School: The Neale (B.)
- Location:
- Neale, Co. Mayo
- Teacher: Tomás Mac an Bháird
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0103, Page 031
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: The Neale (B.)
- XML Page 031
- XML “Local Estates etc.”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- The principal local landlord in this district was Lord Kilmaine of the Browne family, and the family seat is in The Neale village. The Brownes first settled in The Neale in 1583, The Neale Castle having, in this year, become the property of John Browne, the first Brunach-na-h.Elle and first Englishman settled in Mayo.
The Brownes or Kilmaines were always regarded as good landlords, and local history records that they did their best to protect priests during the Penal days. The Kilmaine estate was sold to the tenants under the Ashbourne Act with the result that they are more comfortable than farmers in other parts of the country, but in several townlands the farmers have only small holdings.
Local tradition says that the first of the Neale Brownes to be raised to the Peerage got his title in this way: In 1636 John Browne of The Neale was created a baronet, and one of his descendants, another John Browne, became a peer in 1789. The story is told that a landlord named Millar of the neighbouring village of Kilmaine, an inveterate gambler, was playing dice in Dublin with a woman supposed to be possessed of occult powers. The game went so badly against Millar that he had practically lost all his property, until at the last throw of the dice he called in the help of(continues on next page)
