The sadness around the monuments and how nothing is created unless something else is destroyed

Sadness. Now there's a word. A word full of power, and so appropriate for the story of the monuments, especially those that are damaged or decaying in the landscape. I've been dealing with this sadness for a long number of years. Whenever I am alone at one of the many ancient and sacred places of this land, there's always a sense of sadness. Not that I'm always sad. And not that it's always a dominant emotion. Sometimes, (quite often, in fact) I'm ecstatic. These places are capable of enrapturing me and bringing me to a state of numinous awe. But the sadness is always there, somewhere. It never fully goes away.

The remains of Cairn U at Loughcrew, a "lost world" which is over 5,000 years old, with storm cloud.

I used to think it was just a sadness for a lost world. A lost tribe of humanity, of my ancestors. A people who lived and died in the blinking of an eye, and whose presence here would go totally unrecognised were it not for the presence across the landscape of so many of their ancient monuments and sacred structures.

But then I remember when I was younger, and I'd see a bulldozer at work, ripping up the earth and making a mess of it. And I was sad then too.

I was sad when the diggers came and took down all the trees that used to grow "down the back", a wild field behind the house where I grew up, a place full of briars and old ruins, the decrepit remnants of an old and forgotten urban world - a Drogheda on the Boyne that has been and gone. There, in among the thorns, was "the cave", an ancient wine or food cellar, its old ceiling inlaid with a decoration of cockle shells, set into a sandy cement that formed a rough curving, arched ceiling. Like the candlelit Newgrange of the old days, before the excavations, "the cave" was both fascinating and terrifying. It had partly collapsed at some stage, leaving a hole that we used to enter in through. While in there, in the darkness, we did not know if the whole thing was going to collapse in on top of us. Of course, that didn't stop us from going in!

And one day, the bulldozers arrived and took it all away. And I was immensely sad. I have no photographs of it. All that's left of it is what I remember, and even that's not much.

I was sad the day our apple tree was cut down. And I was said when, years after my siblings and I each planted a tree at the end of the garden, mine had been choked by the growth of many others, and withered away and died.

The house I grew up in (left) and the view towards Laurence Gate. Photo: Google Maps.

I was also confused. When I was young, in my early teens, Drogheda was a run-down place. A decaying old town, crumbling to bits. And I wanted it to be renewed, and rebuilt. And I wanted it to be bigger. And I wanted it to have the biggest port in Ireland, and the busiest railway, and the best shopping centres, and I wanted it to have a big population. That would make it important. That would make people sit up and notice my old town.

And when some of that did happen, in those crazy Celtic Tiger years, I was sadder than ever. More of the green fields were ripped up. In their place was built concrete and asphalt and steel and glass and brick and slate. The land that had been green forever was maimed and scarred. And I was sad.

I never realised that within me was this environmental fundamentalist, bursting to get out. I hated to see new roads being built. I hated to see the bulldozers, ripping up the sods. I hated to see concrete being poured into a green field. It made me very, very sad. And even when old, decaying, derelict and sometimes dangerous, roofless old houses or buildings were knocked, to make way for new ones, I would be sad. How do you explain that? People cannot live in derelict, roofless houses. And yet I was sad, because another part of the old world was being torn up. Of course I would rarely vocalise this urge to preserve everything, perhaps because I feared ridicule because of the apparent futility of my position.

It got to the stage that I wanted to keep the old bits, and I didn't want the new bits. A generation of Drogheda people remember a part of the town - the area of James' Street, Bull Ring, and John Street, that was torn out by the metal monsters to make way for a new dual carriageway that carved its ugly pathway through one of the most ancient parts of the town.

