You will already have recieved the written version of this story, but I have recorded this version just for you, as a little gift for my paid subscribers.

If you know this story, you will probably know the version in which, rather than return to Fionn after Diarmuid dies, Gráinne throws herself under the wheels of Fionn’s chariot, and kills her…

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Spectacular Landscapes of Love and Lust in Irish Myths

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2 months ago · 12 likes · 11 comments · Ali Isaac

GRÁINNE

Daughter of High King Cormac mac Art.

Wife of Fionn mac Cumhall, leader of the Fianna.

Lover of Diarmuid Ui Duibhne, Fionn’s right–hand man.

Mother to sons, Donnchadh, Eochaidh, Ollann, and Connla.

You have a row of drinking horns hanging on the wall, shaped from the hollow tusks of all the wild boar you have hunted down and killed. Your favourite is a foot long, decorated with delicate scrollwork and carvings, festooned with narrow strips of copper and bronze, studded with gems that glint like eyes in the flickering firelight. You love to tell the tale of how you won that one, don’t you, Diarmuid?

You say you are just providing meat for your family and sport for your warriors, but you don’t fool me. I am Gráinne, mother of your children. I know you well. On the tusks and teeth and cloven hooves of every boar you face your death and defy your fate. How many, Diarmuid? Twenty… fifty… one hundred? Now you feel invincible, but death still stalks you. A prophecy cannot be unmade. It will catch up with you in the end.

And after each hunt, you take me to your bed. On those nights, you are not a man; you are made superhuman by glory and victory. Each dead boar is a step closer to longevity. On those nights you are a God.

But always, lurking in the shadows, I see his presence. We can never be free of him: Fionn mac Cumhaill, Eire’s greatest hero, the man who cared for you like a son, the man I married. The man we both betrayed. How I hate the taste of his name on my tongue.

I know how much you have missed him these long years. I see it in your eyes every day, so that now I can hardly bear you to look at me. You are haunted by blame and guilt, and although you never accuse me, I feel the weight of it. I give you my love and four sons, but we aren’t enough. You miss the camaraderie of the Fianna, your war–band. The hunts, the battles, the excitement. Well, I understand that. We have both sacrificed much to be together.

In the pre–dawn light, your eyes flash in anger, your body is tense. Dark eyes, dark hair blowing about your shoulders in the wind. The gouge of a boar’s tusk, Diarmuid, I see it. Why won’t you listen? About your neck, a cord of leather and a small bag cured from the hide of a boar. An amulet. Protection. I don’t know what’s inside, a tooth from the maw of every beast you’ve killed, perhaps. Herbs, enchantments. It has never left your skin. Until now.

I should have gone with you. Remember all the times we hunted together when we were on the run? I’m as handy with sword and spear as any man. But Fionn’s invitation was for you alone, and how can you re–forge your friendship with my eyes like daggers in your back, watching your every move and dissecting your every word?

All the hunts before we came here and since, I was with you, weaving my protection around you like an invisible mantle. Did you really never feel the weight of it, the silky–soft smoothness of it settling on your shoulders, feather–light, cool yet warm, soothing away your doubts and fears, thin as air yet tougher than steel? Your prowess at the hunt was in no small part due to my protection. You would do well to remember that.

Oh Diarmuid, don’t you wonder why now, after all these years? Our sons are grown to manhood, that’s how long it has been. Old hatreds do not die with time but fester and morph into malignant intentions. You know this in your heart, but you refuse to hear it. And so I seal your fate with my angry words. I had hoped to convince you not to go rushing back to him, but my influence cannot compete with the lure of Fionn’s summons.

Rivers of blood. I see rivers of blood, Diarmuid, and splintered bones.

What is it about men, that they can only stay faithful to each other, but not to their wives? What is it about women, that the more we try to please them, the more we push them away? I am done with pleasing men, but not with love. You have forgotten, Diarmuid, that you are the air I breathe. It has ever been so. I bore your sons. What has Fionn done for you? He has persecuted you, cast you out, hunted you down like an animal. Why do you still love him? Is it the nature of man to covet the one thing he cannot have, unable to treasure the riches already within his reach?

But the sun is rising, and you are gone far from me into the shadow of Benbulben where Fionn and your fate await you. You don’t believe in the prophecy anymore, you told me as you left, tearing off the amulet and casting it at my feet. You have gone to offer up your life to Fionn as proof of your devotion. Without my protection and the amulet, you may as well go naked into battle without a weapon. Today, my love, the prophecy will catch up with you.

The beast is stirring, out there on the mountain. The gouge of a boar’s tusk. Red grin gapes in soft white flesh. Rivers of blood. Bones crushed beneath cloven hooves. The hulk of a dead monster, your spear in its breast, and beside it, a dying man. Joined by fate, lying together, blood mingling as it drains into the earth, brothers for eternity, man and beast.

I am wearing your amulet, Diarmuid. It wraps me in the scent of you. We were happy here, weren’t we, but not free. Having walls changed everything. Within them, we gathered possessions, servants, followers and family. We still laughed, but not with abandon. We still loved, but not fiercely. We talked, but of responsibility. Our daily work became duty. For all that, it was still good, more than good. And while you and your men dug ditches and raised ramparts around our home to keep us safe, I wove protection of my own. It was strong, impenetrable. It kept us out of Fionn’s thoughts and beyond his reach. Few of his men from the Fianna, came visiting, and though I could see the hurt twisting in you, it was for the best. I was still Fionn’s wife. I didn’t want him reminded of that.

Four seedlings took root within me, swelled me, split me wide, drained me, made me complete. You took them away and forced them into the skins of men at such an early age, mother’s milk barely dried upon their lips. I know it is the way of things. I forgave you because my love is strong, and because this devastated world needs men not boys. Good men. But it takes more than sword skills to make a man good.

Bones shattered beneath cloven hooves. The body of a man broken upon trampled earth. Thick red blood.

You gave me a man who was so busy being a warrior in the day, he had time only for sleep in the night. Sons who kissed my cheek as they left the house at dawn, and again when they returned at dusk. The company of women and domestic tasks. Did you ever really know me at all? My concentration must have wavered, for Fionn’s messenger slipped through my defences.

Fionn requests your presence in a hunt for the Great Boar of Benbulben. Let your woman (not ‘your wife’; he knows I am still his) prepare food and lodgings for your fellow warriors of the Fianna. Let us feast together as friends of old. Let us put the past where it belongs. Let the sun dawn on renewed friendship. Let us not waste the future as we squandered our yesterdays.

Fine words, I had huffed over folded arms.

Fionn is an old man, you said. He sees the error of his ways, and seeks to make amends.

Then why hunt the boar? He knows the prophecy.

Men bond over hunting a common enemy.

The boar is your enemy, not his.

I am his right–hand man.

Were, Diarmuid. You didn’t care too much for that when you stole his new wife.

You were so angry, that for a moment I thought you would strike me. Go on, then, I urged softly, but know that I will defend myself.

And then you said the words that made something inside me die: You put an enchantment on me. A geis, a curse.

I had no weapon but my hands and the truth. I attacked you with both. It was easy for you to restrain the weak pillow of my female flesh, but you could not break the power of truth. You betrayed him of your own free will, I hissed, and you know it. That was a lie Fionn spread to save face. You chose to elope with me. My only enchantment was the spell I put in the wine, so we could escape safely while everyone slept.

All I know is that when I met you, I became a stranger, a man I did not recognise.

Love changes people, Diarmuid. That is the way of it. Tell me you have no regrets.

But you couldn’t say it, could you? Because you wouldn’t tell a lie. I felt so cold as you walked away, like you had pulled everything from me but my skin. You whistled for your hounds, yelled for your sons, called up your men, and they surrounded you with a bristling wall of masculinity. I watched you melt into the red glow of morning. The red of thick blood. The red of my eyes that weep for you.

Men like their women to wait for them, like for them to be consumed with worry and fear. But I am not like that. I believe in my own worth. My name will not be forgotten, I will make sure of that.

So I will not wait for you on the ramparts today, Diarmuid. I prepare the grand feast you want for Fionn. Not a victory feast, at least not for you. And then I go to the well, and I look for you in the water. Men do not like women to seek knowledge in the well, do they, Diarmuid? Boan and Sionan died for such audacity. The dark water swirls, reveals you laughing with a white–haired, grey–bearded man. Fionn. Still strong, still virile, a big bear of a man. There is something of the Sidhe in him. He has his arm about your shoulders. You are easy together, as if all the enmity of the past years has fallen away. Did you forgive him, or are you the forgiven? His smile is like the raw ragged gouge of a boar’s tusk in frail flesh.

He chased us for a year, Diarmuid, have you forgotten? He hunted us down like animals with his hounds and his men. We had no home, no one we could turn to, were forced to live wild like peasants, like refugees in the wilderness. We slept in caves, we ate what we could catch, or dig up, or pull from bushes and trees. No wine or ale passed our lips. No soft feather bed or sheepskins to lie on. The ground was hard and cold beneath snow. There was very little food or shelter for us, that winter. No one dared help us for fear of Fionn’s wrath. We had only each other and the clothes we stood in, but our love kindled a fire in our blood that kept us warm. We stayed nowhere more than a night, the caves and dolmens wherein we laid our heads bearing our names into eternity. Always moving, driven on by the baying of the hounds borne to us on the wind, and our shared passion.

They were hard times, and the happiest. But then my monthly bleeding didn’t come, and my belly began to swell, and for you, it was the beginning of the end.

This is no life for the mother of my child, you said one day.

But I laughed. I have everything I ever wanted, save for one thing.

Your face fell. Tell me what it is, you begged, and it will be yours.

I have a hankering for rowan berries, and the best are always at the top of the tree.

I will climb up happily and gather them for you.

You will not! Half the fun is climbing the tree to get them.

And so I began to climb. I still laugh when I remember the look on your face as I climbed the rowan tree, hampered by my big belly. Do you remember, Diarmuid? The simple pleasures were our greatest luxuries. They were hard times, but the best.

Rowan berries. Red as the blood that flows in rivers from the veins of man and beast, red as death and birth.

I see you in the well, making up with Fionn, and I am stabbed through with sudden bitter anger. Or perhaps it is jealousy. The two emotions are not a stone’s throw from each other, after all. I punch the water and the image scatters, colours flashing below the surface like darting fish. I am afraid of the deal you are making with him. Does he want me back? Are you willing to give me up, now that I have served you with heirs and the years have stolen my youth and beauty? I will not be given from the hands of one man into those of another like a bribe, or a toy that no longer pleases. I am a woman, Diarmuid, your wife in all but name.

In the great hall, all is ready for the feast. Fires and candles are lit. Light is low, glinting on the row of boar tusk drinking horns. Will another be added to their ranks tonight? I seat myself in your great carved chair, my hands clasped over the arms where yours have rested so many times. The oils in your skin have darkened the wood over the years. Visions of the past are gathering thick as winter leaves on the forest floor, burning through me with the intensity of a fever.

A gown white as dead flesh. A plucked rose red as blood, dead as a broken man. On the day of my wedding I met my husband for the first time, the ghost of my sister, who was his wife before me, sitting on his left shoulder. He was fit and strong still, but I trembled to think of his wrinkly old skin beside mine in the marriage bed, his rough calloused hands dragging over the soft smooth curves of my nakedness. Would age impair his ability to beget children? I hoped it would, and yet wished it would happen at once, so he would have no further need of my body. I wanted to feel passion, to writhe in the firm embrace of a hard–muscled man of my own age. An older man has experience, my father had said, he knows how to make a woman happy. Young men are only after satisfying their own needs.

Fionn cast a fatherly eye over me, then said, I have business to discuss with my men. A young thing like you needs to dance and have fun. Diarmuid, come and dance with my new wife, and mind you take good care of her.

He brought us together, Diarmuid, and he has regretted it ever since. Your dark hair, your flashing eyes, your ready laughter and wit… oh, you were everything Fionn was not, everything I had imagined in my prince. Fionn watched us whirl around the hall, observed our laughter and joy, smiling indulgently that his two favourite people in the world could be so happy, never dreaming that we were falling in love under his very nose.

And then I confessed that I would rather die than lie in Fionn’s bed, and you were horrified until I silenced you by fastening my mouth over yours. I could feel your heart hammering as wild as my own.

I know what people say, that I bewitched you, but I could never be satisfied with a love that wasn’t real. You adored me from the moment we first met. When you breathed in my ear that you would help me escape Fionn, I blessed the wine with the magic of deep sleep, and we slipped safely away. We were drunk on hazelmead and lust, and when you looked at me, I felt like a goddess.

But that was then, and here we are, you, a mangled corpse on a bier in our hall, and me as hollow as the boar–tusk drinking horns hanging on the wall. Outside, the construction of your burial chamber begins, and the air is alive with the keening of women. I wish they’d stop. I wish everything would stop. I don’t know how to live without you.

Fionn comes to me and says, you are still my wife. Come home with me to Almu, where you belong.

I know what you did, I say. You killed him. I heard it from the lips of your own born son.

Oisin is consumed by grief. He loved Diarmuid. He knows not what he says.

You had the power of healing in your hands. A sip of water from the holy well. That’s all. Three times you let the water seep between your fingers. You let Diarmuid die.

My voice is shrill as the banshee, my eyes glued to your ruined face. My power is rising, fizzing with fury in my blood. My hair, red–gold in the fire–light, stirs as if tossed by a wind that doesn’t blow. The flames gutter. Control. My fists clench at my side. I draw a shuddering breath.

Fionn speaks. Look at him, Gráinne. Look at him with your eyes and not your heart, and tell me with all your arcane knowledge, that his wounds are not mortal. I could not save him. No one could. In your heart you know this.

My home is here, I say, and I will never forgive you.

Fionn bows his head. I never see him again, but I hear of the lies he tells, of the ‘love spot’ on your forehead, Diarmuid, that only women can see, how it makes all women love you. He and his storytellers are cunning indeed. Dark magic is to blame, they claimed. Fionn, portrayed as the benevolent master willing to forgive and restore his repentant wife and cursed warrior to his side, free from the blemish of revenge or punishment. Ingenious, except that you spoiled his plans by dying. The tale caught on, nevertheless, became the popular story that prevails, the one that will outlive us all into eternity.

Diarmuid’s love spot, the geis I placed on him, how I wronged Fionn and deceived my father, how I threw myself to my death beneath the wheels of Fionn’s chariot out of grief and shame. Lies that attatch to me like many tiny barbs, because people love a martyr, love to hate a harlot, prefer to be entertained by untruth. I hold my head high. Such venom is but a whisper on the breeze, dissipating into empty air like the scent of spring blossoms.

Here is my truth, Diarmuid: I loved you but I never needed you. Now, I am a wise and just Queen, at once beloved, feared and obeyed. And when time takes my body and frees my spirit, my earthly remains will be taken up and sealed beside yours in our burial mound.

Free, at last, as the winds of Eire that bend the grasses over the hills, I will walk the land knowing I will find my way back to you. For better or worse, our love will be remembered in the twining of our bones beneath the soil, and the stories people tell.

I hope you enjoyed the read. Those of you who know this story will recognise the alternative ending; this version is a legend local to Sligo that was shared with me by the late John Wilmott. No doubt it was censored and rewritten by Christian patriarchy, who didn’t, and still don’t like powerful women. Next time, the Hedgerow H A G will be making her return to share with you the spring plants emerging in our neighbourhoods, and how we can harness the gifts they bring to nurture our health and wellbeing.

And finally, just a quick word about my book, Imperfect Bodies, which was published last week. I had launches in Hodges Figgis, Dublin, and Waterstones, Cork… you can see photos and read about the events in Substack Notes and on my Instagram. You should be able to buy the book in any bookshop now, and if they don’t have it in stock, they can order it for you. It is also available on Amazon (although I’d urge you to support an actual bookstore if you can), Easons, and direct from the publisher, Héloise Press, where you can also subscribe and receive 4 books delivered to your door per year. I will be attending book events next week in Sheffield, Leeds, Edinburgh, Durham and Newcastle, see here for details. I hope to see you there!

Grá Mór,

Céad míle fáilte, a hundred thousand welcomes to H A G! I’m Ali Isaac, and this email publication is where female senescence intersects with Irish landscape, myth and nature. My book, Imperfect Bodies, is available to pre-order now. Grá Mór!

