Eschewing the little people, one archaeologist dismissed folklore about Newgrange, folklore that later proved true

The earliest antiquarians who visited, documented, sketched and spoke about Newgrange sometimes get a hard time from the modern academic establishment. The writings of Lhwyd and Molyneux and Pownall and Vallancey are all criticised for one reason or another (poor Charles Vallancey is largely ridiculed, perhaps because he referred to Newgrange as a Mithraic temple). All of the early antiquarian accounts of the monument are valuable for one reason or another. Some of them have captured aspects of the monument that have disappeared since they wrote. Without the tools and techniques of modern archaeology, all of them were poking around in the dark, so to speak. They couldn't have known the true age of Newgrange,  nor could they have appreciated the skills of the artists and builders who created it, those whom they all too often referred to as barbarous.

Newgrange in its pre-excavation days.

The New Grange book.

However, Dr. Glyn Daniel, lecturer in archaeology at Cambridge University and editor of the academic journal Antiquity, perhaps should have known better. In 1964, Daniel's book 'New Grange and the Bend of the Boyne' was published by Thames & Hudson. It had been a collaborative effort with University College Cork professor of archaeology, Sean P. Ó Ríordáin. Sadly, Ó Ríordáin had passed away in 1957 in his early fifties, when the pair were only half way through completion of the book. Daniel was the General Editor of the 'Ancient Peoples and Places' series of books, under which the New Grange title was published. It was to become the largest single study of the Newgrange monument since George Coffey's 1912 book, and would be the last before Professor Michael J. O'Kelly's excavations at Newgrange revealed so many of its secrets.

One of the shortcomings of the Daniel/Ó Ríordáin book is that it fails to deal in any substantial terms with the mythical history of the Newgrange monument or indeed its counterparts in the Bend of the Boyne. Except for one passage in which he relates that New Grange might be an English corruption of An Uamh Greine (the cave of Grainne), Daniel does not discuss the ancient names of Newgrange, or its import in the early texts, as O'Kelly later did in his own work on Newgrange. Failing to acknowledge the earlier Irish names of Newgrange, and its mythology and associated stories, Daniel falls into a trap – he assumes the folklore about the site to be utter fantasy, and dismisses it as such:

"It is natural that impressive monuments like New Grange and Stonehenge should be visited a great deal by the general public and should themselves have attracted a folklore based on imagination, half-forgotten history, unappreciated archaeology and the sort of nonsense that luxuriates in the lunatic fringes of serious archaeology."(1)

And in that foregoing paragraph, Daniel was just setting himself up for a fall.

"The visitor to New Grange and Dowth will not be surprised to be told that these monuments were built by and were the homes of 'the little people' or to be asked their connection with the Druids."

One should always be careful about dismissing the fairy folk – even if one is a leading archaeologist and "expert" of the times!

But the following is perhaps indicative of the perhaps excessively arrogant attitude of Daniel in dealing with a monument such as Newgrange and in his rush to dismiss the folklore, he dismissed also notions about the site that would later transpire to be based in truth:

The entrance kerb stone at Newgrange (K1).

"A coloured calendar current in Ireland in 1960 had in it a good photograph of the decorated stone at the entrance to New Grange; this was accompanied by an account which needs quoting almost in toto as an example of the jumble of nonsense and wishful thinking indulged in by those who prefer the pleasures of the irrational and the joys of unreason to the hard thinking that archaeology demands.'The entrance in the east was originally triangular,' says this description, 'but is now changed for easy entrance, formerly it was necessary to crawl in and progress was retarded by interference, stones compelling the neophyte to stoop and stumble. The rays of the rising sun at certain times of the year penetrate the opening and rest on a remarkable triple spiral carving in the central chamber. Like the Great Pyramid of Gizeh in Egypt the New Grange Temple was originally covered with a layer of white quartz and was a brilliant object of Light for a considerable distance. Nuda, first king of Tuatha de Danann in Ireland, and his Master Magician, are said to have officiated here in the very, very old days. Artemidoros the Ephesian stated: "To Sacred Ierne of the Hibernians men go to learn more of the Mysteries of Samothrace."'

Two very important statements in this 1960 calendar demonstrate that there were enduring traditions about Newgrange that were fascinating and even compelling (and certainly worthy of at least some investigation) – one that the sun shone into the chamber during the year and the other that it was once covered with white quartz. Understandably, Daniel could not have known about the existence of quartz, given that the O'Kelly excavations at Newgrange had just begun when the Daniel/Ó Ríordáin book was published, but there was at least one possible reference to this feature in mythology – the "white-topped brugh" was said to have been "brilliant to approach".(2) If he had been a bit more familiar with some of the mythology of Newgrange, he might not have been so quick to shrug it off.

