In A GOOD CONFESSION Farran is the home of the Brogan family. It is based on the real village of Currans. In this extract Cathleen and her daughters are visiting for the first time.

As the road climbed higher
they could see that they were
skirting a saucer shaped valley. 
Below them were soft green
fields with patches of dull gold,
the colour of tarnish, held
together with a stitch of dark hedgerows... There was a smell
of hay in the air and turf smoke:
the verge was purple with
wild fuchsia.  To the west was
bogland and for every shade of
green in the landscape there
was a brown to match it.

The Yank runs a local taxi services and picks up Cathleen and the girls
at the station.

They passed a pebbled dashed
hall.   The windows were black
with dirt and a rusty padlock
held the doors in place.
‘That was a dance hall when I
was a young lad.’  The Yank
sighed.  ‘There’s no one left to
dance in Farran.  They’re all
dancing in Chicago and Camden
Town.  In Brooklyn and
Birmingham.  We all went the same road.’
‘Do you ever regret coming back?’
The Yank considered the question carefully. 
‘To tell the truth I regret going. 
I regret us all going.  As old as
I am, I’d love to hear a band
strike up in that dance hall again.’

Thackeray, the English novelist (author of
Vanity Fair) published
an account of his travels
in Ireland in 1843, just
a few years before the famine.  He obviously
had mixed feelings about Kerry. He went to the Killarney races and was delighted by the crowd

“I am bound to say that on rich or poor shoulders I never saw so many handsome faces in my life…among the ladies of Kerry every second woman is handsome…”

But he didn’t like the scenery between
Killarney and Tralee much.

“…a sad-looking, bare undulating country with a few trees and poor stone hedges, and poorer crops…

Farranfore was even
worst.

“…a wretched town where...I saw more hideous beggary than anywhere else…I was glad to get over this gloomy tract of country…”

Ah well, at least Kerry women were good looking.

Find out what is happening in Currans and Kerry today

Or come visit

Currans idles along the road, a mile and a bit from Farranfore and Kerry County Airport. It is a jumble of sturdy farmhouses, 1980s bungalows and the occasional ancient cottage gently falling back to earth. 

History

I don't think anyone has written the history of this small village but here's a few fragments that I have been able to gather together about its past.

Before the famine

The first news report I've found was of a dreaded new disease – cholera. In the 1830s Tralee reported 375 cases and 136 deaths.  As it disappeared from the town, it spread to the surrounding countryside.

A report from The Kerry Evening Post Feruary 8th 1834

There are in the village of Currans 59 inhabited houses.  While the malady raged, and before medical aid was procured there were 28 deaths in that village and neighbourhood – 34 families out of the 59, fled from their habitation carrying off all they possessed, and not knowing where to go.  W…the misery and affliction of the poor in this parish was really horrible…

The famine

Before the famine the island of Ireland had a population of eight million and rising.  According to census returns, there were 2,067 in Currans and the surrounding area.  Ten years later that number had been reduced by almost half. 

Moonlighters

Later in the century secret local groups resisted evictions by waging a Land War aginst landlord and their agents. These groups were called  'moonlighters’ and it is claimed that  the first group was formed in Castleisland  in 1879. So active were the moonlighters that soldiers and police began to patrol the district at night .  As a result for five years a special police tax was imposed on Castleisland residents to pay for the extra secuirty.

Although the Church officially disapproved, some priests were more sympathetic than others.  The following sermon on the evils of drink is supposed to have been delivered somewhere in Kerry during this period.
 
"It's whiskey makes you bate your wives; it's whiskey makes your houses desolate; it's whiskey makes you shoot your landlords; and its whiskey makes you miss them."

WAR

The Irish Volunteers were established in Dublin in November 1913  and the following April the Castleisland branch was formed.  The Currans Volunteers Corp was established on May 1st 1914. 

Who joined those Currans men?  My grandfather who would have been 18  going on 19 perhaps?  My great uncles - the O’ Connor brothers of Farran John aged 22 and Jerry a little younger ?  They were all single at the time and friends. 

World War I broke out in August 1914 and the leader of the Irish Parliamentary party, John Redmond, pledged that the Irish Volunteers would fight for King and country. Tom O Donell, MP for West Kerry, said that anyone who wanted to tear down the British Empire and replace it with an Irish Republic was only fit for Killarney (the psychiatric hospital not the town).