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According to mythology, Lugh had two wives. Fionn mac Cumhall had several, although not all at the same time. Midir brought home Etain when he already had Fumnach at home. Cuchulain, who was married to Emer, had an affair with Fand, who was married to the sea-God Manannán. Gráinne married her dead sister’s husband, the ageing Fionn mac Cumhaill, yet she eloped with Diarmuid on the very night of her wedding. The Dagda had an affair with Boan, fathering Óengus, the God of love, on her, before stopping the sun in the sky for nine months so that the child could be born in one day and put into fosterage without her husband, Elcmar, finding out. Although she was also apparrently married to someone called Nechtan.

Got a head-ache? Yeah, me too. It’s hard keeping track of all these long-lost love triangles, although they do make for some great stories. In Irish myth, love in all its forms was celebrated.

But what I love most of all is how their names and their stories are preserved in the features of the landscape to this very day.

Love Affairs

Queen Medb and Fergus mac Roich

At the time of the Cattle Raid of Cooley, Queen Medb was on to her third husband, Ailill, who had been her former bodyguard. Medb required three qualities from her man: that he be without fear, meanness, or jealousy. She went on to have many affairs, but her lover of choice was Fergus mac Roich, for it was said it took seven men to satisfy her, or Fergus only once.

Eventually, jealous Ailill had Fergus killed, but when Medb discovered Ailill’s own infidelities, she sent an assassin to kill him in revenge.

So it seems that while affairs were conducted fairly openly and without shame, jealousy made such dalliances a risky business.

Love-Children

Often, children were born of these illicit unions. Óengus was fostered at birth by Midir of the Danann. This was not unusual; fostering children was common practice in ancient Ireland.

Lugh was born of a one-night-stand between Cian of the Danann and Ethniu of the Fomori, and fostered by Tailtiu, last Queen of the Fir Bolg. Fionn mac Cumall was fostered at birth by his aunt, Bodhmal, and the warrior-woman Liath Luachra. Cuchulainn was conceived on Dechtine by Lugh in a dream/ one-night-stand, although she was married to Súaltam mac Róich. Cuchulainn was fostered by Fergus, Súaltam’s brother.

Lineage was important, but the bond of fosterage was considered just as strong. It seems that the conditions of a child’s conception were irrelevant. There seems to have been no shame in being the product of an illicit once-off liaison between one’s parents.

Queer Love

Cuchulain and Ferdia

Cuchulainn and Ferdia were foster brothers, raised together from an early age, and so naturally they were close. Unfortunately, during the Táin bo Cuailnge, both men are pitted against each other in battle by the cunning Queen Medb. After a mighty, bloody combat that takes place mostly in the River Dee, Ferdia is slain and Cuchulainn is severely injured and distraught over Ferdia’s death.

Quotes from Cuchulainn of Ferdia :

“We were heart companions ; we were comrades in gatherings ; we shared the one bed ; we used to sleep sound sleep. You were my heart companion, you were my people, you were my family —I never found one was dearer.” 1

And from Ferdia of Cuchulainn:

“A pity indeed a woman to have come between myself and himself! The half of my heart is CuchuIain’s without fault, and I am the half of his own heart. By my shield! If Cuchulain were killed from Ath Cliath, it is I would thrust my sword through my heart, through my side, through my breast.2

Sure sounds like love speech to me.

Bodhmall and Liath Luachra

There is not much said about the relationship between Bodhmall and Liath Luachra. They lived together, two middle-aged or old women, in a basic wooden bothy in the deep isolation of the forest-clad Sliab Bloom mountains. And it was to them that Muirne brought her infant son for safekeeping after her husband had been killed by his enemies, the sons of Morna.

Bodhmall was a druid and Fionn’s aunt. Her status would have afforded her a comfortable life. Liath Luachra was a female warrior and her companion. Why were they so keen to stay out of the public eye, so far from civilisation and the safety and camaraderie of society. They lived a simple life, hunting and fishing, and taking care of this gift of a child, whom they clearly adored as if her were their own. They were skilled enough that they raised between them one of Ireland’s greatest mythological heroes.

The story of these two women is vague, perhaps deliberately so. Today, it is popularly believed that they were a lesbian couple. Makes sense to me. 3

Comedic Love

Not all love stories were tragic. Some where quite funny and even spicy.

Mis and Dubh Ruis

In this medieval poem, Mis becomes distressed when her father is killed in battle. When she found his body, she was so distraught that she lost her mind and started drinking his blood. She then went on a 300-year rampage around the area of the Sliabh Mis mountains, which are named after her. Mis caused so much havoc and death that eventually, when the warriors and hunters failed, the king sent his harper, Dubh Ruis, to trap her.

Dubh Ruis decided the best way to win Mis round was with gold and silver coins, music and sex. These were the familiar things, he reasoned, that would remind her of her past life at her father’s court, of her humanity and civility, and bring her back to her senses. He scattered the coins around his camp, laid himself down on the mountainside, undid his trousers to expose his privates, hoisted up his harp, and began to play.

Mis was drawn to his harp playing at first, but quickly became more interested in him, and a humorous, bawdy little romp ensues:

A glance she gave, and she saw his nakedness and his playthings, and she said: “What are these?” she asked of his bag and his little eggs, and he told her. “What is this?” she asked of the other thing that she saw. “That is a branch of the trick,” he said. “I don’t remember that,” she said. “My father did not have such a thing. Branch of the trick,”she said again. “What is the trick?” “Sit beside me,” he said, “and I will perform the trick of that branch for you.” “I will,” she said, “and stay beside me.” “I will,” he said. He lay and slept with her and she said: “Ho ho, a good trick. Do it again!” “I will,” he said. “But I will play the harp for you first.” “Never mind the harp,” she said. “Do the trick again.”

Dubh Rois then builds a fullachta fiadh in which he boils deer meat to feed her, and gives her bread he has brought with him. Then he melts deer fat in the warm water of the fullachta and bathes her in it.

For two months, they live together in the mountains, and the gentle harper gradually returns Mis to civility and restores her sanity. They go on to marry and have children together, although when Dubh Ruis is later killed, Mis resorts to wildness again in her grief.

Happy-Ever-After Love

Most Irish love stories seem to end in tragedy. As myths functioned to educate as well as entertain, I can only speculate that the idea of marriage based on romantic love was frowned upon and had to be discouraged. Most marriages, especially for elites, were arranged to strengthen or consolidate political power, status, and wealth. Love and passion were more likely to be found in tales of ilicit romantic liaisons. Much like today, happy marriages were probably not seen to be as interesting as scandalous love affairs. The romance of Óengus, God of love, and Caer Ibormeith is the only exception that I can think of. I’m afraid I’m saving this one for a future post, however, but here is a taster for you.

And here is Lough Muskry, that used to be known as Lough Bel Dracan. This where Caer Ibormeith retreated when she transformed into a swan, and where Óengus sought her out and identified her from among all her handmaidens. 4

The Tragic Lovers

Clíodhna and Ciabhán

Clíodhna (Klee-una) of the Fair Hair was a daughter of the Sidhe who fell in love with Ciabhán (Kyav-awn) of the Curling Locks, a prince of Ulster. She visited him from the Otherworld, and Ciabhan became so enamoured of her, that when she left to return home, he stole a fishing boat pulled up on the stony strand nearby, and attempted to follow her.

The little curragh was tossed about like jetsam upon the stormy sea, so that the poor young man nearly drowned. Manannán took pity on him, however, and brought him safely into his magical lands.

There he spent many happy days in Clíodhna’s company, until one day they were warned by Fand, Manannán’s wife, that the sea-god thought it high time Ciabhan returned to his own people.

Devastated, the lovers couldn’t bear to be parted, and stole Manannán’s magical boat, the Wave Sweeper, setting sail for Ireland. Back on the strand, Clíodhna fell asleep after their long sea voyage, and Ciabhán went hunting for a deer to provide their supper.

Having learned of their treachery, Manannán was furious and sent a huge wave to reclaim the runaway maiden, and so she was swept out to sea and so to her death. The wave that to this day relentlessly pounds the shore at Glandore harbour, County Cork, is named in her memory. 5

Deirdre and Naoise

Conchubar mac Nessa, king of Ulster, had a storyteller named Feidhlimidh (Fay-lim) Mac Daill, and a druid named Cathbad. Cathbad prophecied that Feidhlimidh’s unborn daughter would grow up to be so beautiful, the men of Ireland would go to war over her. The warriors wanted the baby to be killed at birth, but Conchubar decided to have her raised in the forest in isolation, where she could do no harm. Her name was Deirdre (Dee-urd-ruh).

One day many years later, quite by chance,  Deirdre met Naoise (Nee-shuh), one of the three sons of Uisneach (Ish-nok), who was passing through the forest. He was so dazzled by her beauty, that he agreed to elope with her. Accompanied by his two brothers, the couple fled to Scotland, far from King Conchubar’s wrath. They lived quite happily in the wilderness, hunting and fishing to survive.

Eventually, the king tracked them down, and sent Fergus mac Róith to bring them home, promising safe passage. Fergus was invited to a feast along the way, which his personal geis would not let him refuse, so the party continued on under the protection of Fergus’s son.

Worth mentioning there’s not a single mention of Macha in this video, Queen and Goddess, who in Irish myth is credited with building this site, and after whom it is named.

On arrival at the King’s court, Conchobar attacked and killed Naoise and his brothers. Fergus arrived too late to save them, and outraged, took up service with Queen Medb of Connacht, soon becoming her lover. He later led her army against the warriors of Ulster in the Cattle Raid of Cooley.

Conchobar took Deirdre as his wife, but after a year of her continued rejection of him, he grew tired of her, and decided to torture her further by giving her to the man who had made the death-stroke against her beloved Naoise.

Deirdre had other plans, though. On the way to her new husband, she threw herself from the chariot, hitting her head against a stone, and so was killed, although some versions of the story say she died from grief. 6

Niamh and Oisín

One day, Oisín (Ush-een) was out hunting with his father, Fionn mac Cumhall, and the men of the Fianna, when he was approached by a beautiful woman riding a white stallion. She told him she was Niamh of the Golden Hair, a woman of the Sidhe, and she had long loved him from afar. She invited him to go with her and live in the Otherworld. Although sad to be leaving his family and friends, Oisin agreed.

He lived very happily with Niamh in Tír na nÓg for what he thought was three years, but then he grew sad and homesick. Niamh reluctantly agreed to let him return to visit his family, and lent him her white horse, who would carry him safely there. She warned him not to let his feet to touch Ireland’s soil.

When Oisin arrived in Ireland, he did not recognise it. He couldn’t find any sign of his home, his family or friends. He saw some men struggling to remove a boulder from a field, and went to help them. Through chatting to them, he realised that three hundred years had passed while he had been with Niamh in Tír na n Óg.

Shocked, he slipped and fell from his saddle as he leaned over to haul up the rock. Instantly as his feet touched the earth, he was transformed into a very old man, and died. Some versions say he survived long enough to meet St Patrick and tell him all the stories of Fionn and the Fianna, before converting to Christianity. 7

Fionn and Sadbh

Sadbh was a daughter of Bodb Derg, High King of the Sidhe. When she refused the advances of the Dark Druid, he transformed her into a deer. She escaped, and after three years wandering, found her way to Almu, the home of Fionn mac Cumhall.

Here she was safe, and the Dark Druid’s spell held no power. Returned to her true form as a beautiful young woman, she and Fionn fell deeply in love. Within a year, she was expecting their first child.

Around this time, Fionn, along with his Fianna, was called away to defend Ireland’s shores against invaders. Every day, Sadbh paced the palisade, watching and waiting for her love’s safe return.

One day, she noticed a warrior and his two dogs approaching. Convinced it was Fionn and his faithful hounds, Bran and Sceolán, she ran joyfully to meet him. It was only when she was in his arms that she realised her mistake. Away from the safe haven of Almu, she was vulnerable again, and the man who wore the likeness of her husband was in fact the Dark Druid, come to claim her.

At the touch of his hazel wand, she became a little brown doe again, and together they simply vanished, never to be seen again.

Fionn was distraught to find her gone on his return. He lost all interest in everything exept searching for his lost love. After seven years, he came across a small boy, alone and wild, without the power of speech, wandering the lower slopes of Benbulben.

When he looked into the child’s eyes, he saw the look of Sadbh in them, and so he knew that this was their son. He brought him home, and named him Oisin, meaning ‘little deer’, but what became of Sadbh, he never found out. 8

Diarmuid and Gráinne

Gráinne was the daughter of Cormac mac Art, High King of Ireland. At her wedding feast to the ageing Fionn mac Cumhall, she met the young and handsome Diarmuid. They fell in love, and eloped.

They were chased across the length and breadth of Ireland by Fionn, who was jealous and angered by their betrayal. Eventually, a truce was sought by Óengus, Diarmuid’s foster-father, when Gráinne became pregnant.

The couple settle far from Fionn in his court at Almu, and live happily together, bringing four fine sons into the world. But an invitation from Fionn to join the Fianna on a boar hunt leads to Diarmuid’s death.

Fionn claims Gráinne as his bride, but she never recovers from her loss, and dies of a broken heart. 9

Tristan and Iseult

I first read Rosemary Sutcliffe’s beautiful version of this story when I was about nine years old, and it has stayed with me ever since. Just a chapter in the Arthurian romances, it is very much an Irish story, although it does not appear in the Irish Mythological Cycles.

Tristan travels to Ireland seeking the hand of Princess Iseult, daughter of Irish chieftain Anguisshe, for his uncle, King Mark of Cornwall. During the return journey, they fall in love, in some versions, by drinking a love potion intended for Iseult and Mark on their wedding night.

When Mark learns of their betrayal, he sentences them both to death, Tristan by hanging, and Iseult by burning. Tristan escapes and rescues her, and they flee into the forest.

Eventually, they make peace with Mark, and Iseult agrees to return to her husband, but Tristan is banished. On his travels, he meets and settles with another Iseult, known by the epithet ‘of the White Hands’, who is the daughter of Hoel of Brittany.

In later years, Tristan is wounded by a poisoned lance. He sends for Iseult of Cornwall, for only she is skilled enough in the healing arts to repair such a wound. He is uncertain that she will come. He asks that if she does, the ships sails are to be white, but if she refuses, the captain must raise a black sail.

Of course Iseult rushes to be with her lover again. The ship’s captain follows Tristan’s orders, and a white sail is hoisted. Too weak to leave his bed, Tristan asks his wife, Iseult of the White Hands, for the colour of the sail. In a fit of jealousy, she declares it black.

Tristan dies from grief, and when Iseult of Cornwall arrives to discover his dead body, she too dies from a broken heart.

Iseult is said to be buried in a small chapel that was named after her, Chapelizod, on the outskirts of Dublin. St. Lawrence’s church is thought to have been constructed upon the original site of Iseult’s chapel.

According to legend, after they were buried, a hazel tree grew from Tristan’s grave, and a honeysuckle from Iseult’s, and it was said that the honeysuckle clung to the hazel so tightly, they could never be pulled apart. 10

We have just had two unusually balmy weeks of sunshine; every morning, we awoke to sunshine, and the sky stayed cloud-free until bedtime, and beyond. We’re not used to it. It was so… well, dry. In the days that followed, however, it has not stopped raining.

We get a lot of rain here, and much of Cavan, where I live, is drained from bogland. The soil is dark and damp and heavy. Low-lying areas are often flooded, and it never fails to amaze me how much water the land can hold and filter and drain away. Other parts of the county lie atop karst limestone, which forms a honecomb of cavities and airpockets that fill with water when it rains. We even have our own Burren.

With the gush and flow of excess water so much a feature of the Irish climate throughout the ages, as you can imagine, the early Irish literary and legendary landscape is awash with flood-lore. Under these darkened lowered skies, as the rain falls, I thought I’d share some of those stories with you here.

In the picture above, the River Blackwater, on its journey to join Lough Ramor, and onwards to the River Boyne, has burst its narrow banks. My local landscape is always changing, is constantly in a state of flux, and that is how it is meant to be. Nature has her own coping mechanisms, which may seem harsh and unduly dramatic to us at times, but they have evolved over millennia, and they work. It is only the interactions of humankind which cause irreversible disruption and destruction. Nature, in her stark honesty, is always beautiful.

Céad míle fáilte, a hundred thousand welcomes to H A G! I’m Ali Isaac, and this email comes to you from the intersection of female senescence and Irish landscape, both mythical and natural. My book, Imperfect Bodies, will be published by Héloïse Press in the spring of 2026.

Flooding seems catastrophic to us, but often this is because humans ignore the signs and build their homes and cities on flood plains. In fact, floods are necessary; they are cleansing, they increase fertility of the soil, they are life-giving, they shape the land.

