A dream of the collapse of Mellifont Abbey and the reinstatement of the old names of Newgrange

This is perhaps going to be a blog post with a bit of a difference. I don't often talk about my dreams, but I've had a few very interesting ones lately, and my mind is bubbling with intuitive thoughts as I consciously (and perhaps unconsciously) try to extrapolate some meaning from them.

A couple of nights ago, I dreamt I could see an old wall, or a portion of an old building. There was a storm, and the wind was very strong. As I watched, I could tell that this structure was going to collapse. And collapse it did. It came crashing down. I was greatly moved by this, and a sense of urgent duty compelled me to reach for my mobile phone, to call for help. I'm not sure who I was supposed to ring for help, but the words were there, on the tip of my tongue, ready to be shouted into the phone to anyone who answered.

"Mellifont Abbey has collapsed."

The remains of Mellifont Abbey, Co. Louth, founded in 1142 and dissolved in 1539.

The location of my dream was not Mellifont Abbey. It was set in another tranquil and scenic location, a place,with which I am familiar, overlooking the River Boyne. However, there was no doubt in the dream that it was Mellifont Abbey that had collapsed. Its strange appearance and obvious dislocation may also have meaning, but for the moment I am concentrating on what seems to me to be the central import of the dream.

Mellifont Abbey

For those of you unfamiliar with Ireland and its history, Mellifont Abbey is one of those places that occupies a reasonably prominent and influential role in our past. A Cistercian monastery, it was founded in 1142 by Saint Malachy of Armagh and went on to become the largest Cistercian abbey in Ireland. It is located on the banks of the River Mattock, a tributary of the Boyne, and is located just over 5 kilometres (3.3 miles) north of Newgrange.

Its importance to my own work is largely through the fact that after its establishment, the Cistercians came into ownership of a lot of the land in the area, including lands at Brú na Bóinne. They established farms, known as granges, with the purpose of supplying the monastic order with enough food to make them self sufficient, and established exclusive fishing rights along the River Boyne. Several of their granges have, it is believed, left their names in the landscape today. They include Newgrange, Sheepgrange, Roughgrange and Littlegrange.(1)

Donnchadh Ó Cearbhaill, king of Airghialla, granted the monks the site for their abbey and the lands with which it was endowed, in the 12th century. It was around that time that the monument we know today as Newgrange assumed the name by which most people now know it. The "new grange" of the Cistercian monks contained this most auspicious monument of ancient Ireland, the one previously known by several different names and variations thereof. Today, it is simply known as Newgrange, but I wonder how many visitors to Newgrange know any of its pre-Medieval names.

The old names of Newgrange

In the Dindshenchas (lore of place names), it is called Tech Mic ind Óc (the house of the son of the young, viz. Oengus/Anghus). In Tochmarc Étaine, the Wooing of Étain, it is known as Síd in Broga - síd being commonly translated as a "fairy hill or mound"(2) and Broga being from bruig, meaning "abode, house, mansion, etc."(3) The áes síde were the supernatural beings, or fairies, who inhabited these mysterious mounds and hills. Many believe these "fairies" represented a later folk survival of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the gods who were said to have owned and lived in the mounds. Dagda, the chief of the gods, is described as the original owner of Síd in Broga, but later his son Oengus takes possession of it.(4) Newgrange was also previously known by variants such as Brug Oengusa and Brug mac ind Óc. (5)

The 'New Grange', originally known by various names including Síd in Broga and Brug mac ind Óc.

A couple of months ago, I watched a beautiful documentary on the Irish language station TG4, called Fís na Fuiseoige (The Lark's View).(6) It was an exploration of the deep connection between Irish people and their places. In it, one scholar suggested that the anglicisation of many Irish place names by the English had helped to undermine this sense of connection, and, by extension, we could propose that a sort of disempowerment had taken place. Did the same thing happen when Síd in Broga became Newgrange? Did it lose some, or all, of its power for people? I believe that something of its importance was diminished by that renaming.

The Cistercians experienced their own disempowerment with the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century. Mellifont was dissolved in 1539 and today it lies largely ruined, although small but impressive remnants survive, including the much-photographed and documented Lavabo, or wash room. In terms of a direct, literal portent, the dream could hardly refer to a physical collapse of Mellifont, for there is not much left to collapse. The Cistercian order does survive, to this day, at the nearby New Mellifont Abbey, in the nearby village of Collon (on land which was part of the original Cistercian grant), which was founded in the 1930s by the surviving Cistercians from Mount Melleray Abbey in Co. Waterford.

