Dunquin ( ) is a

Gaeltacht ( , , ) are the districts of Ireland, individually or collectively, where the Irish government recognises that the Irish language is the predominant vernacular, or language of the home. The ''Gaeltacht'' districts were first officially reco ...

village in west

County Kerry County Kerry ( gle, Contae Chiarraí) is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and forms part of the province of Munster. It is named after the Ciarraige who lived in part of the present county. The population of the co ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...

. Dunquin lies at the most westerly tip of the

Dingle Peninsula The Dingle Peninsula ( ga, Corca Dhuibhne; anglicised as Corkaguiny, the name of the corresponding barony) is the northernmost of the major peninsulas in County Kerry. It ends beyond the town of Dingle at Dunmore Head, the westernmost point ...

, overlooking the

Blasket Islands The Blasket Islands ( ga, Na Blascaodaí) are an uninhabited group of islands off the west coast of the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, Ireland. The last island to hold a significant population, Great Blasket Island, was abandoned in 1954 due ...

. At 10°27'16"W, it is the most westerly settlement of Ireland and of Eurasia, excluding Iceland. Nearby

Dunmore Head Dunmore Head () is a promontory in the westernmost part of the Dingle Peninsula, located in the barony of Corca Dhuibhne in southwest County Kerry County Kerry ( gle, Contae Chiarraí) is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South- ...

is the most westerly point of mainland Ireland. The town is linked to Dingle via the R559 regional road. In summer a ferry connects the village with the main island of the Blasket Islands. There is dramatic cliff scenery, with a view of the Blasket Islands, where Peig Sayers lived. A museum in the village tells the story of the Blaskets and the lives of the people who lived there including the well-known writers of the island, which includes Sayers, Tomás Ó Criomhthain, and

Muiris Ó Súilleabháin Muiris Ó Súilleabháin (; 19 February 1904 – 25 June 1950), anglicised as Maurice O'Sullivan, was an Irish author famous for his Irish-language memoir of growing up on the Great Blasket Island and in Dingle, County Kerry, off the western c ...

. In 1588, when the

Spanish Armada The Spanish Armada (a.k.a. the Enterprise of England, es, Grande y Felicísima Armada, links=no, lit=Great and Most Fortunate Navy) was a Spanish fleet that sailed from Lisbon in late May 1588, commanded by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, an ar ...

returned via Ireland many ships sought shelter in the Blasket Sound — the area between Dún Chaoin and the Islands — and some were wrecked there. A memorial stands on the cliffs overlooking the site. Dunquin is located on the Dingle Way, which is a 179 km circular walking trail which takes in much of the Dingle peninsula.

The Village

This documentary film was made during 1967-68 by Paul Hockings and Mark McCarty, shot almost entirely in Dunquin and the Great Blasket. It was the first film to be completed in the style that came to be known as Observational Cinema.

Ryan's Daughter

Scenes from the

1970 Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). Between 10,000 and ...

film ''

Ryan's Daughter ''Ryan's Daughter'' is a 1970 British epic romantic drama film directed by David Lean and starring Robert Mitchum and Sarah Miles. The film, set between August 1917 and January 1918, tells the story of a married Irish woman who has an affair ...

'', based on a screenplay by

Robert Bolt Robert Oxton Bolt (15 August 1924 – 20 February 1995) was an English playwright and a two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter, known for writing the screenplays for ''Lawrence of Arabia'', ''Doctor Zhivago'', and '' A Man for All Seasons'', ...

and directed by David Lean, were shot at Coumineole Beach and Ceathrú (Caharhoo) in Dunquin. The town's then-struggling economy was largely revived by the production of this film and subsequent tourism. Its marginal condition beforehand had been documented in the 1968 ethnographic film "The Village".

Scoil Dhún Chaoin

Scoil Náisiúnta Naomh Gobnait, Dún Chaoin was first opened in 1914. Before that, the school was located across the road in Baile Bhiocáire. During the 1970s Scoil Dhún Chaoin was the subject of a countywide and national campaign which featured protest marches, sit-ins and arrests. A government decision to close the school was strongly opposed by the local community and following almost three years of closure, the school was reopened in 1973.

