Gorumna () is an island on the west coast of

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

, forming part of

County Galway County Galway ( ; ) is a Counties of Ireland, county in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is in the Northern and Western Region, taking up the south of the Provinces of Ireland, province of Connacht. The county population was 276,451 at the 20 ...

Geography

Gorumna Island is linked with the mainland through the Béal an Daingin Bridge. Gorumna properly consists of three individual islands in close proximity,

Lettermullen Lettermullen, ( or possibly "the hill with the mill"), is a small island and village on the coast of southern Connemara in County Galway, Ireland. It is about west of Galway city, at the far western end of Galway Bay, Lettermullen is the western ...

, Teeranea (Irish: ''Tír an Fhia'') and

Lettermore Lettermore (, ) is a village in County Galway, Ireland. It is also the name of the island, linked by road to the mainland, on which the village sits. The main spoken language of the area is Irish. Lettermore island is in two halves. The easter ...

Contribution to Irish traditional music

During the 1860s in

South Boston, Massachusetts South Boston (colloquially known as Southie) is a densely populated neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States, located south and east of the Fort Point Channel and abutting Dorchester Bay (Boston Harbor), Dorchester Bay. It has under ...

, Bríd Ní Mháille, an immigrant from the Gorumna village of Trá Bhán, composed the Irish-language '' caoine'' '' Amhrán na Trá Bháine'', which is about the drowning of her three brothers, whose ''

currach A currach ( ) is a type of Irish boat with a wooden frame, over which animal skins or hides were once stretched, though now canvas is more usual. It is sometimes anglicised as "curragh". The construction and design of the currach are unique ...

'' was rammed and sunk while they were out at sea. Ní Mháille's lament for her brothers was first performed at a ceilidh in South Boston before being brought back to her native district in

Connemara Connemara ( ; ) is a region on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of western County Galway, in the west of Ireland. The area has a strong association with traditional Irish culture and contains much of the Connacht Irish-speaking Gaeltacht, ...

, where it continues to be passed down as both a work of

oral poetry Oral poetry is a form of poetry that is composed and transmitted without the aid of writing. The complex relationships between written and spoken literature in some societies can make this definition hard to maintain. Background Oral poetry is ...

and as a very popular song among performers and fans of

Irish traditional music Irish traditional music (also known as Irish trad, Irish folk music, and other variants) is a genre of folk music that developed in Ireland. In ''A History of Irish Music'' (1905), W. H. Grattan Flood wrote that, in Gaelic Ireland, there we ...

Geology

Gorumna Island is mostly underlain by intrusive

Devonian The Devonian ( ) is a period (geology), geologic period and system (stratigraphy), system of the Paleozoic era (geology), era during the Phanerozoic eon (geology), eon, spanning 60.3 million years from the end of the preceding Silurian per ...

-aged Galway

Granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

that formed from crustal melting as a result of the

Caledonian Orogeny The Caledonian orogeny was a mountain-building cycle recorded in the northern parts of the British Isles, the Scandinavian Caledonides, Svalbard, eastern Greenland and parts of north-central Europe. The Caledonian orogeny encompasses events tha ...

in the late

Silurian The Silurian ( ) is a geologic period and system spanning 23.5 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Devonian Period, Mya. The Silurian is the third and shortest period of t ...

. Its southern tip also includes

Ordovician The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and System (geology), system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era (geology), Era, and the second of twelve periods of the Phanerozoic Eon (geology), Eon. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years f ...

-aged bedrock of

sedimentary Sedimentary rocks are types of rock formed by the cementation of sediments—i.e. particles made of minerals (geological detritus) or organic matter (biological detritus)—that have been accumulated or deposited at Earth's surface. Sedime ...

marine rocks and

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanite, aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial ...

Demographics

The table below reports data on Gorumna Island's population taken from ''Discover the Islands of Ireland'' (Alex Ritsema, Collins Press, 1999) and the

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

of Ireland.

References

Islands - Change in Population 1841 - 2011

Other projects

* Islands of County Galway Gaeltacht towns and villages {{galway-geo-stub