Fascinatingly, although long renamed, the "New Grange" of the Cistercians had not altogether relegated nor eradicated the older names of the monument, even in the late 19th century, when Borlase mentioned that the place name Bro/Broe, presumably a survival of Brug/Brugh/Brú, still existed in the vicinity of Newgrange and the Bend of the Boyne. There was (and still is today) a Broe House near the river beneath Newgrange. Borlase quotes a Mr. O'Laverty, writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, who had spoken to a Mr. Maguire and his son, of Newgrange, who told him that "the field in which Newgrange tumulus stands is called Bro Park" and that in the immediate vicinity of Newgrange are the Bro Farm, Bro Mill and Bro Cottage. It appears that some things are not easily forgotten! You can listen to me reading an extract from Borlase's Dolmens of Ireland about this Bro/Broe place name in the audio clip below.



The renaming of Newgrange

I'm not entirely sure how the connection was made in my mind, but since I had the dream I've been thinking that it is, at least in part, related to the renaming of Síd in Broga to Newgrange. And I cannot help entertaining the thought that the renaming was not necessarily a deliberately sinister or suppressive act on the part of the Cistercians, but that it was merely coincidental to the long and slow degradation of the mythic and sacred importance of this monument or sídhe that we have come to know as Newgrange. For Síd in Broga slumbered in the shade for great ages of this world, and through many times of turbulence and transformation the áes sídhe kept a quiet watch on the comings and goings of kings and chieftains and religious orders from the unknown hidden realms beyond its doorway.

The Tuatha Dé Danann encountered many "invaders", according to the Lebor Gabala (Book of Takings), and it was the Milesians, arriving from Spain, who finally dispossessed them of Ireland. But it was an incomplete dispossession, because in their armistice with the Dé Dananns, the Milesians empowered them for eternity when they granted them possession of the sídhe. Failing to understand the gravity of this lack of foresight, the Milesians guaranteed the undying Dananns a special immortality. They may have been removed from the physical landscape of the invaders, but in the realms of dream and song and netherworld, they assumed a transcendent elevation of extraordinary proportions - something that legitimized and prolonged them and ensured their vitality for countless generations of people for whom they remained (and still remain) a very real presence.

And so, in the dying light of an apparently vanquished Dé Danann world, the sidhe which had kept hushed for centuries its remarkable secret of hidden realms and banished gods had even been made to suffer the ignominy of the loss of its name. And thus, through deliberate act or unwitting insult, the Cistercians became another in the long line of "arrivers", or invaders, or takers, to attempt by guile or gullibility to degrade and dispossess the stony vault of Síd in Broga of its divine and sacred import.

And what is that import? That there survives in people, even today, a light, a sacred essence, a revered and inviolate aspect, which derives originally from the very best facets of humanity. This aspect preserves the wish to initiate oneself into divine realms, with the express aim that one can be of service to one's greater community. The sacrifice of the Dé Dananns was immense. They yielded ownership of the beautiful Éire, the land we are so blessed to call our home, in order to avoid another war. They were weary of their encounters with the Fir Bolg and the Fomorians. With their blessing, the Milesians would become the new caretakers. But they were only custodians. Their time would come and go with the waning of the years.

In the past century, Newgrange has been unearthed and restored. Given a facelift, it has emerged from the rubble of its forlorn and dormant state. After five millennia, its secret crystal bower receives the golden sunlight once again on the Winter Solstice. The great sídhe has experienced a resurrection of sorts. The Fir Bolgs and the Fomorians were vanquished. Cessair and the Partholonians perished. The Vikings and the English came and went. And the Cistercians changed the sacred name of Síd in Broga to the newfangled Newgrange. But the Dé Dananns never died. Even in the hushed ages of their belittlement, they emerged as the diminutive fairies, the "good people", and danced and sang with unrestrained merriment around their ancient hollow hill in the midnight moonlight.

The unnaming of Newgrange 

Is it too bold a proposition to suggest that Newgrange be given back its old name? If we call it Síd in Broga once again, perhaps those diminutive fairies will arise in us as the unvanquished gods of our better nature, ready to bring light back to a somewhat darkened world.

References:
(1) Stout, Geraldine (2002), Newgrange and the Bend of the Boyne, Cork University Press, p.86.
(2) Dil.ie.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Tochmarc Étaine.
(5) O'Kelly, Michael J. (1982), Newgrange: Archaeology, Art & Legend, Thames & Hudson, p.25.
(6) You can watch a short trailer for this documentary here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR1OUXn0O48

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.

Only the guardian of Fourknocks knows its true name

Inside the ancient stone chamber of Fourknocks, a seemingly small yet very impressive monument of the late Neolithic, there are a number of intricately carved stones, some pristinely preserved.

The lintel stone above the western recess at Fourknocks.