Even today, the traffic winds its way under the ancient archway of Laurence Gate, an ancient barbican, and the most impressive remnant of the walls of the town that were first erected in the 13th century. I grew up on the street that leads eastwards away from the great barbican. I passed by it, and under it, pretty much every day of my life for 20 years. And sometimes a lorry goes under that arch and clips off it, scraping it, and occasionally knocking a chunk out. There's a campaign to close it to traffic. That campaign has been running for at least three decades. The traffic still flows underneath, and the ever-present danger of a catastrophe is there. I wonder if I will wake up some day to the news that the thing has collapsed in a ruin because it has been struck by the truck of ignorance. Or maybe, to save ourselves from all that pain, we should just bulldoze it now?

Aerial view of Laurence Gate. Photo: www.closethegate.org.

No wonder, then, that I make my escape from the post-Tiger concretised Drogheda, out into the Boyne Valley and beyond, to visit places that are away from this unfettered craziness that we call urban civilisation.

Even Newgrange was rebuilt. This is what it looked like in 1890 as depicted in George Coffey's book.

I'd go to Newgrange, and I'd be sad.
I'd drive to Monasterboice, and I'd be sad.
I'd visit the Hill of Slane, and I'd be sad.
I'd climb Loughcrew, and I'd be sad.

Why was I sad? I don't know if I can explain that in one blog post, but one of the reasons I was sad was probably because I realised that, in order to build something, something else must be destroyed. In the world view of a committed environmental fanatic, Newgrange would never have been built in the first place. 

Stormy sky over Drogheda

Evening storm clouds over Drogheda. In the centre of the photo is the martello tower at Millmount, which sits on the top of a large earthen mound. The mound is said to have been raised by the Normans in the 12th century AD, but local folklore says it is the burial place of an ancient Milesian bard, Amergin, who is said to have arrived from Spain in the 17th century BC. Recent archaeological investigations of the mound have revealed the possibility that it might be a mound of earth dating into prehistory.

http://bit.ly/MI-gallery
from Flickr http://flic.kr/p/GyDtRB

Some old names for the town of Drogheda in Irish myths and place name lore

My home town is today called Drogheda. The common accepted nomenclature of Drogheda says that it is derived from the Irish Droichead Átha, meaning "Bridge on the Ford". I've always been curious about that, mainly because a ford or crossing point is something that obviously pre-dates a bridge, so that the name seems to refer to two distinct and different methods of crossing the river. Before bridges were built, rivers were crossed at shallow places called fords, or indeed at shallow places where the crossing was augmented by some sort of stone causeway built along the river bed.1

A view of Drogheda with its bridge over the Boyne from a mid-18th Century
painting by Gabriele Ricciardelli (Highlanes Gallery)

An ancient ford of the Boyne at Rosnaree, several miles upstream of Drogheda, is marked on early OS maps. It might have been one of the principal crossing places of the Boyne in prehistory, and was possibly the place where the great northern road from Tara, the Slíghe Midluachra, passed through the Boyne Valley adjacent to the great monuments of Brúg na Bóinne.

The ancient ford of the Boyne at Rosnaree. (Source)

In 'Island of the Setting Sun - In Search of Ireland's Ancient Astronomers', Richard Moore and I presented evidence that the name of the Boyne river might have been inspired by the Milky Way, the great "river of the sky" and that the Boyne might have been considered its earthly counterpart.

Some of Drogheda's numerous bridges.

So I have this pet theory, and it's only a theory, without much foundation, that perhaps the old name of Drogheda does not mean "Bridge on the Ford", but maybe something like "Ford of the Wheel" - droichead being related to the word droch, which means "wheel".2 I've also seen it written somewhere (although I cannot immediately recall the source) that suggested the word droichead stems from droch representing the wheel-shaped arches of a bridge. My theory is that the "ford of the wheel" is the crossing point of the earthly Milky Way, the river Boyne. Indeed, another great wheel of the sky - the Zodiac, through which the sun, moon and planets journey through the sky - was recognised in earlier times by the Irish phrase rael-draoch, the "circle or wheel of the stars".3

Anyway, I digress. Enough of the pet theories and deviations from the main topic at hand, which is the ancient name of the town we call Drogheda today.

