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An Extract:

The Claddagh ring has a distinctive design – one of the best known in the western world: two hands holding a crowned heart. Its motto is unexceptionable: ‘Let love and friendship reign’ and its origins, its true origins, are shrouded in mystery. It is at least 200 years old, but no one is quite sure how it originated, where the distinctive design came from and why it became associated with the most famous fishing village in Ireland. This book tries to separate the fact from the fantasy, not decrying the myth but seeking to discover from history and tradition something of the story of a peculiarly Irish love-token. Our search will take us to Galway and Iar-Chonnacht (west Connacht) but we will also look at the tradition of token rings worldwide and go back as far as the Sumerian civilisation of the fourth millennium BC.

Our starting place is Galway, that city Ireland’s western seaboard which has had such a colourful history. It began as a Norman fortress and then when the de Burgos became Burkes and more Irish and the natives themselves in the thirteenth century, it passed into the hands of a number of mercantile families who ruled it as an independent city-state. The remoteness of the town and its lack of accessibility except by sea allowed them to make it a rich Anglo-Irish city, independent of its Gaelic hinterland and, because loyal to the Crown, untroubled by the attentions of English viceroys in Dublin Castle. For three centuries it enjoyed a golden age as a busy seaport and centre of trade with Europe, but its tendency to take the wrong side in England’s wars led to its depopulation at the hands of Cromwell’s armies in 162, and forty years later it was occupied by Williamite forces. The final blow came a century-and-a-half later when the Great Famine of the 1840s seemed to take the heart out of it.

In the years that followed, the city’s recovery was real but agonisingly slow. It was about this time that first Claddagh rings appeared in substantial numbers, having been named after the fishing village that was situated at the edge of town on the cladach, or foreshore, of the beautiful Galway Bay. The history of this independent village beside, yet unattached to, an independent town is a fascinating one, and the sage of the ring and its design is even more intriguing.

What part did Margaret of the Bridges, the daughter of John Joyce and widow of Don Domingo de Rona, play in its origins, and how was the salve of the goldsmith from Algiers involved? The tale is complicate and mysterious and, as so often, one is left with conjecture and the feeling that ‘no on knows for sure’.

Galway is now a lively, exciting and prosperous city. Its modern efficiency blends well with its aid of historical importance, and it is a model of how past and present, Irish and Anglo-Irish, culture and industry, scholarship and technology, may be combined in one vibrant living space. The Claddagh ring is appropriately on sale in many of Galway’s shops – just one of several symbols of the town’s capacity for resurrection.

Extract courtesy of Mercier Press

The Story of the Claddagh Ring

‘Let love and friendship reign!’ is the motto of the famous Irish Claddagh ring. This lovely token of fealty a ring in gold or silver comprising two hands surrounding a heart and surmounted by a crown takes its name from the Claddagh, an ancient fishing village that is now part of Galway city. The earliest surviving examples are from about 1700 but it is known that the rings were popular much earlier than this. Tradition has it that in the Claddagh these rings were handed down from mother to daughter. Now the Claddagh ring is a sought-after piece of jewellery and a symbol of romance the world over.

This is the story of the Claddagh ring – a memorable account of the myths and history of one of the world’s oldest love tokens.

80 pages
December 1, 1999
ISBN:1856352528

Mercier Press