But Daniel certainly should not have been so dismissive in relation to the solar alignment – especially as it had been previously suggested by the likes of Solar Physics Observatory director Sir Norman Lockyer in 1909, and W.Y. Evans-Wentz in The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries in 1911.(3)

Within three years or so of the publication of the Daniel/Ó Ríordáin book, Professor Michael O'Kelly would stand in the chamber of Newgrange and become the first person in the modern era (and perhaps since the Bronze Age) to witness the winter solstice sunlight streaming into its inner chamber, illuminating (by reflected light) the triskele or triple spiral in the chamber. During his excavations at the famous monument, O'Kelly would uncover a significant layer of quartz beneath the cairn spill material – quartz that he would later demonstrate through repeated experiment that actually fronted the monument. In other words, at the very least Newgrange had a white quartz facade, and it is not such a huge leap of imagination to envision the possibility that the cairn was once covered with this bright stone.

The Newgrange triple spiral (triskele) in the chamber

One wonders what Daniel made of O'Kelly's revelations, and how it might have altered his thinking in relation to folklore. Folk memory is a very powerful thing. This might have been demonstrated in the case of the story in the locality of Newgrange suggesting that the Morning Star (Venus) shone into the chamber of the monument once every eight years, as recorded by Joseph Campbell in his 1959 book 'The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology"(4) Then there was the folklore collected in 1938 that suggested the Tuatha Dé Danann had built Newgrange using stones brought from the Mourne Mountains, another apparently wild and imaginative claim that had some basis in reality.

Even in the claim that "Nuda" officiated at Newgrange, the calendar was not too far off the mark. In the early texts, Newgrange is associated in particular with Elcmar, Dagda and Oengus. Dagda was chief of the gods, a kind of Tuatha Dé king, so to speak, and Elcmar was described as a "magician" and "original master of Brug na Bóinne".(5)

Unfortunately, I can only challenge Mr. Daniel posthumously, and as he is not here to defend himself, I must not take undue licence in criticising him for these shortcomings. I am glad that this diminution of folklore is not ubiquitous among modern archaeologists. As mentioned above, Michael O'Kelly outlined the mythical importance of Newgrange, and seemed to hold great reverence for the possibility that it was "a house of the dead and as an abode of spirits" which, he said, was a concept not contradicted by the findings of the excavation. O'Kelly felt that a connection between the archaeological evidence and the early literature was to be found in the older and "more genuine tradition".(6)

Daniel allowed only one statement in the 1960 calendar to stand: "It is at least true in this strange wild-cat account we have just quoted, that New Grange might well be described as belonging to 'the very, very old days'."

"It is our object in this book," he continued, "not only to describe the great tombs in the Bend of the Boyne but to set them in what appears to us their true prehistoric context, as far as the limitations of archaeology allow, eschewing the little people and Artemidoros".

One eschews the daoine sídhe at one's peril! Never dismiss the folklore...

References:
(1) Ó Ríordáin, Sean P., and Daniel, Glyn (1964), New Grange and the Bend of the Boyne, Thames and Hudson, p.19.
(2) Murphy, Anthony (2012), Newgrange – Monument to Immortality, Liffey Press, p.114.
(3) Ibid, p.170.
(4) Campbell (1991) [1959], pp.430-1.
(5) MacKillop, James (1998), Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, Oxford University Press, p.177.
(6) O'Kelly, Michael J. (1998) [1982], Newgrange: Archaeology, Art & Legend, Thames and Hudson, p.47.

Summer Solstice sunrise at Newgrange, Boyne Valley

Good morning from the Boyne Valley!

I'm delighted to share this beautiful photo of Summer Solstice sunrise at Newgrange/Síd in Broga (taken a few days after the actual day of solstice).

For a moment of the year,
the sun stops its run,
and stays awhile in the
northeast at dawn.
But, like everything in nature
the spiral will wind down once
more towards winter, when the sun
will come home again.

The big crowds that come to Síd in Broga on winter solstice are completely absent for summer solstice. I am glad for that! At 5am it's probably no surprise, but sometimes it's nice to be the only human figure walking among these magnificent remains...