Rivers are female

In Irish myth, rivers are often associated with women, particularly when they flood. One example suggests the River Boyne is named after the Goddess of the Tuatha de Danann, Boan. Her name means 'white cow', and cattle were essential to the survival of early Irish people. The Danann were famous for their herds of fine white cattle.

Boan's story blames the formation of the River Boyne on her desperate search for knowledge. Knowledge was power, and both were historically denied women. The Well of Knowledge was owned by Nechtan, who was Boan's husband, and when he continually denied her access, she decided to take matters into her own hands. The story goes that the Well was so infuriated by her presumption and disobedience, the water rose up and chased her across Ireland all the way to the sea, where she was drowned. The channel it carved in the landscape filled with water and became the River Boyne.

You can listen to me read my own understanding of this story on ’s podcast, Knotwork Myth and Storytelling. Scroll to Episode 9, A Woman’s Quest for Knowledge: Boan’s Tears by Ali Isaac | S6 Ep9.

There are several other such stories: the River Shannon, for example, is said to be named after Sionann, granddaughter of Lir, who also went searching for knowledge; the River Bann is associated with Princess Tuag, who was fostered at the Hill of Tara, and was reputed to be so beautiful, that at only fifteen years of age, she was abducted by the sea-God Manannán, and subsequently drowned.

The perishing of women in rivers seems to be a common theme in Irish mythology, worthy of a future newsletter of their own.

Lakes are male

But these are river-bursts, rather than lake-bursts. The lake-burst supposedly had its own genre of tales known in Medieval Ireland as tomhaidhm, and describe how water violently erupts in areas where previously there was none. This may be a reference to the great flood myth of biblical times.

Lough Erne (in Irish, Loch Éirne) lies in Co. Fermanagh, and comprises two lakes, the Upper and Lower Erne, which are connected by the River Erne. Between them nestles the town of Enniskillen.

Lough Erne has two origin stories, both very different, but which concern drownings. In one version, High King of Ireland, Fiacha Labrainne (who himself was named after the River Labrainn, which burst its banks when he was born) went to war against a tribe of people who were known as the Érainn. During the battle, a huge torrent of water burst from the ground, drowning all of his enemies, and leaving in its wake the body of water we know today as Lough Erne. 1

The second story concerns Érne, who was ‘chieftainess of the girls of Cruachan and keeper of [Queen] Medb's combs and caskets’.2 It seems that a warrior named Olc Ai came from the Otherworld via the cave of Oweynaghat to seek revenge after Amorgen the Blackhaired slept with fairy-woman, Findchoem.

He didn’t come to do battle with Amorgen, though, oh no. Instead, he took his fury out on the innocent women of Cruachan. It is said that Olc Ai shook his great beard at the girls and gnashed his teeth so fearfully, that Érne and her women were driven insane with terror and fled. They did not slow down upon reaching the lake, but waded in, desperate to escape their tormentor, and so were all drowned.

The water-horse, or the horse’s water

Lough Ree is the fourth largest lake in Ireland. Located near Athlone, it is fed by the River Shannon. Lough Ree is usually translated as ‘lake of Kings’, but according to legend, it was named after a man named Rí, or Ríbh. He was the son of Mairidh, King of Munster, and he had a brother named Eochaid. When Mairidh took a young wife, Ebhliu, she and Eochaid fell in love, and decided to elope. Ríbh went with them. Halfway through the journey, however, the bothers parted company, and Ríbh continued west.

Ríbh had been loaned a magic horse by Sidhe-King Midher. Midher gave him strict instructions: do not let the horse stop, do not remove his bridle, and do not let him stray. This magical creature carried Ríbh and his luggage for many days without a break, so when it eventually stopped to pee, Ríbh decided it was time for a rest. He unburdened the horse and removed its bridle, whereupon the creature immediately galloped off. Unable to continue his journey, he thought this was as good a place as any to make his home. He built a house, and lived there very happily with his family.

All this time, the mighty stream of urine the magic horse had loosed into the ground remained still, but on the eve of Lughnasadh thirty years later, it inexplicably rose up and gushed forth in a great torrent, washing away Ríbh’s house, and drowning him and all his family. The water spread all across the plain, forming the body of water we now call Lough Ree.

A warrior’s watery grave

Lough Corrib is the second largest lake in Ireland. Located in Co. Galway, it contains over 300 islands, and is considered to be an important conservation site. Corrib is an anglicisation of the Irish Loch Oirbsean.

According to the Leabhar Gabhála (an origin story for the people of Ireland tracing back to the seventh century, and preserved in many prose and poetry versions),3 there were two Manannán's: one was the son of Ler, which means ‘sea’ in Irish, and another known as Orbsen, son of Allot. The Yellow Book of Lecan (a manuscript dating to c. 1400AD), actually claims there were four Manannán's. 4

Orbsen went into battle with Uillin, grandson of Nuada of the Tuatha de Danann. Unfortunately, he was slain, and as his grave was being dug, a wave of water burst forth from the ground and became a great lake, which subsequently was named in his memory. The plain on which the combat took place was named Magh Uillin after the victor. Both warrior's names are still preserved in the landscape today as Moycullen, and Lough Corrib.

Another equine connection

Lough Neagh comes from the Irish Loch nEachach, meaning ‘Eachaidh’s lake’. It is the largest lake on the island of Ireland, and is surrounded by the counties Antrim, Down, Armagh, Tyrone and Derry. Remember when Ríbh helped his brother Eochaidh escape the wrath of their father, King Mhairidh of Munster, when he ran off with his father's new young bride, Ebhliu? Well, Eochaidh suffered a similar fate as his brother. What interests me here is that the name, ‘Eochaidh’, derives from the old Irish word, ech, which means ‘horse’.

When the two brothers parted, Eochaidh continued into Ulster. He also had been lent a magic horse. When the horse stopped and lay down, a well sprang up from the ground and Eochaidh decided to build his home there. He placed a cap over the well, and put a woman in charge of tending it. One day, though, after drawing water, she forgot to replace the cap. The water flooded out, and so Lough Neagh was formed. Eochaid and all his family were drowned, except for one daughter, Liban, who became a mermaid.5

But that's another story for another post.

Here is a short film made for Heritage Week 2020 discussing the lake-burst trope in Irish legend and folklore, particularly in relation to Lough Neigh.

What can we learn from all these stories?

Although there is no evidence to support a global flooding event as described in the Bible, there are enough flood myths around the world to suggest that localised flooding events did occur and were severe enough to devastate communities and form part of their historical lore.

We can possibly look a little deeper than that. It is interesting to note in Irish myth that rivers in spate are associated with women, whereas ‘lake-bursts’ are associated with men, and battles. Where the brothers Ríbh and Eochaidh are concerned there is also the equine link, which leads on to the folklore of the water-horse that lures the unaware onto its back, then drowns its rider in a river, clearly a warning to those who can’t swim to stay away from water.

In the stories of Ríbh and Eochaidh, there is also the disobeying of magical or divine instruction. This seals their fate, and is reminiscent of the stories of Boan and Sionan who defy orders in their search for knowledge that is forbidden to them. The two brothers, though, were not looking for knowledge but seeking out a new home. Perhaps in all these stories, then, it is not what one seeks that leads to punishment, but the disobedience, or the disregard for the guidance of a superior.

Water is unpredictable. It is at once both life-giving, and life-taking. It can be gentle, playful, and also savage and merciless. The salt-sweet rush of water can deliver life from the womb, whilst stealing life from the mother. A woman who cannot bear children is described as barren, like a desert, a land dry and devoid of water, ravaged by the lack of it. An interesting comparison, when in cultures around the world, women are so often considered guardians of water. When in Irish myth, the female guardian of a well can confer kingship upon a man with the giving of a cup of water, and her body. A transaction that often returns a dried-up old hag to youth and beauty. The power of that.

We need water, are made of it, desire it, and fear it. It seems to me that these anxieties play out in the stories and are in constant tension with one another.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this newsletter. I just want to send best wishes to those who celebrate Easter, and to everyone else, tender Spring blessings! Grá,

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Céad míle fáilte, a hundred thousand welcomes to H A G! I’m Ali Isaac, and this email comes to you from the intersection of female senescence and Irish landscape, both mythical and natural. My book, Imperfect Bodies, will be published by Héloïse Press in the spring of 2026.

The Hill of Faughart is a site of ancient ruins, epic battles, long-buried kings, of saints and stories and legends. It is also place of great beauty. It is somewhere I have wanted to visit for a very long time but never did, even though it lies only an hour’s drive from where I live.

It is also said to be the birthplace of Brigid.

A week or so ago, my husband and I went on a whistlestop daytrip following the trail of the Táin bo Cuailnge. We made two detours: firstly to Foughart, and secondly to St. Mary’s Church at Templetown, a site associated with the Knights Templar. More about that in the weeks to come.

Now, before I go any further, let me just say there has been an explosion of writing about Brigid recently, even here on Substack, and it is a joy to see how her spirit, her fiery arrow of Imbas is hitting its mark, burning into the collective consciousness, taking hold and driving momentum. I haven’t yet caught up with all your words, but surely will.

Anyway, I’m not adding to this mighty body of work today, although I do want to wish you the blessings of Imbolc. Today, I’m just going to share with you my recent pilgrimage to Foughart, a beautiful and sacred site that feels mystical rather than overtly Christian, if I may say so.

However, if you are interested in my thoughts on Brigid, you can find them in my previous essays about her on H A G, which I link to here:

A lovely film giving you an overview of the whole of the Hill of Foughart, including the modern shrine of Brigid at the bottom of the hill, and also the Anglo-Norman motte at the top of the hill.

© Mully Movies on Youtube.

A beautiful haunting song, Hymn to Brigid, which has a slight early Medieval vibe to it that’s perfect company for this post. Sung by Eldin on Youtube.

Faughart, (pronounced something like Faw-hurt) is in County Louth, not far from the town of Dundalk. It consists of a typically circular early medieval ecclesiastical enclosure containing a church and graveyard. There is also a holy well and various other structures associated with Brigid, who was said to have been born here in 451 AD. In fact, a sign on the wall of the little ruined church claims that the very flagstone upon which she was born is still located at the site.

The view from Foughart graveyard looking out over the beautiful plains of Muirthemne - Cúchulainn country!

Looking out over that view is Brigid’s holy well. A stone staircase leads down to the water, which is covered with a corbelled stone canopy that dates to between 1900 and 1924. It’s dark, and on the day we visited, the water was still and murky and full of autumn leaves. To the left as you descend the steps is a rag tree, something you either love or hate. Personally, I’m not a fan, they are damaging to the trees and it’s basically littering the environment. Sorry, if you think I’m a spoilsport, but these days I think we have to be when it comes to protecting nature. Also, I’m not sure, but does that tree look like a cherry laurel to you? Because if it is, its an invasive species and shouldn’t even be here.

Another holy well dedicated to St. Brigid at Liscannor, County Clare. This poem is by Doirrean ní Ghriofa (who plays a cameo in the film), and performed brilliantly by Irish-Nigerian artist and activist, Osaro Azams.

This strange, circular feature in the cemetary, known as Brigid’s Bed, has a circular raised edge with a depression in the centre and its entrance is flanked by two large stones. It once contained a large black slab in the centre, while the inside of its perimeter was also lined with stones. 2 It has been described as possibly a cairn, but it would be unusually very small, if so. More likely, it was once a small shrine where Brigid’s relics were kept.

Unrelated to Brigid, but an interesting aside nevertheless, in this cemetary lies the grave and stone slab of Edward the Bruce, the lesser known brother of Robert the Bruce, king of Scotland. He was invited over here by a group of Irish nobles who wanted ais with fighting the English. In return, they were willing to accept him as High King of Ireland. He fought a campaign in Ireland that lasted three years, culminating in the Battle of Foughart on the 14th October 1318 AD, in which he was killed and interred in the cemetary at the site where he fell.

The ancient circular site is bisected by a modern country lane, the portion of the cemetary lying beyond it farmed out of existence. Further up the lane is the Anglo-Norman motte and bailey, wild and unkempt and never archaeologically explored. The hill falls away in another stunning vista that overlooks Dundalk Bay.

At the bottom of the hill is the more modern shrine to Brigid. Its a beautiful peaceful little site, filled with tall trees and a small stream trickling through it. It is punctuated by some very ancient stones which are though to contain potent healing powers, including the Head Stone, the Knee Stone, the Waist Stone and the Back Stone. This shrine dates to the mid 1930s and is popular with tourists and pilgrims.

And in answer to the question posed in the title, after visiting Faughart it has become clear to me that this place is very much associated with the birth of a saint, not a goddess. Brigid came to Ireland with her clan, the Tuatha de Danann. She was a daughter of the Dagda, was married to Bres, and had an adult son, Ruadán, who took part in the second Battle of Moytura.3 There is nothing in the written record of goddess Brigid being born in Ireland (at least that I know of, but am open to, if you can direct me to it).

I want to wish you all the blessings of Imbolc as the Cailleach transfers her mantle to Brigid. As we welcome Brigid, let’s also give thanks to the Cailleach for her guardianship and winter wisdom that she has awakened in us, for her stewardship of the land and wild life in the cold dark half of the year. The balance of power has been passed on. There may be some turbulence as the Old One settles into her long sleep (Storm Éowyn may have been a reminder of her power, and that of nature, a nod to the future if we don’t get our act together). As she does so, open yourself and let go of all your worries, let them drain away to the place beyond dreams. Now is the season of new beginnings, of manifestation of all you have dreamed during the long dark, the long cold. Now is the time for action.

I hope you have enjoyed this exploration of the Hill of Foughart with me. As you can see, it is a very liminal landscape, exisiting very much both in the past through its history and mythology, and the present… just like Brigid herself, born on the doorstep, neither of the inside or the outside but both, of church and of home, of Christianity and pagan, saint and goddess, of slave and royalty… she is all things to us all. Thanks for being here. Much grá,

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Finally, listen to this stunning rendition of Gabhaim Molta Brighde - I Give Praise to Brigid by Aoife Ní Fhearraigh… it’ll send shivers up your spine!

Female Fallowing

Something happened in July. I tried four times to write a piece for August’s newsletter, but I couldn’t do it. I still have the drafts sitting in my Substack’s back-office. I had plenty of ideas, but no inspiration. I lost the will to do anything, to exercise, walk the hedges, be with my beloved wild plant neighbours or indeed my human ones, struggled with basic chores, my energy and joy deserted me. Time stretched so that I felt like I was wading through treacle not air, achieving very little , and yet at the same time passed too quickly. I felt not quite part of this world. I felt flat.

It’s happened before: two whole months of the previous summer, and various other times going back into my 40s. I know what it is (now), and if you’re a woman of a certain age, no doubt you do, too. It’s ‘low mood’, and it’s a symptom of perimenopause and menopause. And it can be devastating.

I refuse to see it negatively. Instead, I call it ‘fallowing’. Like when ancient farmers used to let their fields go through cycles of crop production and lying fallow. This unproductive inactive period allows the soil to rest and recover its fertility. In actual fact, what this means is that it allows the land to revert to its natural state, the way it was before human interaction, the way it is supposed to be. In the same way, fallowing allows the body and mind to rest and recover. But female fallowing is not about fertility; that part of us has been and gone, I’m afraid, and personally, I don’t miss it. What fallowing allows us to do is to retreat within ourselves and rediscover our creativity, our inspiration, our Imbas.

This time, I recognised what was happening to me, and for the first time, I didn’t try to fight it. I allowed myself the grace and space to give myself up to it. I coccooned myself within my home. I crafted when I felt up to it. I read. I sat on the sofa at night beside my husband and watched Netflix with him. I cuddled Carys… a lot. I ate when and what I wanted. I scrolled Instagram. I didn’t write anything, apart from the freelance work I had contracted myself to do. And I thought. A lot.

I felt guilty often. I worried I’d lose my subscribers here. I actually gained some. Thanks for sticking with me, you guys! And welcome to all newcomers, I hope you will enjoy what you find here. The research I had planned for my next book, and the edits of my YA projects didn’t happen. And then we went to Corfu for a holiday, Conor, Carys and I. A change is as good as a rest, they say, and you know what? It was. I read 7 novels in 2 weeks, what a luxury! And I came back with a list of goals that I have already begun to tick off.

