Words and photos:  Matt Nolan

It is now ninety years since that extraordinary day – April 12 1935 – when three specially chartered Comhlacht Busanna Éireann buses and six Great Southern and Western Railway lorries rumbled into the quiet hamlet of Ráth Chairn, just outside Athboy, in the very heart of County Meath.

On board were 83 souls from the rugged shores of south Conamara, while behind them followed their furniture, tools, keepsakes—everything they could carry of their old lives. The journey across Ireland was long and wearying.

The roads were poor, the countryside vast, and when one of the buses broke down, it was another blow to tired spirits. They had left their windswept homes above Leitir Móir at the break of dawn. It was past 11 o’clock that night when the last of them finally arrived in what many were already calling the “promised land.”

That day, eleven families from Ceantar na nOileán above Leitir Móir stepped into a new life. Some had glimpsed it a week earlier, when a man from each household came to walk the land.

They could scarcely believe their eyes. The fields were green, deep, and wide—nothing like the meagre, rock-scraped patches they were leaving behind along the Atlantic. To them, this was not a migration, but a return.

Not settlers, but exiles at last coming home—driven west by Cromwell generations earlier, and now, at last, reclaiming what had always been theirs. For these families, the title deeds were more than legal documents; they were a sacred restoration.

The night before they left, their houses across An Maimin and An Trá Bhan and in Inis Treabhar were filled with song and sorrow. There was dancing and music, laughter and tears.

Young people brimmed with dreams of Meath, while their elders sat in quiet corners, heavy with the grief of farewell. Many had never gone farther than Galway—some not even that far. Most had never even heard of Athboy. The air was thick with emotion, hope and heartbreak entwined.

Friday morning dawned with soft sunlight and still air. The bay of Cuan An Fhir Mhóir sparkled like glass. But in the hills above Leitir Móir, a different sound carried on the breeze—the keening of families parting forever.

It echoed through the townlands: mothers sobbing, neighbours embracing, children crying at the gates. No one could say what Meath would bring, but all knew this journey marked an ending. Life would never be the same again.

Among them was eighty-two-year-old Beairtle Ó Curraoin and his wife, aged seventy-four. That morning, Beairtle walked with a photographer through the white sands of An Trá Bháin, a place woven into his every memory.

“I’ll never see it again,” he murmured, his voice breaking.

Others felt the same—the ache of goodbye etched into every glance, every final touch. Even the young, giddy with excitement, felt the sting of departure.

When the buses finally pulled into Ráth Chairn that night, the passengers were spent, body and soul. Most hadn’t slept. The bus breakdown had worn them thin.

The open flatlands of the Midlands seemed vast, unfamiliar—like another country entirely. They didn’t unpack. They didn’t explore. They lay down on bare floors and slept.

And then came morning.

They stepped out into a world reborn. Before them stretched fields of deep brown soil, thick grass, and real promise.

These farms were twice the size of what they’d had in the West, and though the land had only been used for grazing, now it was theirs—to plough, to sow, to build a future upon. Whatever lay ahead, the weight of hardship hadn’t yet settled. That first morning was bright with possibility.

Here, on land their ancestors may have been driven from with fire and steel, they would begin again. It would be no easy road.

From the beginning, this small Irish-speaking settlement faced suspicion, resistance—even hostility. But the people of Ráth Chairn were undeterred. They had come to plant more than crops. They came to plant a culture, a language, and a legacy.

Ninety years on, it’s hard to say where the Ráth Chairn story truly begins. It was born of many minds, carried on shifting visions, and steered by hearts that refused to let the dream die. But it endured.

The old traditions of Conamara—sean-nós singing, dancing, and the Irish tongue itself—still echo through the resilient Gaeltacht of Ráth Chairn. Just last week, the community gathered once again at Tigh Catháin, that holy spot, the very place where those first buses stopped in 1935.

For the first time, not a single one of the original settlers was there. But their descendants were—bearing the old names of Lupain, Ó Gríofa, Mac Donncha, Ó Cofaigh, Ó Meallóid, and many many more.

They stood together outside the house, listening to a younger generation playing the same old Connemara music and drinking strong tea, sharing laughter and tears, and telling stories in the old language—until, finally, there were no more stories left to tell. Only silence, memory, and pride.

Pictured: Bríd Uí Fhatharta—known fondly in the Ráth Chairn Gaeltacht as Bríd “Johnny”—stood quietly by the commemorative flame marking the exact spot where, ninety years earlier to the day, the first buses carrying families from Conamara arrived on 12 April 1935. Bríd’s own family, the Mhiadhcil Johnny Mac Donnchas, were among those original pioneers. Bríd was married to Johnny Phat Pheadí O Fartharta from An Máimín, and together they raised two sons and two daughters, continuing the legacy of a family rooted both in the west and in this enduring Gaeltacht in Meath.