In prehistoric times, the area where Drogheda is situated today was likely known as Inber Colpa (spelt different ways, including Inbher Colptha). There are a couple of different stories accounting for the origin of this name. One of these says that it is named after the shin-bone (Colptha) of the great monster the Mata, which was said to have been slain by the men of Éireann at a mysterious stone near Newgrange in Brug na Bóinne. Another story says the name is accounted for by the death of the Milesian brother Colpa during their battle with the Tuatha Dé Danann, who caused a fierce tempest to blow up as the Milesians attempted to land at the Boyne. You can read more about these stories in Island of the Setting Sun. Inber is an Irish word that means "the meeting of the waters", or a harbour or estuary.

Of particular interest to my little investigation here, though, are a couple of names for Drogheda which I had not previously encountered. Droichead Átha and Inber Colpa are well attested, but much less well known but equally interesting are some other names which were apparently given to the town, or features in its vicinity, in times long ago.

In their recounting of a famous story called 'The Colloquy of the Old Men', Cross and Slover in their 1936 book 'Ancient Irish Tales' refer to the separate journeys of  Oisín (son of the celebrated Finn McCool) and Cailte, son of Crunnchu mac Ronain. After visiting Finn's old nurse, Oisin and Cailte separate, one going north to seek Oisín's mother, who is one of the Tuatha De Danann; the other moving south toward Tara:

... Oisin went to the fairy-mound of Uch Cletigh, where was his mother, Blai daughter of Derc Dianscothach; while Cailte took his way to Inber Bic Loingsigh which at present is called Mainister Droichid Atha (the monastery of Drogheda) from Beg Loigsech son of Arist that was drowned in it, that is, the king of the Romans' son, who came to invade Ireland; but a tidal wave drowned him there in his inber (river-mouth). He went on to Linn Feic (Fiacc's Pool), on the bright-streaming Boyne; southwards over the Old Mag Breg, and to the rath (stronghold) of Drum Derg, where Patrick mac Calpuirn was.

Mellifont Abbey. 

There are a few things that are interesting in this passage. We know that Fiacc's Pool is likely situated on the bend of the Boyne beneath Ros na Rí (Rosnaree) and was the celebrated place where Finneces caught the Salmon of Knowledge, from which Finn gained all his wisdom. The 'Inber Bic Loingsigh' which was better known as the Monastery of Drogheda, is a curious one indeed. Bic of Beg is probably the Irish word for small. Loingsigh could be a variant of loingeasach, meaning "abounding in ships or in fleets".4 In his 1997 book Conversing with Angels and Ancients: Literary Myths of Medieval Ireland, Joseph Falaky Nagy asserts that the Mainistir Droichit Átha referred to in the text is Mellifont, the first Cistercian monastery founded in Ireland (in 1142). Not being a scholar in medieval Ireland, I cannot argue with him. However, the location of Mellifont a number of miles northwest of Drogheda, on a smaller tributary of the Boyne called the river Mattock, means it is some distance removed from the river mouth where Beg Loingsech was apparently drowned.

The story of the mysterious drowning of Beg Loingsech is interesting indeed. There are obvious parallels here between Inber Bic Loinsigh and Inber Colpa. Bic Loinsigh was the son of the king of the Romans, who "came to invade Ireland", but a tidal wave drowned him at the river mouth. Colpa was a son of Mil, the king of Spain, and he was drowned somewhere near the mouth of the Boyne by a storm whipped up by the Dé Dananns while trying to land for the purpose of taking Ireland from them. The Milesians could also have said to be "abounding in ships"; many of them were destroyed in the Dé Danann tempest. The parallels between these stories are so striking that one cannot but draw the tentative impression that they are two versions of a single old mythic narrative involving the naming of the Boyne estuary.

