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Erris is a barony in northwestern County Mayo in Ireland consisting of over , much of which is mountainous blanket bog. It has extensive sea coasts along its west and north boundaries. The main towns are Belmullet and Bangor Erris. The name Erris derives from the Irish language 'Iar Ros' meaning 'western promontory'. The full name is the Iorrais Domnann, after the Fir Bolg tribe, the Fir Domnann. To its north is the wild Atlantic Ocean and the bays of Broadhaven Bay and Sruth Fada Conn and to its west is Blacksod Bay. Its main promontories are the Doohoma Peninsula, Mullet Peninsula, Erris Head, the Kilcommon and Carrowteige peninsulas and Benwee Head. Ireland's History in Maps - Baronies page 3
There are five Catholic parishes in Erris: Kilcommon, Mullet Peninsula, Kiltane, Belmullet and Ballycroy.
Erris has a large range of habitats including , estuaries, salt marshes, fresh water , coasts, cliffs, machair, sand dunes, sandy and . It is an important area for bird watchers as the largely treeless landscape allows relatively easy access for birdwatching. Brent geese overwinter here feeding along the estuaries, and corncrake, chough, rock dove and twite are sometimes seen at Erris Head. Sightings of rarer birds, such as the grey phalarope, booted warbler and Wilson's petrel, have also been recorded.
The oldest rocks in Ireland, some 1.8 billion years old, are to be found on the west coasts of Erris. Pink or orange striped gneisses are found along the beaches of Elly Bay and Annagh Head where they have become separated from the same rocks on the east coast of Northern Canada over hundreds of millions of years by the separation of tectonic plates in the mid Atlantic Ocean. "Erris Head" (Irish: Ceann Iorrais) is a promontory at the northernmost tip of the Mullet Peninsula. It is a landmark known well by mariners and is one of the sea areas cited by Met Éireann's weather forecasters. The coastline of Erris has some of "the grandest sea cliffs in Ireland" over the Atlantic Ocean from where the next stop is the east coast of America. Erris Head is not served by any road and can only be reached by crossing a number of fields from the hamlet of Glenlara where the road ends.
During the Neolithic period, starting about 6,000 years ago, the first people living in Ireland whose ancestors had hunted and gathered along the coastlines of Erris from about 9,000 years ago, began to cut down the forestry to clear land for growing crops and grazing livestock. Because the underlying rock type was ancient and heavily weathered schists the soil was thin and easily eroded by inclement weather. After a couple of years the crops began to fail and the Neolithic people had to clear the native woodlands further and further inland to clear more land for their crops. With minor changes in climate and high rainfall levels the land became blanketed by the bog and remains that way to the current day. When present-day turf cutters harvest the bog for fuel, archaeological remains, mainly from the Neolithic and early Bronze Age, which have become buried under the bog often come to light.For information on the archaeology of Kilcommon parish, see Comhar Dún Chaocháin Teo in Carrowteige. Some archaeological sites are marked on Ordnance Survey maps.
The period of Early Christianity saw several small churches set up but no major religious houses came to the area. During the Plantations of Ireland, there were two major landlords in the area - the Binghams and the Carters. Oliver Cromwell's policy (mid 17th century) of sending the native Irish who refused to bow down to him "to hell or to Connaught" saw a large influx of population into Erris where the disinherited native Irish tried to eke a living from very poor quality agricultural land under the tenancy of the landlords and their agents. During the Irish Famine of 1845 - '47 many died in Erris despite the close proximity of the sea, because they could not raise the cash to fund a passage to America.
Some 19th- and early 20th-century antiquarians and Surveying visited the Erris area and wrote about their experiences and thoughts on the area at that time. These include works by William Bald ( Erris in the Irish Highlands), Caesar Otway ( Sketches in Erris and Tyrawley) and Thomas Johnson Westropp ( The Promontory Forts and Early Remains of the Coast of Mayo). The Ulster Cycle legend of the Táin Bó Flidhais concerns the Barony of Erris in the time period of approx the 1st century AD.
A number of well-known folklore tales have their origins in (or are associated with) the area. The Children of Lir, according to tradition, are buried on the island of Inisglora. The children were turned into swans by their jealous stepmother and doomed to spend the next 900 years on lakes and waters in Ireland. When they finally reclaimed their human form on Inisglora, they were so old that they died and were buried there.
Táin Bó Flidhais is the tale of a cattle raid in which raiders came to Erris from the Royal site at Cruachán (Rathcroghan) at Tulsk, County Roscommon to Rathmorgan Fort (Iorras Domhnann) at the south end of Carrowmore Lake in the centre of the Barony. The remains of Rathmorgan fort on top of the mountain can be seen from the road below.
Brian Rua U'Cearbhain from Inver is remembered in folklore as the prophet of Erris.
The small village of Glencastle has some large mounds in the narrow valley that are not naturally occurring. They can be seen on the right hand side, close to the roadside on the approach to Belmullet from the east. These have never been archaeologically investigated but folklore legends recall that this was the old gateway into the Mullet and a toll had to be paid for each traveller who passed through or the traveller may never be seen again. There were no roads through this area of Mayo until less than two hundred years ago. In recent years the Glencastle Valley has been drastically altered by extensive quarrying.
In 1993, the Tír Sáile Sculpture Trail project was carried out to commemorate 5,000 years of habitation in County Mayo. This trail extends through parts of Erris from the tip of the Mullet Peninsula, through Kilcommon, Belderrig and Ballycastle. The first sculptures along this trail were erected in 1993, with several more added subsequently. The creation of the sculpture trail took the form of the Meitheal, a traditional method of working where a group of workers come together to achieve a common objective.
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