last outposts of spoken Irish in the area. That the old Irish names of two villages, now transcribed into an odd English, should bear testimony to immigration and the new English name of a third be testament to a cultural resistance, whether willed or not, is just another metaphor of the split culture that is Ireland.

Just outside the village is an historic abbey, the Moor Abbey. It was a Franciscan friary, founded in the thirteenth century by Donach Cairbreach Ua'Briain, but only the church survives, built in 1471. The site had a tumultous history, matching the ebbs and flows of Irish politics and religious freedoms, and was inhabited until 1748, though with periods of desertion. Present in the church is the remains of a tomb, which is perhaps that of the founder.

On a nearby hill stands "Darby's Bed" a passage tomb, which is quite rare in the south of Ireland. It is cited in Irish legend as one of the places where Diarmuid and Grainne spent a night during their flight from the angry Fionn MacCumhaill.

Bianconi's famous carriages used to drive through the village, and the stables they used still stand on the north side of the village square.

The centre of the square is the site of a statue of a soldier, erected in memory of the involvement of people from the area in the War of Independence of 1921. This area of East Limerick and South Tipperary was indeed the site of many acts of resistance during the period.

The south side of the square was the site of a poor house during famine times.

The Lords Massy of Duntryleague had their original seat here and their Charnel house (burial place) is still to be seen. The Massy's, an English family of Norman descent, had received land in county Limerick in the Cromwellian plantation, and settled in Duntryleague, in the parish of Galbally. The family played a prominent role in the Anglo-Irish ascendancy class up to the 20th century. Their Summer house, Massy Lodge, stands near the village of Anglesborough.