Another obscure ancient name from Drogheda is mentioned all too briefly in O'Donovan's Ordnance Survey letters, and it would be interesting to see if further research into this name - and its variants - yields information of interest. Here is what O'Donovan says, after writing briefly about the name Droichet Atha:

There are other ancient names of it still retained by some persons. Sarsfield, whom we have mentioned on our former letters, says the ancient name of it was Ath Dhunruaidhe, and Jones says the ancient name of it was Dun Dubhruaidhe . . . Others say it was called Treda prior to it having got the denomination of Drogheda - if it was so-called, Treda seems to have been the first Anglicized name of it. Droichet atha (Droichet Atha) occurs in several places in the Annals of the Four Masters . . .5

Literally translated, Ath Dhun Ruaidhe would mean "the ford of the red fort" or something similar and Dun Dubhruaidhe would mean "the fort of black-red" or something to that effect. O'Donovan puts a footnote in for the Sarsfield and Jones references which asks the question "Are these names preserved in any document?" Regrettably, the answer would appear to be no.

NOTES:

1. Drochet can also refer to a causeway as well as a bridge. See DIL.
2. See Vallancey (referenced in Newgrange: Monument to Immortality) and also for droch = coach-wheel, see the Shaw Gaelic Dictionary.
3. Newgrange: Monument to Immortality, Anthony Murphy, 2012, p.92.
4. Shaw Gaelic Dictionary, p.358.
5. Louth Ordnance Survey Letters, Co. Louth Archaeological Journal Vols. IV, V & VI, p.92.

Artist creates incredible resurrection image for Easter

Irish artist Richard Moore has created an enormous image of the resurrected Jesus in a field in his home town of Drogheda. The huge depiction - based on a Byzantine image of the resurrected Christ - was created using fertiliser to help bring out the image from the surrounding grass. The gigantic portrait covers an area of approximately two acres.

Richard Moore's image of the resurrected Christ viewed from the air.

Richard explained the inspiration behind the image: "This image stems from a line in the Psalms - 'I will remove sin as far as the East is from the West'. Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection is the balance restored for mankind.  The eyes of the image are on a line in that is on an east west line that extends all the way from Drogheda to Croagh Patrick, an alignment which also marks the Spring and Autumn Equinox sunrise and sunset. And of course Spring Equinox is the astronomical event from which Easter is calculated each year."

"Artist Derek Closkey and myself used very basic materials and astronomy to measure out the image," Richard explained. "I was trying to see how the ancient builders of megalithic sites might have worked out methods of transferring large images on to the ground without being able to see it and still get it right."

Richard has a major interest in ancient megalithic sites and their alignments and is co-author with Anthony Murphy of the book 'Island of the Setting Sun - In Search of Ireland's Ancient Astronomers'.

The giant depiction took about two weeks to create. Richard and Derek marked the area out and then put down fertilizer along the outline of the image to help the grass grow faster so that the image would 'appear' out of the surrounding field.

He has never done anything like this before. Richard typically paints landscapes and streetscapes using mainly oil and acrylics on board and canvas. This is certainly the biggest canvas he's ever used!!

The search for Amergin and Drogheda's Stone Age past

Drogheda Museum / Old Drogheda Society
Special HERITAGE WEEK lecture

Is Millmount really a passage-tomb? 

THE SEARCH FOR AMHAIRGIN – Looking deep into Millmount’s past …

By Kevin Barton & Conor Brady
THURS 22 AUG 2013 – 8pm
Governor’s House, Millmount Cultural Quarter

Using the latest geophys technology Drogheda Museum begin a year-long project to look deep into the ancient mound at Millmount in a search for Drogheda’s Stone Age …

It is thought that the mound at Millmount in Drogheda was originally part of the great Megalithic (“large stone”) Culture which flourished in the Boyne Valley from 5,000BCE to 2,000BCE and includes the internationally-famous tombs of Newgrange and Knowth. Its importance in our collective folk memory is underlined by the legend that the mythological figure Amhairgin (pronounced “Aver-gin”) the originator of song and poetry is buried there.

Because of the huge amount of structural changes on the mound over the millennia normal archaeological excavation is impossible but now through the wonders of modern electronic remote sensing (“geophys”) we can scan deep into Millmount and begin to unlock its secrets.