Fallow periods are essential to our wellbeing, I have realised, no matter how uncomfortable and horrible they are to experience. They lift eventually, when the time is right, but if they don’t, you must seek help. Being able to ask for help is a strength, not a weakness. Low mood is a type of depression sparked by our declining hormones; it is unlikely to be fixed by antidepressants, and you can’t just ‘snap out of it’ or ‘pull yourself together’. Depression is a common mental health disorder, and there are several types. Although women are diagnosed more often than men, the only female depression listed on the National Institute of Mental Health website is perinatal depression. The NHS UK website does, however, link menopause with depression. So we’re not imagining it, Ladies!

Depression and Story

I first came across the idea of depression as fallow in Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood. It immediately struck a chord with me, because I could see elements of myself in it.

Veena… was sitting on the worn plush-covered sofa as if rooted there, staring at the wall. She had on her usual shapeless dress; her knees were covered with an old yellow baby blanket; her pale hair hung limply on either side of her round, soft, whitish face; her hands lay curled slackly, as if her fingers were broken. On the floor in front of her was a scattering of dirty plates. Veena didn’t cook; she ate what Bernice’s father gave her; or else, she didn’t eat it. But she never tidied up. She hardly ever spoke, and she didn’t speak now. Her eyes flickered as we went past her though, so maybe she saw us.

“What’s the matter with her?” Amanda whispered to me.

“She’s Fallow,” I whispered back. 1

Atwood goes on to describe people in a Fallow state as resting, “retreating into themselves to gain Spiritual insight, gathering their energy for the moment they would burst out again like buds in spring”.

I love that last metaphor! Atwood’s description is a bit extreme in relation to how I felt, but not that far off the mark; any physical movement felt exhausting, including showering and tidying up. I didn’t care how I looked. I didn’t care what I ate. I hardly moved. But I had Carys to care for, and there was no avoiding that. She needed me, and that gave me some impetus, stopped me sinking too far. And it was pretty much all I could manage.

Atwood’s book is set in a post-dystopian future, and if you read it you will see how all the destructive features of capitalism and modernity we are living through now feed into and fracture the human psyche. But poor mental health is not a modern thing. Through the earliest writings of Irish scribes, there is evidence that they were familiar with depression as far back as the early medieval period, because it surfaces in their retellings of Irish myth.

The Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulainn

In the story of the Serglighe Con Culainn, the ‘Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulainn’, the warrior Cúchulainn becomes depressed and falls into a malaise in which he appears to sleep for a year, dreaming prophetic visions from which he cannot be roused.

This tale survives in two manuscripts, the twelfth-century Book of the Dun Cow and a seventeenth-century copy of it. The text has been heavily doctored through the centuries, but the earliest parts by their lingustic features are believed to date to the ninth century.

The plot of the story goes like this: Cúchulainn hunts and injures a magical pair of birds who are really the Sidhe women Fand, wife of sea God Manannán, and Lí Ban. He immediately falls into his ‘wasting sickness’. The reason we are given is that the two fairy woman transform out of their animal form and get their revenge by attacking him with sticks and beating him almost to death. No one around him in the mortal world witness this, because it take place in the fairy realm. To them, he is in a waking yet dreamlike state, in which he can still speak to them at times. This goes on for a year.

Eventually, Fand relents and says she will heal him on condition that he works for her and defeats her enemies in battle. He agrees, and also embarks on an affair with her. When Emer, his real wife in the mortal world discovers his infidelity, she challenges Fand with a dagger, and it is seemingly this passion that restores him from his stupor. Cúchulainn re-enters the mortal world. However, according to Lady Gregory’s version of the story, assimilated from local folklore and oral tradition, Cúchulainn is so destraught at the loss of his fairy lover that he

went with great leaps southward to Luachair, the place of rushes; and he stopped for a long while without drink, without food, among the mountains, and where he slept every night, was on the road of Midluachan. 2

Conchobar, King of Ulster, sent all the poets and the skilled men and the druids of Ulster to find him and bring Cúchulainn to his fort at Emain Macha. They put enchantments on him, and made him drink the daught of forgetting so that he would have no memory of Fand, and gave some to Emer, too. In the Book of the Dun Cow version, there is no mention of Cúchulainn escaping into the wild, and it is Manannán who makes the couple forget by waving his cloak between them.

In the Táin bo Cuailnge, the ‘Cattle Raid of Cooley’, Cúchulainn also has other periods where he will sleep for several days and nights at a time, and periods where he does not sleep at all. Alongside his remorseless killing sprees while under the influence of the riastradh, his battle frenzy, and his capacity for rage, it has been suggested that Cúchulainn may have been a user of narcotic substances, perhaps amanita muscaria (fly agaric). 3

Dr Deborah Hayden suggests this behaviour is a sign of mania lupina, and that the only way to control it was to wear special items of clothing that restricted his movement, allowing him to still fight, but slow him down so he could not kill indiscriminately. 4

The Dream of Óengus

Here, we have another story of the ‘wasting sickness’. In Aislinge Óenguso, the ‘Dream of Óengus’, the protagonist is visited by a mysterious young woman in his dreams, although he appears to be awake. When he reaches out to her, she disappears. All day he couldn’t stop thinking of her, couldn’t eat. That night she visited him again, playing sweetly on a timpán, a type of stringed instrument. This time, she slept with him. This continued for a year, whilst he languished in bed, living only for the night and the girl of his dreams, love-sick and unable to eat, becoming weaker and sicker. It took two years more to identify and locate the girl. She was a shape shifter who lived alternately for a year as a human, then a year as a swan. Óengus found her at Samhain, just after she had transformed into a son. He was set a challenge to identify her among 150 other swans, which he did. He then became a swan himself so that they could be together. 5

We can see here a very similar malingering illness to Cúchulainn’s in which a male person is weak and confined to bed, semi-conscious and able to converse in the real world, but existing also in the fairy world at the same time. Both involve dreams and visions that ultimately find their conclusions in the real world. Both men are healed by the love of a woman. Yet both men had entered into their wasting sickness by the visitations and actions of fairy women.

The Romance of Mis and Dubh Ruis

In this medieval poem, the onset of Mis’s distress is sparked by the news of her father’s death as he took part in the Battle of Ventry, an event that places this story in the third century. When she found his body, she was so distraught with grief that she lost her mind and started drinking his blood. She then went on a 300-year rampage around the area of the Sliabh Mis mountains, which are named after her.

Unlike in the tales of Cúchulainn and Óengus, Mis’s response is not one of malaise, but of action, or reaction, more precisely, to the trauma of grief. Like them, her response is born out of love, although familial rather than romantic or sexual.

According to Muirreann Ní Bhrolcháin, “her hair grows to the ground, and the nails on both her hands and feet are so long that she can tear apart the flesh of any human or animal that comes too close. She can run like the wind and eats raw meat”. 6 Appearance is important here, because it is not just behaviour and demeanor that signify mental disorder; women who fall outside the norms of female beauty, like Mis, become physically ugly, and undesirable, like the hag. This is the inevitable letting go of hygiene standards and the maintenance of one’s appearance that comes with depression.

Mis caused so much havoc and death that eventually, when the warriors and hunters failed, the king sent his harper, Dubh Ruis, to trap her.

Dubh Ruis decided the best way to win Mis round was with gold and silver coins, music and sex. These were the familiar things, he reasoned, that would remind her of her past life at her father’s court, of her humanity and civility, and bring her back to her senses. He scattered the coins around his camp, laid himself down on the mountainside, undid his trousers to expose his privates, hoisted up his harp, and began to play.

Mis was drawn to his harp playing at first, but quickly became more interested in him, and a humerous, bawdy little romp ensues:

“A glance she gave, and she saw his nakedness and his playthings, and she said: “What are these?” she asked of his bag and his little eggs, and he told her. “What is this?” she asked of the other thing that she saw. “That is a branch of the trick,”he said. “I don’t remember that,” she said. “My father did not have such a thing.” “Branch of the trick,”she said again. “What is the trick?” “Sit beside me,” he said, “and I will perform the trick of that branch for you.” “I will,” she said, “and stay beside me.” “I will,” he said. He lay and slept with her and she said: “Ho ho, a good trick. Do it again!” “I will,” he said. “But I will play the harp for you first.” “Never mind the harp,” she said. “Do the trick again.” 7

Dubh Rois then builds a fullachta fiadh in which he boils deer meat to feed her, and gives her bread he has brought with him. Then he melts deer fat in the warm water of the fullachta and bathes her in it.

For two months, they live together in the mountains, and the gentle harper gradually returns Mis to civility and restores her sanity. They go on to marry and have children together, although when Dubh Ruis is later killed, Mis resorts to wildness again in her grief.

In this story, then, madness rather than melancholia is a symptom of the trauma of grief, and it is interesting that her madness is tolerated; the King orders Mis to be captured, not killed, despite all she has done. But like the other stories, it is the love of a partner that heals and restores her to normalcy.

Mór Muman agus Aided Cuanach meic Ailchine

Mór Muman agus Aided Cuanach meic Ailchine, ‘Mór Muman and the death of Cuanu mac Ailchine’, is a story that dates to the tenth century, or possibly earlier, and is found in the Book of Leinster, which was compiled during the mid twelfth century.

Mór Muman was the daughter of a seventh-century historical king of Munster, Aed Bennan. She never stepped outside of her house, and it was said that she heard voices speaking to her out of the air. When the Kings of Ireland came seeking her hand in marriage, she decided it was finally a good time to leave:

Great derangement [presumably this was caused by the voices] was put upon her, so that she bounded over the mound of the liss, so that it was not known to what place she went. 8

Such leaping is typically a sign of mourning, loss or madness in early Irish literature.

Mór wandered Ireland for two years, “blackened by sun and wind, in rags and marshes”. 9 In other words, she had gone back to nature. She had succesfully survived, alone, in the wild for two years. She had rewilded herself. She shows no sign of the aggression or violence associated with Mis.

In Cashel, she obtained employment herding King Fingen mac Aeda’s sheep. Fingen’s wife mocked the new shepherdess for her rough, wild ways, and dared her husband to sleep with her. He obliged, although somewhat unwillingly, and something strange happened; the king was kindly, and having sex with him seemed to restore her memory, and she remembered her name. Then he gave her her weight in silver. In the morning when she rose to tend to the sheep, he wrapped a purple cloak around her shoulders to which he pinned a queenly brooch. She married him and in due course gave birth to a male heir, Sechnasach.

So in the end, in her desperate attempt to evade marriage, Mór makes a good match after all. In fact, it seems to me that reading between the lines of this story, we find a girl repressed by patrarchal expectation, who was raised to be traded for her father’s most advantageous political alliance. She had no choice but to submit. That’s enough to send any woman into depression. The only way to avoid her father’s control was to escape. Being able to choose her own partner (after she has already tried him out and got to know him a little) restored her to normal mental health.

What does Irish Mythology tell us about Disappearance and Depression?

Well, today we have a much broader understanding of the different conditions that can affect our mental health, but back in the day, our Irish scribes did not neccessarily distinguish between depression and insanity. However, what these stories show us is that from earliest times, people suffered from the same sort of stresses and strains that we do today. They also show that people had then, as now, different responses to those stressors. To be overcome by melancholia was as common as grief, or violence, or madness. Return to nature was a common reaction, where peace and solitude brought some level of relief. Physical activity seemed to help, whether it was leaping, climbing trees, sex, fighting, or hunting. Music also features in two of these tales. But mostly, it is care, tenderness, gentle human interaction, and love that brings a cure.

That’s all for this week! Wishing you positive mental health in these troubled times. Thanks for reading,

Pronounced ska-ra-veen, this is the name given to a unique Irish weather phenomenon that takes place during the last fortnight of April and the first fortnight of May. It is thought to derive from the Irish phrase, garbh mi na gcuach, and means something like ‘the rough month of the cuckoo’.

This four week period of Ireland’s natural calender is often characterised by extreme and seemingly illogical fluctuations of weather. It is not unknown to have mild sunny days followed by storms and flooding, hailstones, or even snow. This is no exaggeration: I have experienced it many times myself. Snow in May? Not unheard of. In Ireland, we say you can expect to experience all four seasons in one day, and this is certainly true of the Scarbhín.

Our ancient ancestors who worked the land and were much closer to the seasons knew this as ‘the hungry time’ of the year. This is because in the spring, they were busy planting their crops; in May and June, as their stockpile of food from the previous year’s harvest was running low, they would see the results of their labour in the growth of new crops that were as yet too young and immature to produce food.

The Scairbhín sounds incredibly destructive, and sometimes, it can be. Last year, the early budding of flowers on my apple trees were destroyed by strong winds, and we had very few apples that year. I left what there was on the trees for the birds and the wasps. Another year saw a cold snap kill off all the midges; you’d think that was a good thing, but I learned that year that midges are a food source for wasps. As a result, we had very few wasps. You might think that’s another good thing, but wasps are incredibly important to the ecosystem. Although the adults only eat sugars, they kill a lot of spiders and bugs like greenfly which they feed to their larvae, and generally keep my garden midge free. Thank you, wasps. 1

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Its name derives from the Irish Cloch Locha Uachtair, which means, more or less, 'the stone building on the upper southern part of the lake' - a bit of a mouthful in our flat, functional English, but in Irish, place-names are always so poetic and descriptive.

Antiquarians of the nineteenth century believed the castle was built on a crannóg, or man-made island; they misinterpreted wooden beams and tumbled masonry on the shoreline as evidence of the construction of the island, but more recent archaeology has shown that these remains were in fact the basis of defences, and a quay and mooring system for boats, which would have brought supplies, and prisoners, to the castle.

Items found on the island suggest it may have been occupied long before the stone castle was built: a wedge-shaped stone axe, a leaf-bladed bronze age sword, an iron socketed axe. Stone castles in Ireland are generally associated with the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in the late twelfth century, and it is estimated that Cloughoughter was probably built by 1220AD.

At this time, the rule of the kingdom of Breifne was split between two warring local clans, the O'Rourkes in the west, now Co. Longford, and the O'Reillys in the east, now Co. Cavan. But in 1220, Walter de Lacey of the Anglo-Normans had taken control of much of the O'Reilly land, including the castle at Loch Oughter, where Walter’s brother, William, began the reconstruction of the structure in stone. Their goal was to seize the Earldom of Ulster, but King Henry III in England got wind of this, and sent a force against the de Lacy's. The O'Reillys sided with the King and retook the castle, completing the work William had begun in 1233. They managed to hold onto their kingship into the 1600s through allying with the English, although, as time passed, they became increasingly discontent with the way England treated them.

As the English began to implement the Plantation of Ulster, Cavan land was seized by the Crown, carved up and redistributed among Protestant incomers, with the surviving O'Reillys receiving only small allocations of the land that had once been theirs. It is not surprising that they eventually responded with an uprising. Cloughoughter Castle played its formidable part as the stronghold of the Irish Rebellion against the English in 1641.

And this is where my interest in Cloughoughter Castle becomes apparent, and where my college, professional, and personal lives collide.

Back in 2017, in a first year history class, our lecturer asked us to research the 1641 depositions and write an essay on our findings. I looked up depositions made by planters in my own county, clicking on one made by Marmaduke Batemanson, purely because I liked his unusual name. He introduced me to a woman named Rose ni Neile, whom I have been fascinated by ever since. He claimed she had ordered his execution, and that struck me as odd; women in Ireland at that time were supposed to lead domestic lives, they wouldn't normally have held such power over a man's life. I opened up more depositions, and to my amazement, found more stories of Rose.

Fast-forward to April 2021, shortly after lockdown ended, and we were allowed to travel within the confines of the county in which we lived, the first place I escaped to was Cloughoughter Castle. I had never been before, and after I had clambered my way through a very muddy forest, I sat on a large rock beside the water, listening to the waterbirds, and contemplating this breath-taking almost fairy-like castle, and I took these pictures. I was even inspired to write a poem, and believe me, I am no poet! And then I went home.

A few months later, I started working in my local museum. I did not know then that my new office door would open directly onto an exhibition of Cloughoughter and its tragic role during the rebellion years of 1641. Every day, I gaze on the face of Owen Roe, and wonder about his sister. Various incarnations of the castle hover upon the museum walls. In the archival record, I have catalogued many of the archaeological artefacts that were discovered there. I have produced condition reports on the artefacts displayed in the exhibition. When in 2022 we were asked for our Master’s to make a presentation on an aspect of the past which intruded upon our present, Cloughoughter was an obvious choice. Cloughoughter, it seems, will not let me go.

