Ancient and Sacred Sites

Ceremonial Landscape of the O’Dubhda

Ancient and Sacred Sites

The inauguration mounds, cairns and ritual places at the heart of Tír Fiachrach

From at least the seventh century until the late sixteenth, the O’Dubhda and their ancestral kindred — the Uí Fhiachrach Muaidhe — governed a stretch of the Connacht coast reaching from the Erris peninsula in the west, across the mouth of the Moy, and east along the north Sligo shore as far as the Ox Mountains. Their authority was not invented in castles; it was performed on cairns, mounds and hilltops that predated Christianity itself. To become O’Dubhda was to stand on ancient ground and be proclaimed under the open sky.

This page gathers what is known — and what is carefully argued — about those sites. Two of them, Carn Amhalghaidh and Carn Inghine Briain, have their own full pages and form a short self-contained tour of their own — separate from the main Castle Tour, because their story is ceremony and not fortification. The remaining sites are gathered here, with links out to the primary scholarship.

I. The Two Inauguration Mounds

West of the Moy
Carn Amhalghaidh
Croghan townland, near Killala, Co. Mayo. The principal pre-Norman inauguration site of the Uí Fhiachrach, named for Amalgaid mac Fiachrach — ancestor of the O’Dubhda and of Tirawley itself. Levelled c.1911; a curving western scarp survives.
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East of the Moy
Carn Inghine Briain
Coggins’ Hill, Kilrusheighter, Aughris headland, Co. Sligo. A two-tiered mound whose profile deliberately echoes Meadhbh’s Cairn on Knocknarea. Confirmed by Dr Marion Dowd (ATU Sligo) in 2026 as a probable castle — and possibly an associated settlement — beneath the pasture.
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Elizabeth FitzPatrick’s Royal Inauguration in Gaelic Ireland c.1100–1600 (Four Courts, 2004) treats both sites at length in §2.3 “The Invention of Tradition”. Her argument, in short: the pairing of west-of-Moy and east-of-Moy inauguration mounds was itself a deliberate act of political memory, consolidated after the O’Dubhda reconquest of Tír Fiachrach in 1371. Carn Inghine Briain on Coggins’ Hill is the best surviving candidate for the eastern mound; Carn Amhalghaidh, the older and better-attested western one.

II. Related Sites in the Sacred Landscape

Scurmore
South of Enniscrone, east bank of the Moy. An alternative candidate for Carn Inghine Briain, linked to the “Children of the Mermaid” standing stones (above) and the folk-tale of Tadhg Ruadh ó Dubhda and the sea-bride. Recorded by Otway (1841). Best read as a shoreline station within the same ritual geography, rather than the primary mound.
The Enniscrone Mound
A raised mound at Enniscrone Castle is remembered as the venue of the last O’Dubhda inauguration in living tradition. By the late 16th century the ceremony had been drawn back inside the fortified residence of the ruling branch — a sign that the old open-air rite had already begun to contract before it was legally ended.
The Inauguration Tree (2026)
A tree was planted in 2026 in conjunction with contemporary O’Dubhda remembrance of the inauguration tradition. A dedicated page on the tree and the planting is forthcoming.
Carn Fraoich
FitzPatrick also treats Carn Fraoich among the great inauguration cairns of Connacht, but this is a Síl Muiredaig site — the inauguration cairn of the O’Conor kings of Connacht — and not an O’Dubhda site. It is noted here for context only.

III. The End of the Tradition — 1585

The Composition of Connacht

In 1585 the Crown drew up the Composition of Connacht — known locally as the “Indenture of Sligo” — under which every Gaelic lord of the province, including O’Dubhda of Tír Fiachrach, formally renounced the right to inaugurate a successor under native custom.

From that year forward, no O’Dubhda was ever again proclaimed on an open-air mound under the old rite. The sites remained; the ceremony did not. The mounds stand today as landscape memory — waiting for the excavations, surveys and attentive readings that will recover what was lost in a single stroke of the pen.

Sources

• Elizabeth FitzPatrick, Royal Inauguration in Gaelic Ireland c.1100–1600: A Cultural Landscape Study (Four Courts / Boydell, 2004), §2.3 “The Invention of Tradition”, pp. 68–82, and Epilogue.
• Dr Marion Dowd, MIAI, FSA — Atlantic Technological University, Sligo — site visit 2026 (mariondowd.com).
• John O’Donovan, The Genealogies, Tribes and Customs of Hy-Fiachrach (Dublin, 1844).
• Caesar Otway, Sketches in Erris and Tyrawley (Dublin, 1841).
• Composition of Connacht / Indenture of Sligo, 1585.

Ancient Sites Tour

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Carn Inghine Briain


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Carn Amhalghaidh

A Note from the Clan

These pages are prepared and maintained by volunteers of the O’Dubhda clan. We work from primary sources where we can, and we name what is evidence, what is tradition, and what is argument. We do not make claims we cannot support.

If you have a correction, a source we have missed, a family story, or a photograph of one of these sites, please get in touch. Our history is bigger than any one of us, and everything we add makes the next page a little truer.