CAMRA

It was in Kruger's bar in Dunquin that

CAMRA The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) is an independent voluntary consumer organisation headquartered in St Albans, England, which promotes real ale, cider and perry and traditional British pubs and clubs. With just under 155,000 members, it is ...

was founded in 1971.

People

* Peig Sayers (1873-1958)

Irish language Irish ( Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was ...

memoirist A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based in the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobiog ...

and

seanchaí A seanchaí ( or – plural: ) is a traditional Gaelic storyteller/historian. In Scottish Gaelic the word is (; plural ). The word is often anglicised as shanachie ( ). The word ''seanchaí'', which was spelled ''seanchaidhe'' (plural '' ...

Cáit Feiritéar Cáit Feiritéar or An Bab (1 December 1916 – 8 June 2005) was an Irish storyteller. Biography Cáit Feiritéar was born Cáit Ní Ghuithín on 1 December 1916 in Ballynahow, Dún Chaoin in County Kerry. The area is within the West Kerry Ga ...

(1916-2005) Folklorist and Seanchaí * Folklorist Seosamh Ó Dálaigh. *

Monsignor Monsignor (; it, monsignore ) is an honorific form of address or title for certain male clergy members, usually members of the Roman Catholic Church. Monsignor is the apocopic form of the Italian ''monsignore'', meaning "my lord". "Monsignor" ca ...

Pádraig de Brún Pádraig de Brún (13 October 1889 – 5 June 1960), also called Patrick Joseph Monsignor Browne, was an Irish clergyman, mathematician, poet, and classical scholar, who served as President of University College, Galway (UCG). He was also known ...

(1889-1960),

Roman Catholic priest The priesthood is the office of the ministers of religion, who have been commissioned ("ordained") with the Holy orders of the Catholic Church. Technically, bishops are a priestly order as well; however, in layman's terms ''priest'' refers only ...

and

Irish-language Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was the ...

scholar. *

Máire Mhac an tSaoi Máire Mhac an tSaoi (4 April 1922 – 16 October 2021) was an Irish civil service official, writer of Modernist poetry in the Corca Dhuibhne dialect of Munster Irish, a writer, and highly important figure within Modern literature in Irish. Alo ...

(b. 1922),

poet. Mhac an tSaoi spent much of her childhood visiting her uncle,

Padraig de Brún, and chose to use Dún Chaoin's dialect, folksongs, and folklore as the literary basis for her own poetry and poetics. While assigned to the Irish

embassy A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually den ...

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

shortly after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, Mhac an tSaoi discovered the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca, which inspired her to belatedly introduce

Literary modernism Literary modernism, or modernist literature, originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction writing. Modernism experimented ...

into Irish poetry in the

. * Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh (b. 1978), award-winning seán-nos singer and performer 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 ...

, was born in the

Aran Islands The Aran Islands ( ; gle, Oileáin Árann, ) or The Arans (''na hÁrainneacha'' ) are a group of three islands at the mouth of Galway Bay, off the west coast of Ireland, with a total area around . They constitute the historic barony of Aran i ...

, but grew up in Dún Chaoin. She was the lead singer for Danú, and from 2016 on she has been half of the electronica duo

Aeons The word aeon , also spelled eon (in American and Australian English), originally meant "life", "vital force" or "being", "generation" or "a period of time", though it tended to be translated as "age" in the sense of "ages", "forever", "timel ...

. Nic Amhlaoibh has both performed and recorded Irish language songs from the Dún Chaoin area, including at least one song from

Great Blasket Island The Great Blasket () is the principal island of the Blasket Islands, Blaskets, County Kerry, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It was home to a small fishing community of Irish speakers until the island was abandoned in 1954 when living there becam ...

Gallery

File:Blasket Centre.jpg, The Blasket Centre with the Blasket Islands visible in the distance File:Replica Blasket Cottage.jpg, Replica of a traditional Great Blasket cottage File:Dunquin Coastline.jpg, Jagged coastline near Dunquin pier

References

External links

Dún Chaoin Entry on the Irelandscape Web Site
Towns and villages in County Kerry Gaeltacht places in County Kerry Gaeltacht towns and villages Dingle Peninsula {{Kerry-geo-stub