Rose was no ordinary woman; she was born into the powerful Ulster Gaelic family, the O’Neills, said to be descended from King of Ireland, Niall of the Nine Hostages. Her brother, Eoghan Ruadh Ó’Néill (Owen Roe O’Neill), commanded the Ulster forces during the Confederate Wars which followed the 1641 Rebellion. And she had married into the O'Reillys; her husband was Pilib mac Aoidh mic Sheáin mic Aoidh Chonallaigh Ó'Raghallaigh (Philip O’Reilly). Pilib's father, and all his forefathers had been O'Reilly chieftains, and Lords of east Briefne. The English had dismantled the kingship by then, but Pilib was a member of parliament for Cavan until 1641, when he became a leader of the rebellion, and was elected by clansmen as the O'Reilly chieftain. He led battles in Belturbet, Drogheda, and Benburb.

As you might expect, Pilib was accused of treason by the English, but managed to evade capture until 1653. He had retired to Cloughoughter Castle, which had been used as a refuge and a prison throughout the rebellion, due to its defensible position. However, Cromwell's forces battered it relentlessly with canon-fire, until one half of the castle wall collapsed. Just as we see it today.

According to Kirker, local lore claims Cromwell had a lot of problems with his assault on the castle; he only succeeded when, thanks to an 'Irish betrayer', he

commenced battering the south face of the castle, but in vain, until a false woman, who was inside, hung out a white cloth opposite the spot where the wall was weak: at this spot he directed all his shots until he made a breach which exposed the warders inside to the fury of his firing.

Isn't it always a woman who gets the blame?

Pilib was forced to surrender. He was banished from Ireland, and fled to Spain, finally settling in Holland; I cannot find Rose's name in the historical record, but I like to think that she was with him. I believe he took an entourage of a thousand people with him, so it is highly likely Rose was amongst them. He died shortly afterwards in 1655.

According to the depositions, Rose rode into battle alongside her husband, and wielded a gun called a petronel. She was so fierce and commanding that she was nicknamed 'the Colonel'. She also went on rebel missions where she was the leader in charge of groups of men, taking prisoners, and terrorising English planters. Pilib and Rose, it seems, were working in concert, where Rose was allowed the freedom and power to act independently. I guess extreme times, like a rebellion, call for extreme measures.

From the time it was built, until the time it fell, Cloughoughter was fought over and thus passed between clans as the spoils of war. For example, in 1327, following a war between the O'Rourkes and the O'Reillys, the castle was taken by Cathal O'Rourke 'by cunning, for 20 cows' - possibly a reference to cattle-raiding, or a bribe; in 1369, (a different) Philip O'Reilly was imprisoned there by his clansmen, where he was 'severely bound and fettered'; Manus O'Reilly then made himself lord, which started a war amongst the clans in which Manus was defeated. Maguire, Lord of Fermanagh sent boats to liberate Philip, who promptly re-assumed his rightful lordship. In 1370, Manus was caught and imprisoned in the castle, and in 1390 escaped but was subsequently slain.

Although he gives no date, Kirker claims that on one occasion, the O'Reillys stole the castle back from the O'Rourkes by entering the building disguised as servants, and thus killing everyone inside it. During the 1641 rebellion, the Protestant Bishop of Kilmore, William Bedell, the same man who is credited with the first ever translation of the Bible into the Irish language, was imprisoned in the castle for giving refuge to English planters in his home. Although he was released some weeks later, he died as a result of the wounds of torture and effects of exposure he had endured during his imprisonment.

Rose's brother, Eoghan Ruadh Ó’Néill, a hero of the rebellion, and leader of the Confederate forces, died in Cloughoughter Castle in 1649, having been brought there following an acute attack of gout on his way to battle parliamentary forces. O'Neill was considered such a threat to Cromwell's invasion, that rumours circulated of his assassination, that he was poisoned by a priest recruited by the English, but no evidence to support this story has ever been found.

I wonder if Rose ever visited Cloughoughter Castle. Was she rowed across the lake to attend her sick brother? Perhaps she was at her husband’s side as Cromwell’s forces bombarded the castle. She cannot have thought of the place fondly, symbol as it was of personal loss and tragedy: the death of her brother within its cold, stony confines; her husband defeated by Cromwell's forces there, her hopes of liberating Ireland from the English as shattered as the castle walls.

Cloughoughter Castle was a place I had always wanted to visit long before I was aware of its historical significance. I was then attracted by the romance of its location, the fairy-tale façade of a tower on a lake in the middle of a forest. Then I learned about the importance of County Cavan in the 1641 rebellion, that it began with Pilib calling a meeting of all his clansmen in the small town of Virginia, so close to where I now live. I learned about fiery, unpredictable, maverick Rose, whose presence has become a regular feature in my life. And I wonder at how their stories have intersected with mine, at how much they occupy my thoughts, how the voices of the past manage to find a way into the present to tell their stories if we are open to hearing them.

RESOURCES:

The Annals of the Four Masters, Celt UCC.

Kirker, S.K., 'Cloughoughter Castle, County Cavan', The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland , 4th Quarter, 1890, Fifth Series, Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 294-297.

Davies, O., 'The Castles of County Cavan: Part I', Ulster Journal of Archaeology , Third Series, Vol. 10 (1947), pp. 73-100.

Owen Roe O'Neill, Library Ireland.

Philip O’Reilly, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Incredible Irish Women | Rose ní Neile O'Reilly

1641 Depositions

Located at the junction of the River Shannon and one of the five ancient roads of Ireland, the An Slí Mhór, Clonmacnoise enjoyed a strategic position in Medieval Ireland which undoubtedly contributed to its success and longevity. Founded by St Ciaran in 548AD, the monastic site at Clonmacnoise continued until its destruction in 1552 at the hands of the English, who were garrisoned in nearby Athlone (Halpin and Newman 381). Clonmacnoise, or Cluain Mhic Nóis in Irish, means 'Meadow of the Sons of Nós'.

The river and the Great Road brought pilgrims and trade, and as the monastery grew, it attracted patronage in the form of donations of land, livestock, and other riches. In addition, the monastery became wealthy from renting out land, charging fees for services and raising taxes.

Today, the site consists of a walled inner enclosure containing the remains of several stone structures dating to between 800–1200 AD, including churches, round towers, high crosses, and grave slabs.

Who was St Ciarán?

Born in 516AD to a carpenter and chariot builder in Co. Roscommon, Ciarán mac an tSaeir (meaning 'son of the carpenter') herded cattle as a child and studied at Clonard under Saint Finian. He was ordained as a priest by Saint Enda of Arden on Inishmore, after which he travelled Ireland, finally settling in Offaly in 544, where he founded Clonmacnoise.

He died a few months later, a young man aged only 33, after contracting the plague. His feast day is the 9th of September.

Ciarán possessed a cow which was famous for producing vast quantities of milk which could feed everyone in the monastery.

It is said that the hide of this cow had magical properties; any man who died whilst sleeping on it would automatically be blessed with eternal life. According to legend, the hide of this cow was used to make the vellum upon which the Leabhar na hUidhre was later written.

The earliest building on the site is arguably the least significant in terms of size or grandeur. ‘Temple Ciarán’ can be found in the centre of the old graveyard, dwarfed by the Diamliag which overshadows it. The mortar from this structure has been radiocarbon dated to the eighth or ninth centuries.

Its alignment suggests it has been built over an older wooden church beneath which St Ciarán himself is buried. To this day, clay from the floor of the building continues to be removed by visitors in the belief that it will protect harvests. Although much of the masonry has collapsed and probably been re–used elsewhere, the remains were partially rebuilt in the nineteenth century.

The largest and most historically significant building is the Daimliag, meaning ‘stone church’. At 18m in length, it is the largest pre–Romanesque church in Ireland (Halpin and Newman 382). The church is rectangular in shape, with distinctive antae for supporting the roof.

It was built in 909AD by Flann Sinna, King of Tara, undoubtedly praising God for his victory over the King of Munster the previous year, in partnership with Colmán, who was Abbot of Clonmacnoise.

At the same time, an elaborately decorated high cross was installed before the entrance to the building, known as the ‘Cross of the Scriptures’. It depicts various scenes from the Bible, but its most famous panel represents Flann and Colmán ceremonially planting the first post of the church, with an inscription to that effect below. It is also thought to commemorate the founding of the monastery by St Ciarán and Diarmait mac Cerbaill, who was then King of Tara, thus reinforcing the association between church and king.

The Daimliag has undergone several renovations during its lifetime: the addition of the west door, east window and sacristy in the twelfth century; the relocation of the south wall 2m north of its previous position, some hundred or so years later, giving the church façade its slightly unbalanced look; and lastly, in the fifteenth century it was partly vaulted, and Dean Odo O’Malone had the beautiful and highly ornate north door added (Halpin and Newman 382). The figures from left to right represent St Dominic, St Patrick and St Francis.

According to local folklore, whispering one’s sins into the architrave on the outside of the doorway carries the sound to anyone listening on the inside; in this way, priests would safely listen to the confessions of lepers in their community without putting themselves at risk of infection.

In 1198 AD, the last King of Ireland, Ruaidhri Ua Conchobair, was buried at Clonmacnoise. His grave is thought to be near the alter in the Daimliag.

Temple Dowling, Temple Melaghlin, and Temple Finghín were all constructed during the twelfth century. Temple Melaghlin is believed to have housed the scriptorium, where manuscripts such as the Lebor na hUidre (the Book of the Dun Cow) were written.

Temple Dowling was renovated in 1689 as a mausoleum for the Dowling family (Halpin and Newman 382), with the addition of Temple Hurpan.

Temple Finghín is built in Hiberno–Romanesque style with a round bell tower (McCarthy’s Tower) attached to it. The tower is, unusually, entered via the church at ground level, and stands just under 17m high, and 4m wide, with a conical roof (Anon 32).

Just outside of the central enclosure lies the Nuns’ Church, which occupies a key position along the Eisker Riada upon which the Pilgrim’s Way is located. Here, visitors would pause their pilgrimage in order to rest, eat, wash, and purify themselves in order to enter the sacred space of the inner ecclesiastical site, thus providing the nuns with a means of income.

The existing church is of Hiberno–Romanesque style, measures 13m by 8m, and dates to 1167 AD. It features intricately decorated arches to both the entrance and the chancel, with monstrous creatures, animal heads, foliage, geometric designs including Greek key, and even an ‘exhibitionist female’ (Anon 31), thought to be the first Sheela–na–gig in Ireland. The foundations of two earlier churches have been identified in the surrounding grounds.

According to the Annals of the Four Masters, the Church of the Nuns was constructed under the patronage of Dearbhforgaill, daughter of Murchadh Ua Maeleachlainn (Celt M1167.16). This lady is notorious in Irish history; she was abducted by Diarmuid mac Murchadha, King of Leinster (Celt M1152.10), and although she was restored to her husband, Tighearnan Ua Ruirc, the following year (Celt M1153.21), her abduction sparked a feud between the two men, setting off a chain of events which resulted in the English invasion of Ireland.

However, she was a pious woman, donating gold and riches to Mellifont Abbey (Celt M1157.9), retiring there in 1186, where she died in 1193 (Celt M1193.3). It is unusual for a woman to feature so frequently in the Irish Annals.

It is clear that Clonmacnoise prospered through the centuries, as the chronology of its churches, from the initial wooden buildings constructed by its founder in the sixth century, through various phases of replacement with stone buildings in the ninth and tenth centuries, and renovations through the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries show.

Its military and commercial strategic position on the intersection of Medieval Ireland’s two busiest routes, the River Shannon and the Slighe Mhór, undoubtedly contributed to its success, as did the patronage it attracted from various royal dynasties throughout its lifetime, until its decline and eventual abandonment in 1552.

SOURCES:

Anon. 2009 The Monastic City of Clonmacnoise and its Cultural Landscape Candidate World Heritage Site. World Heritage Site Draft Management Plan 2009–2014. Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government/ Office of Public Works, Dublin.

Celt: The Corpus of Electronic Texts, The Annals of the Four Masters, https://celt.ucc.ie/publishd.html.

Halpin, A., and Newman, C. 2006. Ireland: An Oxford Archaeological Guide to Sites from Earliest Times to AD1600, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

The Hill of Tara gets all the glory and the visitors, but much as I love it, I think this is a bit of a shame. There is as much a wealth of heritage, in terms of archaeology, history, and mythology at our other provincial ritual sites as there is at Tara, and they are well worth exploring.

The early literature of Ireland has identified a number of ‘Royal Sites’: Tara, in Co. Meath as the seat of Ireland’s high kings; Dún Ailinne in Co. Kildare, which is associated with the kings of Leinster; Cruachain, Co. Roscommon, as the fort of Queen Medb, and Emain Macha, said to be the palace of King Conchobar of Ulster.

These sites are all depicted in the literature as the royal residences of pre-historic provincial rulers. What the medieval writers saw in the landscape was pretty much the same as what we see there today, and they would have noted that these sites all share similar characteristics. What else could these lumps and bumps mapped out so clearly in the earth be but the remains of the palaces of mighty pagan kings?

It wasn’t difficult, then, for scribes to connect the legends and local folklore of heroes and kings and battles which they must have heard being told of an evening around the fireplaces by Gaelic storytellers, with these features in the landscape. Of course, we have no evidence of this, other than the knowledge that non-literate cultures usually pass on their wisdom and history via the oral tradition of storytelling and song.

What we do know is that medieval scribes created (or revised) these stories to suit their own political, social and religious agendas and concerns at the time they were writing, so that often, these stories reflect what was really going on in medieval society, rather than the Iron Age which they claim to portray.

According to legend, Emain Macha was the court of King Conchobar mac Nessa. The Ulster Cycle of myth tales tells us that Nessa the ‘un-Gentle’ married Fergus and tricked him out of the throne in favour of her son, Conchobar. Fergus then sought exile in Connacht with Queen Medb, and became her lover. Queen Medb went to war with Ulster over the Brown Bull of Cuilnge, and the men of Ulster were unable to defend against them due to the labour pangs with which Macha cursed them. Fortunately, Cuchulainn saved the day, but Conchobar went on to kill Naoise for eloping with his intended, the beautiful Deirdre. Confused? Stick with me, I will go through all these stories in future posts, and they are wonderful!

Emain Macha stands atop a low rise, much like Tara, yet gives way to glorious panoramic views across the wide grassy rolling light-filled countryside of Ulster. Our ancient ancestors certainly knew how to pick a site.

Less than 3km from the city of Armagh, and also from St Patrick’s Church (both can be seen from the site), it is surrounded by a huge ditch approximately 250m in diameter, and an external bank thought to have been constructed in the third century BC.

There is something I find very interesting about this ditch; it becomes progressively shallower as it approaches the entrance to the site, not because of infill or farming activity or attempts at destruction. It was built that way. Our guide suggested that the ditch may have been used as a processional way to approach the site.

I was immediately struck with this idea, because of a personal experience at Tlachtga a few years previously, which has four ditches and banks surrounding the site. Processing through them creates particular effects intended to support meditation whilst walking.

To find out more about sensory deprivation, meditation, and the processional pathway, read the following post:

H A G

Processional Pathways of Ancient Ireland

In October 2015, I had a very strange experience at Tlachtga, the Hill of Ward. As I walked the site, I became increasingly dizzy and developed an overwhelmingly powerful headache. Half an hour after driving away from the site, the headache had completely gone and I felt fine…

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4 years ago · Ali Isaac

Archaeological work carried out at Emain Macha in the 1970s revealed a long history of activity but no evidence of habitation. This indicates that the site could not have been the location of a royal palace as the ancient literature describes. So what was it?

Two mounds remain today; a large one approximately 50m in diameter and 6m high, to the west of the site, encircled with beautiful very ancient trees, and a smaller one which is barely visible. This has echoes of the layout of Tara, with its Mound of Hostages and the conjoined figure-of-eight structures of the Forradh and Tech Cormaic.

In fact, the excavations at Emain Macha uncovered a similar figure-of-eight structure beneath the existing large mound which was rebuilt in situ nine times over a period of about 350 years.

But here’s the most intriguing aspect of the site; in 94BC, the existing structure at that time was demolished, and a new one created, a circular temple of timber posts 40m in diameter with a double row of posts at the perimeter which were boarded with planks to create a wall. We know the date, because at its centre was a huge central oak post so massive, that it was embedded 5m into the ground to hold it upright, and this was dated by dendochronology, a very accurate dating technique.

This image shows a model of a possible interpretation of the final timber structure, and how it was constructed with radial posts and planking to the outer perimeter. Note the thatched roof; archaeologists have found no evidence of a roof structure at the site, and believe instead that it would have been open to the sky. To the right, you can see a portion of the roof removed and a layer of white stones, showing how the site was put beyond use.