The 12 days of Solstice - Day 11 - Winter Solstice sunrise viewed from the doorway of Newgrange

It's day 11 of my new series of photographs entitled 'The 12 days of Solstice'. This is the second-last image in the series. It shows the sun not long after it has risen on the shortest days of the year at Winter Solstice. The picture was taken just inside the entrance of the passage of Newgrange. Above my head in this image is the specially constructed aperture known as the 'roof box'. This is the portal which allows sunlight to penetrate the entire length of the passage and into the chamber. The light that enters through the actual doorway does not reach the chamber floor. The two beams of light are kept separate by the stone seen in the top of this image.

Immediately in front of the entrance is the large kerb stone, K1, which on its front side (the side facing the sun) has the famous tri-spiral design among other lavish engravings. At the time this photo was taken, the sun's light had already left the chamber again. It shines in there for 17 brief minutes. There is something very special about the quality of the light immediately at sunrise. As soon as the sun rises above the ridge known as Red Mountain (Roughgrange), its golden light reaches into the corridor of Newgrange and shines a narrow beam of light onto the darkened floor of its central chamber. It is at this moment that the year is seen to have reached its turning point. The old year dies and the new year is born. Dagda, the father god, yields ownership of Síd in Broga (Newgrange) to his son, Oengus Óg, the youthful sun.

From this moment, following a period of about a week when the sun's rising position has stood still on the horizon, it begins its slow movement back towards the east, and after a few weeks the light will get stronger and the days longer.

Time lapse video - winter evening setting sun illuminates southern chamber at Dowth megalithic monument

It was shaping up to be a lovely time lapse video. I wanted to record the setting sun shining into the southern chamber of Dowth. It's six days until Winter Solstice, and the sky was nice and clear, so I headed out to Dowth with the cameras hoping to catch the illumination of the chamber. As you can see, all was going well, but an encroaching Atlantic front - bringing rain - started to shroud the sun just at the crucial time, and cut off the light, which had begun to reach the chamber floor.

I guess I will just have to try again, if and when the opportunity arises.

Make sure to watch the video full screen and in 1080 high definition. (To do that, press play on the video, and when it starts playing click on the YouTube logo on bottom right. That will open the video in a new window. Then click the full screen and HD settings either side of the YouTube logo).

In the meantime, if you want to see some fantastic photos of a previous winter solstice illumination of Dowth by Anne Marie Moroney, click on this link.

Celebrating winter solstice season with a new series of images of Newgrange called 'The 12 Days of Solstice'

The first image from my new series called 'The 12 days of Solstice' shows the corbelled ceiling of the chamber
of Newgrange. This photo was taken with a wide-angle lens while lying on the floor of the chamber. The ceiling
was not disturbed during excavations and is undisturbed. The passage is at bottom, with the recesses partly
visible on left, top and right.

Today begins a 12-day countdown to the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, which is celebrated every year at the 5,200-year-old Newgrange monument in the Boyne Valley. This year, as a special celebration of the solstice season, I am unveiling a set of images - one per day until solstice - based upon the idea of the song '12 Days of Christmas'.

Because the date of Christmas was undoubtedly chosen to coincide with the ancient pre-Christian celebration of the shortest days, I thought it would be a nice idea to do something based loosely around the twelve days of Christmas. However, instead of beginning on the special day, the series of images will be finishing on that day - the Winter Solstice - with the 12th image.

The series of images I have chosen is made almost exclusively of pictures that have never been seen before - with the exception of one. They show various images of Newgrange - interior and exterior - which I hope will evoke a mood of reverence for the ancestors, and perhaps an inclination towards reflection and contemplation about the deeper meanings of Newgrange, and how these might  permeate into our own lives.

For me personally, Newgrange is an extremely sacred and potent place. The idea - propagated in the abundant folklore and mythology of the sacred monument - that it is a liminal place, or point of access to other realms, is something that brings a deeper meaning to what it should represent for us, as individuals, and collectively as a society.

Newgrange functions as a mandala of sorts. It represents a prehistoric society's vista into an all-encompassing cosmology. It represents, symbolically, the earth, but an earth that is connected intimately with the wider cosmos. That connection is dramatically played out on the shortest mornings of the year, when a blade of golden light illuminates the dark cave in an awesome display that provides, for the modern observer, a moment of profound rapture. But it represents, more than anything, an image of hope - hope on two levels. The first is the hope that we can see the light after darkness, in a physical sense and also a psychological and spiritual sense. The other is that there is something beyond this life, something out there, through the "magic window", along the pathway of light, in another realm of existence.

