Munterconnaught

Fuinseog

Does such a place exist? I read about in a Cavan memoir I picked up in a second hand book shop, but it sounds like a makey up place.

Bummer1234

not a made up spot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munterconnaught

Fuinseog

Bummer1234 wrote: »

not a made up spot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munterconnaught

thanks for that. unusual to see a village in the republic being labelled as roman catholic. are there Protestant villages in Cavan as well?

baalthor

Fuinseog wrote: »

thanks for that. unusual to see a village in the republic being labelled as roman catholic. are there Protestant villages in Cavan as well?

"Roman Catholic parish" usually means a parish whose boundaries (and name in many cases) has been determined by the RC church. Originally, parishes were created by the Normans and then used as a basic adminsitrative unit by the (British) government and the Church. After the Reformation the state and Church of Ireland continued with these parishes (called Civil Parishes) and if you are reading official documents such as census returns from this period they refer to the civil parishes.
Meanwhile after Catholic Emancipation, the RC Church found that the civil parish system did not meet their needs mainly due to the increase of the RC population. So in many cases they created new parishes or altered the boundaries of existing ones. This process continues to the present day with new RC parishes being created in urban areas.

However the government (both British and Irish) only officially recognises the original civil parishes. These are what you will see on census returns (British era) and ordnance survey maps (including current ones). Modern Irish census records do not use parishes, instead they use Electoral Divisions (EDs) as the basic enumeration unit.

In many cases, especially in rural areas the modern Catholic parish is exactly the same in name and areas as the civil parish but as I have described above in many others there may be a big difference.

However Munterconnaught is a Civil and COI Parish as well as RC so I am not sure why the wikipedia author referred to it as a "Roman Catholic" parish. Possibly because under the modern COI system it's united with several other parishes under a single clergy-person. That said, any resident of the parish regardless of religious persuasion will probably say they come from Munterconnaught so the article might be better written as "Munterconnaught is a small parish on the shore of Lough Ramor ..."

Finally, Munterconnaught is not a village but a rural area extending over 20 sq km. Like almost every where else in the Republic the majority of the population identify as RC, however I believe there are two EDs in the republic which are majority non RC, these are Castlesaunderson in Cavan and Drum (a village) in Monaghan. I think Drum is supposed to be the "most Protestant" village in the South.

Hope this answered your question - I didn't this this post would be so long !

Gophur

Fuinseog wrote: »

thanks for that. unusual to see a village in the republic being labelled as roman catholic. are there Protestant villages in Cavan as well?

Munterconnaught is not a village, nor is it a parish. It's part of the RC Parish of Castlerahan and Munterconnaught.

The Wikipedia article has been judiciously edited, I see.

By a comedian, no less.