Soon after it was built, the interior of the structure was filled with stones and boulders to a depth of 2m, and then the whole thing was set alight. The earthen mound we see today was then laid over the top of the remains, and curiously, analysis of the soil has revealed that it consists of different samples taken from various locations right across the province. The site was then abandoned.

Interestingly, archaeology has shown that the same sequence of events were carried out at the same time at the other so-called ‘Royal Sites’ – Tara, Dún Alinne, and Cruachain.

What the sites were used for, why they were burned and abandoned, how it was coordinated across the provinces, why all the sites were built in such similar fashion and then decommissioned the same way, why soil was carried in from all corners of Ulster can only be guessed at. It does suggest a ritual or religious purpose though, rather than a place of royal residence.

Refs.

Cooney, G. and Grogan, E. 1991 An archaeological solution to the ‘Irish’ problem? Emania, 33-45.

Lynn, C.J. 2003 Navan Fort, Archaeology and Myth. Wordwell, Bray.

Mallory, J.P. 1987 The Literary Topography of Emain Macha, Emania 2, 12-18.

Waterman, D.M. 1997 Excavations at Navan Fort 1961-71, HM Stationary Office, Belfast.

The three famous burial mounds of the Boyne Valley, Newgrange, Knowth, and Dowth, form the heart of a complex, sacred landscape dating back to the early Neolithic period, c. 4000BC. In 1993, the Boyne Valley was formally designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site (Smyth et al 2009 vi), and continues to excite the national imagination by revealing new, previously unknown archaeological monuments; ‘Dronehenge’, a pit circle dating to c. 2900BC, was discovered during the dry summer of 2018, as was a tomb with a highly decorated kerb stone at Dowth Hall (Maxwell 2018 www.archaeologyireland.ie).

This kerb stone is thought to be one of the most impressive examples of megalithic art unearthed in Ireland for decades. As such, it enhances the Boyne Valley’s pre–existing collection, which is recognised as comprising the most prolific concentration of megalithic art in Europe (Smyth et al 2009 vi).

Of Ireland’s total wealth of decorated stones, 70% can be found within the Boyne Valley (O’Sullivan 1997 19). This artwork has provided the basis for much debate since Newgrange was first discovered by antiquarians in 1699. Many theories have been proposed concerning the artwork’s meaning and purpose, although no definitive conclusions have been drawn.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, analysis of the Boyne Valley megalithic art focused on interpretation; popular theories ascribed astronomical associations with particular geometric motifs, whilst one antiquarian proposed that C4 at Newgrange was covered with Phoenician numerals (O’Sullivan 1986 69).

George Coffey claimed that Irish tomb art derived from Scandinavian rock art, although the latter was found to date to the Bronze Age, long after the Boyne Valley monuments were constructed (O’Sullivan 1986 69). Some years later, Joseph Dechelette suggested the abstract symbols represented facial images of a Neolithic funerary goddess (O’Sullivan 1986 69–70).

Anthropomorphic imagery dominated the scholarly imagination for much of the twentieth century; however, further excavations enabled detailed studies of a ‘wealth of newly unearthed tomb art’ in Ireland, leading to a more objective focus on the art forms and techniques, rather than potential meanings of individual motifs (O’Sullivan 1986 70–71). Whilst earlier analysis had led to speculative and unproven conclusions, this new clinical approach erred too much on the side of caution, prompting what O’Sullivan describes as an ‘observer–imposed selection of what may be accepted as tomb art [which] ignore[s] non–formal ornamentation such as extensive pick dressing’ (1986 71).

Excavations at Knowth by George Eogan in the 1960s revealed an interesting phenomenon with regard to its stone art. Some of the stones used in the tomb’s construction (eg. capstones 3, 5, 10 and orthostats 17, 18, 74 and 81, among others) appeared to have been positioned so that their decorated surfaces could not be seen; this was found to be true also of Newgrange, where various kerb stones (4, 13, and 18) were discovered to have artwork on the side facing into the mound (Eogan 1998 162–63).

Eogan realised that some of these stones had been repurposed; some capstones, for example, had an undecorated portion at one end, suggesting this was the socket end of a stone which had once served as an orthostat (1998 165).This indicates a sequence of monument building on the site, with a previous tomb being dismantled to provide materials for the construction of a new structure; Eogan suggests hiding the old, pre–existing decoration diminished the power of its symbolism (1998 165–168).

However, kerb stone 6 at Newgrange appears to be original to the construction of the tomb, yet its decorated surface is found in the socket, suggesting that in some cases, for reasons unknown, the art was deliberately hidden (Eogan 1998 171).

Just as the use of recycled stones indicates a history of monument building in the Boyne Valley, O’Sullivan believes that the decoration itself reveals a sequence of artistic evolution. In particular, the art at Knowth shows signs of continental influence not seen elsewhere in Ireland, with designs from Brittany being copied onto the stones of both western and eastern tombs, whilst the anthropomorphic image of orthostat L19 inside Newgrange is reminiscent of Iberian art (O’Sullivan 1997 20).

Many artworks show that new designs have been superimposed over older ones. These new designs are bold and distinctive in appearance, consisting of serpentiform motifs and large–scale parallel lines and arcs, and seem to be inspired by the shape and surface structure of the stone itself, often filling the whole face of the stone with little respect for pre–existing motifs; O’Sullivan labels these designs ‘plastic style’ (1986 74–76).

Plastic style decoration can be found in both tombs and on some kerb stones at Knowth (K11, and orthostats 41, 44, 48, and 49); they are found exclusively on surfaces which can still be seen, and do not extend below 30cms of the bottom of the stone, all of which suggests they were added after the stones were already in situ (O’Sullivan 1986 76).

Other designs, consisting of individual motifs such as spirals and circles, chevrons and lozenges, O’Sullivan distinguishes as ‘depictive style’; he claims these were traditional at the time of construction and appear on surfaces both visible and hidden (1986 75). With its bold form, and its positioning to the side and along the facing edges of its stone façade, plastic style art was clearly designed for maximum visual impact as one progressed along a tomb’s passageway.

It is apparent, therefore, that the function of the art changed; whereas the traditional depictive motifs seemed to prioritise ritual over aesthetics, as O’Sullivan claims, the innovation of the new plastic style symbolised a shift ‘from art as expression to art as spectacle’ (1997 19).

In recent years, interest in interpretation has been revived. New spheres of archaeology have emerged, such as archeoastronomy, which has established the now well–accepted theory of solar alignment.

The passage at Newgrange is aligned with sunrise on the morning of the winter solstice; the east and west passages at Knowth are aligned with sunrise and sunset on the Autumn equinox, respectively (Prendergast and Ray 2002 35), whilst Dowth North aligns with the winter solstice sunrise, Dowth South with sunset on the winter solstice.

These solar events were clearly of great importance to the community which built these monuments, perhaps providing a cycle of occasions to be marked and celebrated throughout the year. That the decoration itself might be thought to represent astronomical and solar events is no surprise.

According to Euan McKie, the artwork on kerb stone 15 at Knowth represents a Neolithic solar calendar, which he believes is authenticated by the British ‘menhir calendar’, a series of standing stone solar alignments, identified by A. Thom (2013 215). The design on K15 consists of a ‘a mass of pecked rings, spirals, and wavy lines… {and] an unusual fan-shaped pattern’, which McKie claims represents a sixteen ‘month’ solar calendar, copies of which can also be seen in cruder form at Newgrange and cairn X at Loughcrew (2013 215–218, 213).

Martha Doyle has a very different view; she believes megalithic stone art has a marine theme. She cites La Table des Marchands, a tomb in Brittany, as an example; it contains a carving of an axe on the ceiling, and marks on a triangular stone below the axe, which have been interpreted as ‘crooks’ (Doyle 2016 10). She believes this image represents stalks of marine kelp stacked in a heap to dry, that the axe was used in harvesting the seaweed, explaining that the coast of Brittany harbours the largest seaweed beds in the world which are still harvested today (Doyle 2016 10).

She claims Irish tomb art symbolises the harvesting of light; oriented on solar alignments, which often correspond with high or low tides, the art represents images of bioluminescent sea creatures, which had the ability to produce light (Doyle 2016 11). She compares the spirals on the Newgrange entrance stone with sea–slug eggs (Nudibranchia), and the triangle shapes with barnacles, the sea–slug’s main food source; this creature glows in the dark and spawns in January; the capturing of the winter solstice light could have been a celebration in anticipation of this extraordinary event (Doyle 2016 11).

She suggests that motifs found inside and outside of Dowth represent the bioluminescent Hydromedusa jellyfish, and that cairn T at Loughcrew contains a wide variety of such representations; by harnessing the light of solar alignments, the artists discovered a technology to make their art glow, just like the creatures themselves glowed (Doyle 2016 11).

Although the Boyne Valley monuments and Loughcrew are not located near the sea, she suggests the builders were a ‘coastal culture who progressed to inland farming but retained their coastal inspired beliefs’ (Doyle 2016 11). Whilst the similarities between the sea creatures and the motifs are certainly striking, as Robert G. Bednarik warns, ‘the semantics of prehistoric art is inaccessible to us’ (1990 79).

The abstract nature of Irish megalithic art has led to the view that it may have been inspired by shamanic altered states of consciousness. This theory, known as the neuropsychological model, attracted the attention of specialists from a wide variety of disciplines besides archaeology, including anthropologists and psychologists.

Megalithic motifs were categorised and compared with artwork of known shamanic cultures in Africa, and the Coso people of California; whilst this process described similarities between motifs, it did not, however, provide proof of the existence of Neolithic shamanic practices (Dronfield 375). Nor did it suggest why artists felt compelled to recreate their motifs on monument stone surfaces.

It did invite interpretations of a religious or spiritual nature, though; O’Sullivan suggested that the cup mark, a picked hollow which dates back to the Palaeolithic period, could be interpreted as the symbol for a tunnel leading into death, in much the same way as the passage leads into the tomb wherein lie the remains of the dead; this cup mark appears in profusion at the Boyne Valley complex, on one in every two stones at Newgrange, and on one in every nine stones at Knowth (O’Sullivan 1997 20).

The theory might also explain why some art was hidden, visible only to those of the spirit world, or experiencing shamanic journeying.

The neuropsychological theory suggests that both depictive and plastic styles of art perform an important visual role in the use of the tomb structures. In order to test this hypothesis, Rachel Opitz conducted an experiment in which the interior of Knowth was scanned into a virtual reality program which monitored participants’ eye gaze movements; the aim was to ascertain which elements dominated the visual experience of passing through the passage (Opitz 2017).

Results indicated, however, that the art was not the dominant feature in the passage for several reasons: concentration was directed towards safely navigating the passageway, therefore the overall pattern of stone arrangement, ie where it was safe to put one's feet and hands, was the primary focus; secondly, a motif such as a spiral, came into view and was passed in the space of two steps, which was not enough time for it to be noticed; additionally, lack of adequate lighting was also a factor (Opitz 2017 1216–18).

If the builders of the monuments processed through the passages in complete darkness, then clearly the decoration could have no significance at all until lit up by the sun’s rays on the relevant day of alignment. It may be that modern ‘preconceptions of what was important to someone in an imagined past’ have hindered rather than enhanced investigations (Opitz 2017 1222).

The desire to attach meaning to the symbolism of Irish megalithic art has sparked fierce debate. Much has been learned about the distant past by deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the cuneiform script of ancient Sumer. Not only do these prehistoric texts provide a contemporary historical narrative, but they reveal details of the religious beliefs, motivations, organisation, and daily life of the societies which made them; they provide a human connection to the past and our own origins. Decoding the enigmatic inscriptions left behind by the builders and artists of Ireland’s great ancient monuments is an elusive task which will continue to intrigue scholars for many years to come.

Sources:

Bednarik, R. G., Lewis–Williams, J. D., and Dowson, T. A. 1990 On Neuropsychology and Shamanism in Rock Art, Current Anthropology, Vol. 31, No. 1, 77-84.

Doyle, M. 2016 Passage Tomb Art: A Marine Connection?, Archaeology Ireland, Vol. 30, No. 2, 10-12.

Dronfield, J. 1996 The Vision Thing: Diagnosis of Endogenous Derivation in Abstract Arts, Current Anthropology, Vol. 37, No. 2, 373-391.

Eogan, G. 1998 Knowth Before Knowth, Antiquity, Vol. 72, No. 257, 162–72.

Maxwell, N. 2018 Summer of Discoveries, Archaeology Ireland, https://archaeologyireland.ie/2018/09/07/summer-of-discoveries/. (Last accessed 02 May 2019).

MacKie, E. W. 2013 A Rosetta Stone for the Prehistoric Solar Calendar? Kerbstone K15 at Knowth, Ireland, Time and Mind, Vol. 6, No. 2, 211-229.

Opitz, R. 2017 An Experiment in Using Visual Attention Metrics to Think About Experience and Design Choices in Past Places, J. Archaeol Method Theory, Vol. 24, 1203–1226.

O’Sullivan, M. 1986 Approaches to Passage Tomb Art, The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Vol. 116, 68–83.

O’Sullivan, M. 1997 Megalithic Art in the Boyne Valley, Archaeology Ireland, Vol. 11, No. 3, Supplement: Brú na Bóinne, 19-21.

Prendergast, F, and Ray, T. 2002 Ancient Astronomical Alignments: Fact or Fiction?, Archaeology Ireland, Vol. 16, No. 2, 32–35.

Smyth, J. (ed.) 2009 Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site Research Framework, The Heritage Council, Kilkenny.

Burial and its associated ritual offers not only the chance to pay respect to the deceased, but in doing so, to reaffirm and/ or reposition social bonds within the community, and the present community’s links with their ancestors and the landscape (1994, 52).

Further, the construction of these enormous, grand monuments was a visible statement of the community’s power, wealth, and standing with the Gods, which other tribes could not fail to be aware of. Today, Newgrange, as the focus of the complex has become, with its striking white quartz wall, as much an icon of Irish heritage and Irish nationality as the Hill of Tara in earlier times.

Film (c) Anthony Murphy at Mythical Ireland

This is not a monument to be admired from afar, like Stonehenge in England; every visitor is invited into the heart of the mound to touch the stones, trace the art, and experience a simulation of the winter solstice dawn light, just as its ancient builders would have. As a heritage site, that makes it really special. When I visited with a group of young Erasmus students a couple of years ago, I was touched by their emotional response to the solstice simulation; I didn't expect it from a generation so au-fait with technology, computer graphics and game-play. That was a very special and rewarding moment for me.

However, since its re–emergence into the national consciousness, Newgrange has been plagued with controversy, which most visitors are probably unaware of. Debate has raged, for example, over the accuracy of O’Kelly’s re-constructional interventions, the presence of the quartz wall, the discovery of the roof box, and the single-period mound/ multi–period mound theories.

Between 1962–1975, Professor Michael O’Kelly began the archaeological investigation and restoration of Newgrange. It was a huge undertaking. He came to the conclusion that the monument consisted of a single-period mound, and that the layer of white quartz and rolled granite stones which lay outside the kerbstones were the remains of a great wall which had collapsed (Erikson 2008, 250). Palle Erikson disagrees; he cites O’Kelly’s own stratification studies, which reveal four layers of infill stones within the mound, separated by three layers of turf (Erikson 2008, 250–51).

O’Kelly claimed these turf layers were man–made, laid over the stones to prevent slippage and hold the infill in place. However, as Erikson explains, where turves were used to cover burial mounds, the turf was typically laid with the vegetation layer face down. At Newgrange, the vegetation layer of the turf is uppermost, suggesting natural formation over a period of time. This indicates that each layer of stones represents an enlargement of the mound, with the following layer of turf representing the period in between enlargement works. In other words, Newgrange is a multi-period mound, which was extended over time by the community which built it.

This makes sense; it is logical that as a community prospers, it grows, and it seems natural that their burial grounds and ritual spaces would be developed accordingly to accommodate the increased population, and that it would be made larger and more impressive in order to indicate their fecundity and success.

One of the most striking features of Newgrange is its towering white quartz wall. O’Kelly was convinced that the white quartz and rolled granite stones which lay scattered beyond the mound’s kerbstones were the remains of a collapsed wall designed to hold the tons of infill in place. However, the original techniques used by the mound’s ancient builders were beyond the understanding of modern construction; the restoration of the glittering façade we see today disguises a ‘reinforced concrete wall inside the kerb… using mortar and metal pins to affix quartz and granite to the face of the concrete’ (Cooney 2006, 697). In fact, Cooney argued that such a wall, if it had originally existed at all, would have soon been dislodged by the settlement of mound infill, estimated today to weigh in the region of 200,000 tons.