There is much about Newgrange that is mysterious. But, when you've been there often enough, there is much that is hidden in plain sight. The antiquarians who visited the Boyne Valley monuments were, in some cases, undoubtedly looking for treasure - artefacts - things that would perhaps give them wealth and fame. However, the real treasure of Newgrange is far greater than any trinket of gold or venerated object of stone.

The real treasure of Newgrange is that it can serve as a mandala for us. It connects us with ancestors, those to whom we owe our very existence, and whose struggles through the dark periods of life were not in vain. It allows us a symbolic representation of something that is beyond the humdrum of ordinary life - opening a portal for us, perhaps, allowing ingression into sacred and divine realms. Newgrange - because it has endured and is still accessible to this day - offers an opportunity to experience a rapture and an awe, a pure exhilaration at the miracles of our existence, and indeed a space in which to contemplate the deepest of life's mysteries, those which were undoubtedly pondered by the ancestors of the Neolithic.

Where have we come from?
Who are we? 
Why are we here?
What happens to us when we die?

I hope you enjoy this series of images. I am very blessed to have been able to access Newgrange on many levels over the past two decades. I am, in particular, extremely grateful for the permission from the OPW that I have had to photograph its interior on many occasions over the years. I am especially thankful for having been able to witness the solstice illumination of the chamber, back in 2010. It is a very special place. I hope these photographs give you some sense of just how special it is.

Anthony Murphy, December 10th 2016.
(The first day of solstice!)

Incredible 3D imagery of the inside of Newgrange allows us to be virtually there for winter solstice illumination

Some incredible images and videos have been created from 3D imagery of the inside of Newgrange. This artist's impression uses a 3D model, created by the Discovery Programme, which allows us, virtually, to be inside the monument. Using this imagery, Seán Doran has recreated the solstice illumination of the chamber, and it's beautiful.

Click the image below to put yourself in the interior of the chamber of this ancient megalithic passage-tomb and see what happens in there on the dawn of the shortest days of the year:




This gives a good idea what it's like to be standing in the chamber on winter solstice, something only the winter solstice lottery winners can usually do.

Sean tells Mythical Ireland that this rendering project is at an early stage, and that it is very much a "work in progress". Nevertheless, we think it's fantastic. See another render below. In this one, you can click and drag the image to take a look around:



The lighting simulation, according to Sean, is a "brute force Global illumination solve for a light source passing across the roofbox". So the result is accurate in terms of the way light would flow into the passage and chamber, but not necessarily fully accurate in terms of the intensity of light or even the colour. At this stage, the model is completely untextured. That's why I can't wait to see further results!

Here are some still images from the render.  We are very keen to keep an eye on Seán's work as it progresses. There is a huge amount of valuable research going on in relation to the megalithic monuments using very modern technologies. We are, effectively, being allowed to look at monuments in a whole new way.

A view from the rear recess of the light streaming into the chamber, with the triskele visible in the glow.

In these simulations, the famous triskele (tri-spiral or triple spiral) emblem carved into the side stone of the rear recess of the chamber is made visible in the glow. The folklore of Newgrange once suggested this would happen.

The computer imagery puts us right there inside Newgrange.

You can find some of Sean's imagery on his Flickr page here.
You can see some of the Discovery Programme's 3D models of Irish monuments here.

Do the myths about Newgrange and the Boyne Valley mounds offer an insight into their function?

"Myths are just stories," a historian once told me. As far as he was concerned, they were stories that were made up for sheer entertainment. In that mindset, myths are not metaphors for anything, and they certainly don't contain detail about real history, or any information such as astronomical data.

The winter solstice illumination of Newgrange by the sun. Composite © Anthony Murphy.

However, students of mythology know the truth is much more complex than that. Many myths are metaphorical. Some do refer to actual events. And there are stories that appear, in certain interpretations, to contain astronomical information.

My own view is that myths should never be dismissed as mere stories. However, the truth is that in most cases we can only travel so far along the road of hypothesis and speculation, no matter how well grounded it is, because often we are unable to discern the true age of a myth, or how it might have been altered by the voices of time.

In the case of Newgrange, Dowth and Knowth (the former two in particular), there are myths and folk tales that appear to offer a tantalising possibility - that they contain information about these sites and the function of these monuments that might go all the way back into deep prehistory. And so I will discuss some of these myths and folk beliefs in the context of possibility only - without drawing any definitive conclusions, except to acknowledge at the outset that I am excited about the possibilities, which may tinge my investigation with a hint of subjectivity.

Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. Images by the author.

Joseph Campbell

I've written in several publications about the Venus connection at Newgrange. Joseph Campbell, writing in The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, referred to a local story that suggested that at sunrise on one day in eight years, the morning star rises and casts its beam into the chamber. This story was recounted, it would appear, before the excavation and restoration of Newgrange in the 1960s, work which resulted in the leading archaeologist Michael O'Kelly witnessing, in 1967, the light from the winter solstice sun entering the chamber. Prior to the restoration, neither sun nor Venus (nor any heavenly body) could be seen from the chamber because of the subsidence of the passage cap stones during the five millennia since Newgrange was constructed.

Of particular intrigue is the fact that archaeologists maintain Newgrange was "sealed up" within a few centuries of being built after cairn material slipped off the top and covered the kerb and entrance, and that its passage and chamber lay concealed for about four millennia until local landowner Charles Campbell rediscovered the entrance in 1699AD.

Another folk belief in the 1930s, recounted recently in this blog, told how the Tuatha Dé Danann brought stones from the Mourne Mountains for the building of the mounds. During the excavations in the 1960s, it was indeed discovered that there were water-rolled granite cobbles at Newgrange (which had been hidden beneath the cairn slip). These, it has been revealed, came from the Cooley Peninsula, but have their origin in the Mournes.

In his 1990 paper, Time, Memory, and the Boyne Necropolis, John Carey examined aspects of two stories - one about Newgrange and one about Dowth. The Newgrange story, from Tochmarc Étaíne, The Wooing of Étaíne, tells of how the Dagda sent Elcmar away so that he might have illicit relations with Elcmar's wife, Bóinn. The Dagda worked a magic spell, so that Elcmar would seem that he is away for a single day, when in fact he had been away for nine months. Dagda lay with Bóinn and the child Oengus Óg was conceived and born. The Dowth story, from the Dindshenchas, told how the king, Bresal, had brought the men of Ireland to build him a tower to reach heaven. The king's sister cast a spell on the sun to make it stand still, so there would be endless day to allow the tower be built.

The myths of the Boyne monument appear to indicate control of time.

Carey makes a very interesting observation: "I am aware of no Irish legends associating the control or construction of sacred sites with the manipulation of time other than those which concern the tumuli of the Boyne valley."

In the tale Altram Tighe Dá Mheadar (The Fosterage of the House of Two Vessels), Manannán advises Oengus on how to take Newgrange from Elcmar: "Command him not to come (again) to the house from which he departs until ogam and achu are mingled together, until heaven and earth are mingled together, and until the sun and moon are mingled together." The mingling of heaven and earth could imply the mating of sky with the earth-mound Newgrange during winter solstice, while the latter reference to sun and moon being mingled might refer to an eclipse, something that I think is implied in the story about Dowth, in which the magic spell on the sun is broken when Bresal commits incest with his sister and a sudden darkness comes upon the land. (For further discussion of this theory, see Island of the Setting Sun, chapter 6.) I have discussed at length on the Mythical Ireland website and in my books the idea that the mound builders were competent astronomers, whose knowledge of the complex movements of the moon (and by extension the predictable patterns of eclipses) were recorded in stone, and inherent in the design of the monuments.

Ronald Hicks

Writing in 2009, Ronald Hicks of Ball State University suggested, in a paper entitled Cosmography In Tochmarc Étaíne, that the story of The Wooing of Étaíne was "meant as an allegory about lunar cycles in which Étaín represents the moon". These lunar cycles, writes Hicks, include the 19-year Metonic Cycle, which was"likely to have been of interest to the ancient Irish".

In one part of The Wooing of Étaín, Midir's wife Fuamnach became jealous of her husband's new wife, Étaín. By magic, Fuamnach turned Étaín into a butterfly (some versions say a fly) and raised a storm that buffeted the butterfly around Ireland for seven years.

At last, however, a chance gust of wind blew her through a window of the fairy palace of Angus on the Boyne. The immortals cannot be hidden from each other, and Angus knew what she was. Unable to release her altogether from the spell of Fuamnach, he made a sunny bower for her, and planted round it all manner of choice and honey-laden flowers, on which she lived as long as she was with him, while in the secrecy of the night he restored her to her own form and enjoyed her love.