Leaders of the Project Team, Kevin Barton of Landscape & Geophysical Services  and Conor Brady, Lecturer in Archaeology at DKIT will launch the research programme with a special lecture in The Governor’s House Millmount on Thursday 22 Aug 2013 at 8pm.

In Early Irish mythology Amhairgin ("aver-gin") was the inventor of song and poetry as implied in his name ("Amhair"=singing; "gin" = give birth to). The extraordinary poem/song associated with him, Duan Amhairgine (The Song of Amhairgin), was therefore regarded by the Old Irish as the first song ever made and was always placed first in collections of poetry.

The power of this poem in Old Irish is such that a whole array of famous poets in many languages have attempted translations. Among them was the great English poet Robert Graves who said that “English poetic education should, really, begin not with Canterbury Tales, not with the Odyssey, not even with Genesis, but with the Song of Amergin.”

Many composers and songwriters have also set versions of the text to music including this one in the original Old Irish by Lisa Gerrard (of Dead Can Dance) from the BBC series "The Celts".

Monasterboice Round Tower and High Crosses - pictures

Muiredach's Cross, Monasterboice, probably Ireland's
most famous High Cross.

Is there anyone home? The steps up to the round tower
at Monasterboice, Co. Louth, Ireland

The Western Cross and Round Tower

A second view of the Western Cross and Round Tower

A close-up of the Western Cross

Western 

My Nikon D7000 is working a treat

I know this is not entirely related to Mythical Ireland, but my Nikon D7000 will, I hope, be used to capture many nice images for the website and other projects. I wanted to share two images that I took with the camera in the past couple of days. It is a nice piece of kit.

The first is a picture of some houses on the outskirts of Drogheda, overlooking the Boyne river. It was taken at ISO100, with an F stop of about F11, and an exposure of 30 seconds.

The second is this picture of Newgrange, again at ISO100, and F11. The exposures on the D7000 seem to show better detail compared to my D200. In some pictures there is both a bright sky and a bright foreground. Impressive.

New exhibition to feature pictures of Newgrange

The major historical landmarks of the Boyne Valley - along with a few lesser known ones - will feature in an evocative new exhibition by accomplished local photographer Pat Burns opening next week in Drogheda.

The Boyne with swans at Newgrange by Pat Burns

The exhibition of highly atmospheric black and white prints is the result of five years of meticulous observation and many pre-dawn forays to catch the magical early morning light.

The exhibition, at the Abbey Gallery in Dominic Street, will feature rich moody images of Newgrange, the Hill of Slane, Monasterboice, Mellifont, Dunmoe Castle, Bective Abbey, Tara, Trim Castle, the cairns at Loughcrew and the standing stones at Baltray.

“For over 5,000 years, builders have left their mark in wonderful inscribed stone buildings and monuments across this ancient and historical countryside. It is a rich and royal landscape, home to high kings and druids, Christian saints, monks and monasteries,” says Pat, who hails from Laytown.

“The connecting thread in the landscape is the River Boyne from which the Valley takes its name.”

“The exhibition is an attempt to capture in black and white photographic images not only the beauty of the landscape of the Boyne Valley, but also the power, sense of mystery and atmosphere that still inhabits the place.”

“There's something palpable that still seems to cling to and live on in the castle ruins, in the high crosses and monasteries, the trees, standing stones, ancient mounds and along the river Boyne itself.”

Adds Pat: “The exhibition is not meant to be an in depth pictorial record of the Boyne Valley. Rather it is a personal visual homage to this place of myth, mystery and beauty.”

Pat is a self-taught photographer with a particular interest in documentary and landscape work. He has recorded many aspects of life and community in Laytown where he has lived for almost thirty years.

The exhibition will be opened by Anthony Murphy, co-author of Island Of The Setting Sun: In Search of Ireland's Ancient Astronomers, on Thursday July 26 at 7.30pm.

The Mound of the Hostages at Tara

Cairn S at Loughcrew by Pat Burns

The Hag's Chair at Cairn T, Loughcrew