At the same time as the concrete wall was installed, the entrance to the mound was adapted to account for increasing numbers of visitors: ‘considerably more space […] be provided at each side of the tomb entrance than would be available had the archaeologically correct design been adopted’ (O’Kelly 1982, 110). This suggests that from the start, the restoration of Newgrange was a commercial venture, and that those involved were prepared to sacrifice archaeological authenticity for revenue.

Cooney believes, along with Erikson, that the white quartz and rolled granite stones exist in situ where they were originally laid, as a ritual platform space. Again, this seems a logical and practical arrangement for a community which is growing. Clearly, few members of the community could fit within the chamber at any one time, therefore it is quite likely that as the community expanded, the main bulk of ritual ceremony would be held outside, where the vast majority could take part, with only a small elite venturing inside to commune with the ancestors on the community’s behalf.

In his book, The First Light: Origins of Newgrange, Robert Hensey claims the quartz was not laid down in the Neolithic period, but after 2500BC (2015, 156), suggesting that the community may have grown quite rapidly immediately preceding this development. He claims that the ground had been deliberately stripped of vegetation in preparation for the installation of the platform. O’Kelly himself discovered this:

Outside the kerb [lies] a subsoil surface from which the turf and humus had been cut off […] lying directly in contact with [it] and spreading for a distance of 6–7m outward from the kerb is a layer composed entirely of angular pieces of white quartz (1982, 68).

O’Kelly seems to have based his decision on the fact that there was no quartz beneath some fallen kerbstones, citing KS96 as an example (1982, 68). However, if the platform was not laid until the Chalcolithic period, it is possible that the kerbstones may have already fallen and been left in situ by the platform builders.

What, then, is the significance of white quartz? It looks attractive, but there must have been more to it than aesthetics. The builders certainly went to a great deal of trouble to obtain it, digging it out of the Wicklow mountains, most likely transporting it in boats down the coast and up to Newgrange via the River Boyne (Stout 2002, 30–31).

In her study on existing ‘primitive’ tribes around the world, Ffion Reynolds has found that many use quartz in shamanic ceremonies to communicate with Otherworld beings, and that they consider quartz not as an inanimate rock, but as a living entity (2009, 156–66). She describes how, when two quartz stones are rubbed together, they produce a flash of light called ‘triboluminescence’ (2009, 156).

The presence of so much white quartz at Newgrange may indicate that this ‘magical’ quality of the quartz may have been a part of ritual ceremonies. If the quartz stones rubbed together producing triboluminescence as the community stood or walked upon the quartz platform, it may have been seen as a powerful invocation upon the ancestors and the Gods by the whole community. However, it should be noted that the quartz had not been smoothed or shaped to produce a flat or even surface comfortable enough for walking upon; furthermore, whilst the community that used the monument may have worn some form of footcoverings, many may also have been barefoot.

At Loughcrew, OPW guides inform visitors that the mounds there were once covered with a blanket of white quartz, before the stone was robbed for road building. This made them highly visible by day, as they sparkled in the sunshine, and also at night, where they glowed in the light of the moon. This may have been a deliberate attempt to mark them out as special, ethereal monuments to the Otherworld of ancestors and Gods, and if true, may well have occurred at other burial mound sites too. It is certainly the most feasible option, and indeed, O’Kelly himself was aware of this, for he quotes an early guide book on Newgrange which states that ‘the entire surface [of the mound …] was covered with a layer of broken fragmented quartz’ (1982, 73).

It is interesting to note that two large blocks of white quartz, now lost, were used to seal a feature of Newgrange known as the ‘roofbox’ (Reynolds 2009, 158). This aperture is located above the entrance to the main eastern tomb, and admits the rising sun of the winter solstice, allowing it to penetrate the inner central chamber. The winter solstice falls on the 21st December, and is significant because it marks the shortest day of the year, an important turning point for a community dependant on agriculture. This was not an accidental occurrence, but involved years of observations, planning, and engineering expertise. Such solar alignments are not unusual amongst Ireland’s burial mounds, however, many passage tombs are instead aligned with other objects, such as other monuments, or prominent landscape features, or clustered around a central space, as at Knowth (Hensey 2015, 43).

Popular belief describes the penetration of the tomb by the sun’s light as symbolic of fertility, or that the passage tombs, laden with the bones of the dead, were instead observatories to the stars. Hensey argues that the solar orientation was less an attempt at calendrically measuring space and time – for they would hardly need a structure so large or complex as the burial mound of Newgrange to do so – but was part of a phenomenon, or ritual, in which people were able to ‘engage with and examine a small piece of the sun’ (2015, 75).

Between 3600–3000BC, the Irish climate had gradually become colder and wetter, disastrous circumstances for a community that depended on farming for its survival, yet at the same time, passage tombs were becoming larger and more complex (Hensey 2015, 29). This may have been due to an increased concern with, and a need to study, or connect with the sun. As with Reynold’s evaluation of the ‘living’ properties of quartz, it is possible that the ancient people may have viewed sunlight as a living entity, since it moves, has warmth, and changes often throughout its existence (Hensey 2015, 76), much like humans, in fact.

However, in 2016, archaeologist, former OPW worker, and former student of O’Kelly, Michael Gibbons, stated in an interview with the Irish Times newspaper that ‘the roofbox which was central to capturing the winter light has “not a shred of authenticity”, and was “fabricated” during reconstruction in the 1960s’ (www.irishtimes.com 2016), although his journal article, published in Emania (2016, 67–78) makes no such claim. Nevertheless, his allegations caused a sensation among scholars and the general public alike. The OPW responded by publishing photographs taken prior to the reconstruction which clearly show the roofbox in 1935, and later in 1954 (www.thejournal.ie 2016).

It could be argued that, had O’Kelly restored the ‘original natural sloping face of the mound’ as the 1961 committee had requested (1987, 72), Newgrange may not have achieved its high status in terms of its archaeology and popularity as a tourist attraction. The mask the mound wears, its white quartz façade, has become fixed in the mind of popular culture, regardless of its authenticity.

Nowadays, conservation methods would not be so heavy–handed, and modern construction materials would not be utilised, unless safety required it. Advances in archaeological technology and techniques mean that new discoveries are often being made, challenging traditional, accepted beliefs.

Today, scholars are in agreement that Newgrange represents a multi–period mound, which was regularly extended by successive generations, as required. The white quartz wall is no longer thought plausible, particularly as no evidence of any such walls have been found at any other mounds. It has been proven that the entrance to Newgrange aligns with the rising sun of the winter solstice, and that the function of the roofbox is to admit a beam of sunlight into the furthest reaches of the inner central chamber. As yet, however, the reasoning behind these phenomena remains speculation.

This post is based on an essay I wrote for my Irish Cultural Heritage studies. Have you visited Newgrange? Were you aware of these controversies? Does it matter that the reconstruction may not be historically and archaeologically accurate, that the popular public perception of the site is based on that inaccuracy? What do you think?

Sources:

Cooney, Gabriel. 2006 Newgrange – A View from the Platform, Antiquity, Volume 80, Issue 309 1, 697-708.

Cooney, Gabriel and Grogan, Eoin. 1994 Irish Prehistory; A Social Perspective. Wordwell, Dublin.

Erikson, Palle. 2008 The Great Mound of Newgrange, Acta Archaeologica vol. 79, 250-273.

Gibbons, Michael and Gibbons, Myles. 2016 The Brú: A Hiberno-Roman Cult Site at Newgrange?, Emania, 23, 67–78.

Hensey, Robert. 2015 First Light: The Origins of Newgrange, Oxbow Books, Oxford.

Irish Times – Newgrange sun trap may be only 50 years old, says archaeologist. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/newgrange-sun-trap-may-be-only-50-years-old-says-archaeologist-1.2913483, (Last Accessed 3 Dec 2017).

The Journal – Newgrange's winter solstice is only 50 years old? No way, says OPW. http://www.thejournal.ie/neolithic-showdown-3155424-Dec2016/, (Last Accessed 3 Dec 2017).

O’Kelly, Michael, J. 1982 Newgrange: Archaeology, Art and Legend, Thames and Hudson, London.

Prendergast, F. and Ray, T. 2002 Ancient Astronomical Alignments: Fact or Fiction?, Archaeology Ireland, Vol. 16, No. 2, 32-35.

Stout, Geraldine. 2002 Newgrange and the Bend of the Boyne, Cork University Press, Cork.

"thrice fifty stately couches there were,
and fifty men to each shining couch.
Seven cubits, an honest reckoning,
before the crowded warlike company,
55] with blazing torches burning,
that was the measure of the hearth.
Other seven, I have heard,
made in truth a brightness beyond denial,
majestic, notable, noble,
60] beautiful chandeliers of brass.
This sunny shining citadel,
festive, martial, with cask-staves,
therein, amid radiant hospitality,
were doors twice seven in number"

Excerpt from Poem 4, The Metrical Dindshenchas, author unknown, Celt.ucc.ie.

You may recall that early writers described this feature as the banqueting hall of the Kings of Tara, naming it Tech Midchúarta, which in Irish means “House of Mead Circling”. We now know it was in actual fact, an ancient road by which the summit of Tara and all its monuments are approached. Evidence such as the raised embankments with their irregular slots suggest a ritual, or ceremonial purpose.

This is how Conor Newman describes the feature:

Tech Midchúarta is a linear earthwork comprising two arcuate but nonetheless parallel banks, 25m to 28m apart and 203m long. Over this distance it rises more than 8m. It was made by scarping, or scraping away the soil in the middle and piling it into the two banks on either side. The result is that the whole surface of the interior has been lowered and is markedly below exterior ground level.

The banks rise to above head height, or at least the west bank still does; the east bank has been ploughed over and is considerably more denuded. The banks, therefore, are higher from the inside because the viewer is standing on a lowered surface. At irregular intervals along each bank are narrow gaps, possibly as many as 11 in total.

In its original state, one would have ascended Tech Midchúarta without being able to see out from either side. Moreover, up ahead would have been nothing other than the skyline; just like today, there would have been no indication of what awaited the traveller ascending the hill. It is, in short, a monument designed to deprive one of the otherwise celebrated views from the Hill of Tara. So doing, it removes the visitor temporarily from the familiar, outside world, into an enclosed, interior space.

So I decided to walk the length of the Tech Midchúarta from its beginning (as it exists today) to the top, and here is a short film of that experience in real time.

Unfortunately, the tech which supports directly embedding video clips in Substack posts is currently still in beta , but click the button to view a short film of my ascension to the top of the Hill of Tara via the Tech Midchúarta.

Ceremonial pathway experience

You can see that the pathway is very broad and seems very shallow. However, if you look to left and right, you can see that the embankments rise higher than your head. The slots which have been cut away in the embankments show that you are walking at a level below ground level; all you can see through them is the grass at the surface meeting the sky.

Above you is the sky. You can see nothing but the ground at your feet gradually rising as you traverse along it, the embankments at your sides, and the sky. The embankments force all sound up and over your head so all you can hear is the wind, no birds, or other visitors to the site. As you walk along the Tech Midchúarta, all is eerily blanketed and still. It really is an extraordinary experience.

And then suddenly you are at the top, and all is revealed. Before you lies the remains of the Rath of Synods and immediately beyond that, the object which automatically draws your eyes: the Mound of Hostages.

Newman suggests that the slots which are cut into the embankment are placed to reveal strategic glimpses of particular monuments at the site as one traverses the path. At first, I believed this to be the case, because as I walked along the top of one of the embankments, I could see Rath Grainne through the first slot.

But from inside the Tech Midchúarta, all you can see is grass and sky through the first slot – no Rath Grainne. You wouldn’t even know it was there. You can see this in the video.

So either this theory is wrong, or perhaps less permanent features once stood in these niches, like carvings of Gods and Goddesses perhaps, or maybe even people, possibly spectators. It is also possible that these slots enabled other pathways to join or intersect with the main processional route. Who knows? All we can do is speculate.

It should be remembered that the embankments have been somewhat denuded by time, erosion, and the action of agriculture and various other human activities over the centuries, and most likely stood considerably higher than they do today. The church would not have stood to the left of the pathway just as one reaches the top, either, so who knows what once stood there before it. However, none of this detracts from the experience, and if you go to Tara, I highly recommend approaching it this way, rather than through the churchyard.

You can read more about the ceremonial roads and pathways of Ireland in the following two posts:

H A G

Processional Pathways of Ancient Ireland

In October 2015, I had a very strange experience at Tlachtga, the Hill of Ward. As I walked the site, I became increasingly dizzy and developed an overwhelmingly powerful headache. Half an hour after driving away from the site, the headache had completely gone and I felt fine…

Read more

4 years ago · Ali Isaac

and

H A G

The 5 Great Roads of Ancient Ireland

According to legend, there were five great roads which led to the Hill of Tara. One of them runs between the north and south campuses of my university at Maynooth, and I’ve been crossing it almost every day for the last two years. Of course, it looks a bit different today; it’s tarmacked for a start, cars drive along it instead of carts, and it has rath…

Read more

4 years ago · Ali Isaac

I don’t believe I’m very receptive to picking up the energies and vibes of a place. I’m often in the presence of people who are, and it is always a wonder to me that I can’t feel the power they are feeling when we stand together on an ancient site.

I was deeply affected by what I felt that day at Tlachtga, however. Here is what I wrote about it at the time:

I found myself walking the ditches as if drawn along them, almost as if they were processional walkways, rather than defensive structures. The experience left me feeling dizzy and head-achy. It was much like walking through a maze. In the ditches, the banks are still high enough that the view is completely obliterated. There was nothing to do save look at one’s feet and think. Or meditate. Or contemplate. Until one gravitated to the top of the central mound and was smacked in the chops with that view over the land.

Incidentally, you can expect to learn more about Tlachtga, goddess of earth and fire, here on H A G in the not too distant future.

The interesting thing here, though, is not so much the energy of the place which I was clearly picking up on, but my behaviour. I naturally, without thinking, found myself drawn along the ditches between the embankments, and experienced a kind of sensory deprivation until I arrived at the top.

However, although I noted this, I dismissed it almost immediately, because I am only a wielder of words, and know myself to be susceptible to a fanciful imagination; I am not a historical or archaeological or ritual expert.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I went on a field trip to EMAIN MACHA during my Irish Cultural Heritage studies, and our guide suggested it was possible that the ditch around the site was used as a processional walkway by which the site was approached, because the floor of the ditch gradually rose up to meet the level of the entrance to the site.

Instantly, the memory of my experience at Tlachtga came rushing back. I was very excited. And then I came across a paper in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology by Conor Newman, and I realised that I was onto something.

Tlachtga is interesting in that it is one of only a handful of quadrivallate ring forts in Ireland. A structure surrounded by a series of four ditches and embankments is quite rare, and indicates a site which was once considered of great importance.

Excavations were carried out by the UCD School of Archaeology in 2014/15 (you can read about their findings here), which confirm that the area was very active in the pre-historic and early Medieval periods. UCD compare Tlachtga with other so called ‘royal sites’, specifically naming Tara.

And as you know from my recent post, The 5 Great Roads of Ancient Ireland: Fact or Medieval Fiction?, it is now believed that Tara, and other ‘royal sites’, were approached by a a specific, specially constructed ritual processional walkway.

H A G

The 5 Great Roads of Ancient Ireland

According to legend, there were five great roads which led to the Hill of Tara. One of them runs between the north and south campuses of my university at Maynooth, and I’ve been crossing it almost every day for the last two years. Of course, it looks a bit different today; it’s tarmacked for a start, cars drive along it instead of carts, and it has rath…

Read more

4 years ago · Ali Isaac

At Tara, this walkway is called the Teach Miodchuarta, meaning ‘banqueting hall’ in English, because the site was originally interpreted as the royal residence of Ireland’s high kings. It was thought that it was here the king would have held his feasts. We now know this is not the case.

This is how Conor Newman describes it:

Tech Midchúarta is a linear earthwork comprising two arcuate but nonetheless parallel banks, 25m to 28m apart and 203m long. Over this distance it rises more than 8m. It was made by scarping, or scraping away the soil in the middle and piling it into the two banks on either side. The result is that the whole surface of the interior has been lowered and is markedly below exterior ground level.

The banks rise to above head height, or at least the west bank still does; the east bank has been ploughed over and is considerably more denuded. The banks, therefore, are higher from the inside because the viewer is standing on a lowered surface. At irregular intervals along each bank are narrow gaps, possibly as many as 11 in total.