The modern visitor is able to see, at close quarters, the careful work of Neolithic artists, people who lived and died in a remote age, when only the most basic technologies were afforded use by human hands. At Fourknocks, the lozenge (diamond) and the zigzag predominate. The angular manifestation of the glyphs is curious. There is one stone, above the passage, bearing concentric circles, and another - the original entrance lintel - bearing a rough spiral, among other curious designs. Most of the other decorated stones are devoid of curvature, containing the distinct angles of diagonal and serrated patterns.

The stones of Fourknocks demand from us an answer, an answer to an unanswerable riddle - why is the spiral, so predominant at Brug na Bóinne, almost absent from this wondrous little passage-tomb, and why do the angles predominate? We can only answer the question with a question:

Who can know?

I have a theory. But that's all it is - a theory. Unfortunately, we cannot travel back in time to speak with the artists of the New Stone Age, whoever they were - farmers, astronomers, poets, priests or magicians. So we have to make do with our own speculations, and our own vivid imaginations. My theory is that the absence of the spiral is directly connected with the absence of the sun. No sun can shine into Fourknocks. Its passageway points to a place in the far north, some 15 degrees (approximately) east of north. No sun can enter into its cold interior. Fourknocks, whatever its other purposes might have been, was definitely not a solar observatory; not in its own right at least. (There are other mounds in the district, and who knows what secretly oriented chambers they might contain?)

The spiral is a convenient and potent symbol representing solar movement. Over the course of the year, the sun appears to wind a series of contracting and expanding spirals in the sky. At Newgrange, the great entrance stone, facing the sunrises on winter solstice, is adorned impressively with huge spirals, one of which appears to end in a line that seems to point in towards the entrance to the cave, perhaps beckoning the sun to "enter in here".

The "guardian" stone of Fourknocks, said to represent a human face.

There is no such theatrical meandering spiral at Fourknocks. Here, we see zigzag lines and diamonds, almost exclusively. Almost. There is one stone that stands out above all others. It is one of the chamber orthostats, positioned just to the right of the passageway as one looks out from the chamber. It is said, by some, to be a crude representation of the human face. Not having access to the artist, or the instruction manual from which he or she was working when they carved it, I can neither agree nor disagree with this contention. There are more angles, and diamonds, and curves. If it's a face, it's a strange one. And yet I find myself drawn to the idea that it is a type of "guardian" stone, if such a concept even existed when these structures were built 5,000 years ago. There is a stone in the western passage of Knowth that has been said, by some, to represent some type of guardian. It has an almost owl-like presence - the owl being the Cailleach of the night, its call often attributed to the Bean Sídhe, the woman who cries out before death. As a place of burial, Fourknocks might have needed just such a presence - a woman of the sídhe to watch over as the souls of the deceased crossed over from this world to the next.

Fourknocks is indeed a sad place. When it was excavated in the 1950s by P.J. Hartnett, the remains of at least 21 children were found, along with burnt and unburnt remains of adults. By the time its period of use was coming to an end, the entrance passage had been filled almost to the top with material, with three separate layers or deposits of human remains. The passage was deliberately blocked up. It was intended that Fourknocks be sealed off. And so it was . . . until the 1950s.

It is a sad fact that all of the burials/deposits were removed during the excavation. There is a sense that the monument has lost an aspect of its sacredness, that the final resting place of so many people would later be stripped out so that nothing of the burials remains.

In being sealed up, Fourknocks shares a history similar to that of Newgrange (which points towards it, incidentally). Archaeologists maintain that Newgrange was sealed for the best part of 4,000 years, until Charles Campbell and his labourers rediscovered the passage entrance in 1699. Fourknocks lay concealed in the landscape for a long time. Because it likely did not have a stone vaulted roof and thus it didn't have a large cairn covering it, it was lost to time. The name Fourknocks is said to be derived from the Irish na fuarchnoic, meaning "the cold hills". But I don't buy it. It doesn't "feel" like an authentic name for a complex of ancient monuments. And this I think its real name has been lost to time. Local historian Brendan Matthews once proposed to me the possibility that Fourknocks was derived from the "four cnocs", meaning the four cnocs or artificial mounds. That seems more plausible to me than the cold hills.

The proximity of Fourknocks to Clonalvy tempts me into looking for a link there. Clonalvy is from Cluain Ailbhe, the meadow of Ailbhe, whoever she might have been. It might also be connected with the Delvin River (Ailbine). I am curious about the mention of a possiblity that Clonalvy was the location of a monument called Lia Ailbhe, a huge standing stone described as the "chief monument of Brega", until it fell in 999 and was broken into four millstones by Máelaschlainn, the high king. That seems like an avenue worthy of research . . . for there is something that has been nagging away at me for years that is telling me to find out the real ancient name of Fourknocks.

Perhaps only the guardian of Fourknocks knows its real name?


(I will deal with some aspects of the angular art and connections to the cosmos in another post).