In its original state, one would have ascended Tech Midchúarta without being able to see out from either side. Moreover, up ahead would have been nothing other than the skyline; just like today, there would have been no indication of what awaited the traveller ascending the hill. It is, in short, a monument designed to deprive one of the otherwise celebrated views from the Hill of Tara. So doing, it removes the visitor temporarily from the familiar, outside world, into an enclosed, interior space. 

Now doesn’t that sound eerily familiar? I was blown away when I read that, because it describes pretty much my experience at Tlachtga.

But what’s the deal with sensory deprivation?

Well, firstly, with nothing to distract you externally, you tend to focus inwards. This is good for concentration, for psyching one self for a performance, for meditation. Christians were aware of this power; the museum in which I now work is housed within a building which was initially designed as a convent, and all the windows on the ground floor are glazed with opaque glass to prevent the nuns from being distracted by the gardens. Similarly, the cloisters at the ancient abbey of Fore in County Westmeath where the monks were allowed to walk were walled in so they couldn’t see outside. But also, sensory deprivation was used in ancient times for ritual and/ or magical purposes.

So, for example, a druid would have been wrapped in a bull hide during the tarbfeis, effectively sealing him off from his physical surroundings, so that he could enter a trance and thus predict who the next high king would be.

Similarly, sensory deprivation was used in the ritual of imbas forosnai, when the person conducting the ritual would place their hands over their eyes in order to enter a trance and access the Otherworld. This hand position is still used today in the practise of Reiki, in order to enhance the power of the Third Eye so as to receive divine knowledge and visions.

Modern meditation techniques nearly always reduce visual stimulation; whether a guided meditation, or a personal one, eyes are required to be closed. That is done for a reason: to avoid external distraction.

When walking, however, you need your eyes open so you can see where you are going. But the high walls of the ditches at Tara and Emain Macha function in much the same way so as to limit one’s range of vision, thereby eliminating external distractions.

Conor Newman sees it slightly differently. There are eleven irregularly spaced gaps in the banks of the Teach Midchuarta, which he believes are ‘windows that create, frame and therefore control what is seen and viewed’.

Through the first and second windows on the right can be seen the Ráith Ghráinne and the Cloenfherta (the Sloping Trenches), the three biggest ring-barrows at Tara, for example. Therefore, the monument not only functions as a ceremonial pathway by which the sacred site is approached, but it acts to restrict visual access to the majority of the site whilst allowing views of certain, particular monuments only.

Newman associates this with the procession of a king to the sacred site of his inauguration within the Rath na Riogh. This fits with medieval descriptions of Tara as a stronghold of High Kings. He claims the passage of the king into this most sacred enclosure at the very pinnacle of Tara symbolises his union with the sovereignty goddess, and thus with the land, whilst authorising his rule as only she can.

Can we assume, though, that the sacred site of Tara was approached on foot? After all, there are stories of kingship rituals at Tara involving the driving of a chariot between two stones, so perhaps wheeled transport could have been used. However, there is practically no archaeological evidence of the use of chariots in Ireland.

Travelling to holy sites on foot, however, is extremely common, and still popular today. Think of the annual pilgrimages up Croagh Patrick, often in bare feet, sometimes on one’s knees. Think of the Camino de Santiago. Think of the medieval crusades; only the wealthy would have travelled by horseback. Think of the Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

It is not unlikely that pre-Christian pagan peoples conducted pilgrimages to their holy sites, too, such as Tara, and Emain Macha, and that the five great roads which connected these sites enabled them to do so.

Perhaps they did so to honour the great fire festivals. Perhaps to honour the ancestors, communicate with their gods, conduct burials, who can say? We don’t know. But we do know that to carry out a pilgrimage is a sign of devotion, the hardship and endurance of the journey an act of penance and a sacrifice.

In his essay for The Stinging Fly, ‘Dromomania’, Brian Davey describes how walking can be a compulsion, its repetitive motion inducing a hypnotic state inciting visions. This is known as alússein in Classical Greek, leading to the term ‘halucinate’ via the Latin alucinari, meaning ‘to wander in thought’.

By contrast, solvitur ambulando is a Latin phrase meaning ‘it is solved by walking’. So walking it seems, according to Davey, serves a dual purpose: it can help you think, or  it can obliterate thought.

It is hard to know which purpose the walkways at Ireland’s ‘royal sites’ really served. What do you think?

This post was originally published on aliisaacstoryteller on July 16th 2018.

Refs.

Newman, Conor, ‘Procession and Symbolism at Tara: Analysis of Tech Midchúarta (The Banqueting Hall’) in the Context of the Sacral Campus’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 26(4) 415–438 2007

Davey, Brian. ‘Dromomania’, The Stinging Fly, Issue 38, Vol. 2, Summer 2018.

"The five chief roads of Ireland, namely Slige Assail, Slige
Midluachra, Slige Cualann, Slige Dala, Slige Mór.

Slige Assail, in the first place, Assal son of Dór Domblas
found it before the brigands of Meath when proceeding to
Tara.

Slige Midluachra, then, Midluachair son of Damairne son of
Diubaltach son of the king of Srub Brain, found it when proceeding
to the Feast of Tara.

Slige Cualann, Fer Fí son of Eogabal found it before the
elfmound’s armed hosts when going to Tara.

Slige Dala, Setna Seccderg son of Durbaide found it before
the warlocks of Ormond, when going to Tara. Or it is Dala
himself that discovered it for him.

Slige Mór, that is, Eiscir Riada, ’tis this that divides Ireland
in two, namely from Áth Cliath Cualann (Dublin) to Áth
cliath Medraige (Clarin Bridge near Galway). Nár son of Oengus
of Umall found it before the champions of Irrus Damnonn,
when contending for leadership, so that they might be
the first to arrive at Tara.

On the eve of the birth of Conn (of the Hundred Battles)
these roads were found, as saith (the tale called) Airne Fingin."

The Prose Tales in the Rennes Dindṡenchas translated by Whitley Stokes, UCD.ie

According to legend, there were five great roads which led to the Hill of Tara. It has always been believed that the Hill of Tara was the royal residence of the High Kings of Ireland; after all, we have inherited a vast wealth of early Medieval literature which tells us so. However, since the 1980s, a new school of thought began to emerge which interpreted these medieval tales as a reflection of the times in which they were written rather than the Iron Age which they claim to portray.

When you look at what was going on in Ireland during the Medieval period, this concept cannot be denied, but I also think these early writers were building on something which was already in existence: non-literate societies share their knowledge, learning and history through an oral tradition, and there is no reason to suppose that the people of Ireland’s pre-history were any different.

In 1992, the Discovery Research Programme found that the archaeology at Tara did not support the literature; there was no evidence of habitation, and in fact the presence of burials, combined with the density and complexity of other structures, and lack of defensive features suggested instead a ritual purpose.

It also shares similarities with other so called ‘royal sites’ at Cruachan in Connacht, Emain Macha in Ulster, and Dún Ailline in Leinster, such as the conjoined figure-of-eight mounds accompanied by the close proximity of a burial mound, both located within a wide, circular embankment and ditch.

In addition, archaeology revealed something else; that all these sites shared a mysterious decommissioning process around the year 96BC. It seems each site was buried beneath a layer of stones and boulders, the whole thing set alight, and then, when the embers had died down, the whole site was covered in earth. It was, in effect, a triple death, something which has been interpreted as  a great sacrifice when applied to people, as described in literature, and as discovered during the study of various bog bodies.

Another feature shared by these ‘royal sites’, but less sensational and certainly long neglected, is their connection via a system of five great roads, which according to early Irish literature, appear to centre on the Hill of Tara.

This is what the Annals of the Four Masters has to say about them:

The night of Conn’s birth [Conn Cétchathach, meaning ‘of the Hundred battles] were discovered five principal roads leading to Teamhair [Irish for Tara] which were never observed till then. These are their names: Slighe Asail, Slighe Midhluachra, Slighe Cualann, Slighe Mor, Slighe Dala. Slighe Mor is that called Eisir Riada, i.e. the division line of Ireland into two parts, between Conn and Eoghan Mor.

(AFM M123.2).

Although travel is frequently mentioned in early Irish literature, with stopping points and places of habitation along routes being named, the roads taken are not. ‘The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’ is an exception; it mentions ‘the four [not five] roads whereby men go to Tara’, naming two of them later in the story when Conaire breaks his kingly geisa, or taboos:

'Great fear then fell on Conaire because they had no way to wend save upon the Road of Midluachair and the Road of Cualu.'

(CELT).

Could these roads mentioned in early Medieval writings have existed in pre-historic times? For an answer, we need to turn to the archaeological evidence.

George Petrie was an Irish artist and antiquarian who travelled the length and breadth of Ireland, recording the land’s ancient monuments. In 1839, he was commissioned by the Irish Ordinance Survey to conduct a survey of the Hill of Tara, which was later published by the Royal Irish Academy. His plan clearly shows all five roads as named in the Annals.

According to scholar DL Swan, these roads ‘correspond closely to the main road system at present in use’. However, he claims the evidence upon which Petrie based his map is not clear, and that he cited none at all for his plotting of the Slighe Cualann.

By contrast, Colm O’Lochlainn‘s study, ‘Roadways in Ancient Ireland’ (1940) upon which most contemporary works are modelled, focused on journeys in early Irish literature, particularly The Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, the Tain bo Cuailnge, Mesca Ulaidh, Acaldamh na Senórach, the Book of Lismore, and others.

He marked these routes on a map upon which he had already identified place names associated with travel, such as ath– a ford; droichead – a bridge; bealach– a gap/ passage; and bóchar– a cattle track, amongst others. The results led him to identify the five great roads, but with one huge difference: they centred on Dublin not Tara, and as we all know, Dublin did not become a major centre until the Vikings in the mid ninth century.

DL Swan’s aerial photography identifies a series of linear depressions which correspond with Petrie’s plan. He also makes a very interesting observation; he claims they all align with the feature known as the Teach Miodhchuarta, or Banqueting Hall, stating that ‘regardless of which route one uses to approach the hill, the final approach can be made via the Teach Miodhchuarta’.

This monument is thought to be one of the oldest structures at Tara, dating to 2700BC. Early Irish literature portrays this feature as the setting for each reigning High King’s feasts; in fact, a drawing from the Leabhar Glinne Dá Locha (the Book of Glendalough, dating to the twelfth century but gathered from earlier sources) goes so far as to present a seating plan for the king and his guests.

Today, this feature is recognised as a ceremonial processional road by which the monuments on the hill top are approached, a pathway between the physical world and the Otherworld of Tara, between the present and the past. C. Newman specifically links it with the inauguration and burial of kings. He also draws comparisons with the Knockans of Teltown, and the Mucklaghs of Cruachan: they all slope downhill towards what was originally bogland, feature irregularly spaced gaps in their banks, and lack identifiable ditches from which the bank material was dug.

An excavation of the partially destroyed Knochans in 1997 by Waddell and O’Brien yielded unexpected results, revealing that major structural phases had occurred between AD640-780, and again in AD770-990. Newman claims this has implications for Teach Miodhchuarta and the Mucklaghs: they could be much later additions to the royal complexes than previously thought, suggesting that an early Medieval date ‘connect[s] it [Teach Miodhchuarta] far more definitively with the institution of early Medieval kingship of Tara than if it were already some thousands of years old’.

This, however, poses a problem: at the time when the Knockans were under Medieval renovation, Christian scribes were busy imagining Tara as the royal residence of High Kings, not as a ceremonial centre. If Teach Miodhchuarta was indeed constructed in the early Medieval period, as Newman suggests, then the scribes writing about Tara from the seventh century onwards would have witnessed its construction, or at least have been aware of it and its purpose as the processional way of kings, instead of describing it as a banqueting hall.

It is also possible, though, that the Church was attempting to rebrand Tara even whilst it was still in use, to secure their religious and political goals, such as promoting Christianity, and courting the patronage and favour of the ascending powerful Uí Néill family.

A study by P. O’Keeffe in 2001 for the National Roads Authority disagreed with O’Lochlainn and placed the hub of the five ancient roads quite firmly at Tara. He claimed the Slighe Assail connected Tara with Uisneach and Cruachan, that the Slighe Dála passed close to Dún Ailinne, that the Slighe Midhluachra connected Tara with Emain Macha ( I have stood on this road), and that the Slighe Mór only joined the Eisker Riada at Balinasloe.

This indicates that the pre-historic purpose of the road network was to connect the major ancient ritual sites, allowing the flow of communication between the authoritative bodies governing each one, perhaps explaining how they were all decommissioned at the same time.

However, as L. Doran notes, these roads were ‘not physical entities but rights of way with legal staus’, meaning that it is unlikely travellers would have been able to travel along them in chariots at great speed as depicted in the stories of the Tain, for example, where warriors traversed the distance between Emain Macha and Cruachain in less than a day.

The terrain would have had to have been modified to accommodate them. In the minds of the writers of these stories, however, such travel seemed perfectly feasible, suggesting that by the early Medieval period, when the stories were written, the rights of way had been superseded by roads which certainly were capable of supporting wheeled traffic and horses.

Whilst presenting a logical progression, Doran’s theories are based on O’Lochlainn’s model, and completely disregard the importance of Tara as the central hub of the road network, which the compilers of the annals and the Christian scribes of the early Medieval period were keen to point out.

This ancient road system continued to be of use throughout the Medieval period and beyond, as can be seen in the number of Anglo-Norman castles, mottes and settlements at fords and crossing places along the Slighe Mór and Slighe Assail. HC Lawlor in an earlier study traced the route of the Slighe Miluachra through Ulster by identifying river fords. Situating one’s castle at a fording point gave the owner strategic advantage, both militarily and commercially, in terms of controlling access to the river, an important artery of transport and communication, and also to the road.

We can see this at Clonmacnoise, an early Medieval ecclesiastical site located at the intersection of the River Shannon and the Slighe Mór, also known as the Pilgrim’s Way. The remains of a wooden bridge dating to the ninth century were discovered at the ford beside the monastery, making it, as Doran says, ‘the earliest known bridge in Ireland and also the largest free-standing wooden structure in early Medieval Ireland’. This bridge undoubtedly provided a means of control and revenue for the community of monks at Clonmacnoise.

So, whilst it seems that there is indeed enough archaeological and literary evidence to support the existence of some level of road network extending from the pre-historic era into medieval Ireland, scholars are divided on the exact routes and the location of the central hub, either Tara or Dublin.

Most are agreed, though, that they appear to connect the provincial ‘royal sites’, thus corresponding with early literatures, such as the Táin bo Cuailnge. These roads appear to have been developed during Medieval times from rights of way into physical road structures capable of supporting horses and wheeled transport, possibly to facilitate trade and commerce, but also to cope with the increased traffic of pilgrimage where the roads passed by major ecclesiastical sites.

The ‘royal site’ at the Hill of Tara also presents a sixth road, as archaeological evidence has facilitated the re-interpretation of the Teach Miodchuarta from a king’s banqueting hall into a ritual processional way by which the summit of the site may be accessed (I will be going into this in a bit more depth in a future post), and with which all the five great roads connect. Recent archaeological findings at the Knockans, a similar structure at Teltown, have challenged the early dating of this monument at Tara, but remain a somewhat controversial theory as yet unproven.

This post is adapted from an essay I submitted for my Irish Cultural Heritage studies, and was originally published on aliisaacstoryteller on July 2nd 2018.

Refs.

Annals of the Four Masters, M123.2, CELT: The Corpus of Electronic Texts.

Doran, L. 2004 Medieval Communication Routes through Longford and Roscommon and Their Associated Settlements, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History,Literature, Vol. 104C, No. 3, 57-80.

Field Seminar to Emain Macha, my notes.

Lawlor, HC 1938 An Ancient Route: The Slighe Miodhluachra in Ulaidh, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Third Series, Vol. 1, 3-6.

Newman, C. 2007 Procession and Symbolism at Tara: Analysis of Teach Midchuarta (the Banqueting Hall) in the Context of the Sacral Campus, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 26 (4) 415-38.

O’Lochlainn, Colm. 1940. Roadways in Ancient Ireland. In J.Ryan (ed), Féil-Sgribhinn Eóin Mhic Néill: Essays and Studies Presented to Professor Eoin MacNeill, 465-74, Four Courts Press, Dublin.

O’Sullivan, M. and Downey, L. 2015 Early Historic Routeways, Archaeology Ireland, Vol. 29, No.3, 14-17.

Swan, DL. 1978 The Hill of Tara, County Meath: The Evidence of Aerial Photography, The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Vol. 108, 51-66.

The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel, CELT: The Corpus of Electronic Texts.