There is only one "window" at Newgrange - the sky window, or roof box, as it's more commonly known. This aperture allows the sun to shine into the chamber on winter solstice. Perhaps the "sunny bower" is the chamber of Newgrange, illuminated by the rays of the rising sun on Winter Solstice. I discuss this and some of the other above mentioned myths about Newgrange in this video:

Newgrange at midsummer - the solstice and the longest days of the year in video and photos

I had the pleasure of spending a couple of evenings out at Newgrange this week, following the very recent Summer Solstice.Tonight's visit was especially beautiful. I saw the sun going down and there was a beautiful sky at the time. This was followed by a lovely red sky and a vivid lingering twilight.

Taken tonight, a week after the Summer Solstice, with the sun's setting position not having moved much in a week, you can see how the sunset at this time of year is opposite the winter sunrise, towards which the passage opening points.

From here on in, the sun begins its slow retreat southwards, with the inevitable shortening of the days that comes with it.

Right now, the twilight lasts throughout the night. This will keep happening for another couple of weeks, but after that the evenings will start to draw in again.

This is something that must have had quite a dramatic impact on the minds and lives of the people of the Stone Age. The passage of the sun from its strongest to its weakest is surely something around which the monuments and some of their mythology was based. It's easy to see why this would be the case. The long days of light in the summer seem everlasting. This might have been what the legend of Dowth referred to.

A beautiful red sky ensued after sunset at Newgrange tonight.

Although I love this time of year, and the warmer and brighter days, they are always tinged with a sense of sadness too, because these days don't last. The endless twilight of midsummer is fleeting, and the year turns again quickly. The retreat of the sun back towards the south gave rise, I have no doubt, to numerous myths involving themes such as darkness and the vanquishing of one foe or hero by another. At Newgrange, this is best exemplified in the myth of Aonghus Óg, who takes Síd in Broga (the old name for Newgrange) from his father, Dagda, the chief of the gods. He does this by asking him for possession of the Brug for one day and one night. When the Dagda asks for the return of the Sídhe, Aonghus says "all of time is made up of night and day" and thus, through cunning, takes permanent possession of Newgrange from his father.

Perhaps Aonghus Óg, Aonghus the young, represents the coming of the new sun at winter solstice, and the growing of the year that results, and he takes possession of the mound from the older, dying sun of the previous year.

Watching the northerly march of the sun as we head towards the longest days of the year

I realise that I haven't written a blog post in a while. It's not that I haven't been doing anything. Quite the opposite. One of the things that's been keeping me busy is photography. Among many other things, I've been tracking the northerly progress of the sunsets over the past month or so as we march inevitably towards summer solstice and the longest days of the year. It's just over three weeks away now, and as much as I love this time of year, personally watching the sunsets is always tinged with sadness for me. And in this blog post, I will attempt to explain why.

The sadness finds its source in a number of places. I think that its difficult to live at any latitude so removed from the equator that the difference in the length of day from midwinter to midsummer is enormous. It's not so difficult to live in Ireland in summer, when the days are long and there is a great spurt of life and growth evident all around. Winter is a very different story. The days are short, and are often shortened further by a darkness that is creeping and all-encompassing. Immersed in this darkness, all you can do is accept it, and perhaps embrace it, and wait for the days to lengthen.

A recent sunset over the Boyne from Millmount.

Summer then arrives rather abruptly. In late March, the clocks go forward by an hour. Where previously the sun was setting around 6pm, now it sets at 7, and it doesn't get dark until nearly 8. Because it's the time of equinox, the sun's rising and setting positions on the eastern and western horizons are moving at their greatest speed. The days are getting longer rapidly from Imbolc (the ancient Celtic spring festival of early February), through spring equinox, and on towards Bealtaine (early May). Before Daylight Saving Time kicks in, you are probably driving to and from work in the dark, and find that the only daylight activities you can partake in (apart from whatever work you do) are at weekends, when you try to "cram it all in".

From late March onward, you can start to enjoy the "stretch in the evenings", as it is commonly referred to here in Ireland. And very quickly, within a month, you've gone from driving home in the dark to enjoying brightness until well after 9pm.

Tonight, (May 29th, 2016) I watched and photographed the sun as it went down beneath the horizon from Millmount, a mound said to have been built by the Normans in the 12th century, but which local folklore says is an ancient burial mound. The sun finally disappeared beneath the horizon at 9.33pm. As I write, it's 10.29pm and it's still not dark.

Now don't get me wrong. I love this time of year. And I love the long evenings. I enjoy the extra light. It invigorates my spirit. There is something about the lingering of the light that I have always connected with hope, and vitality. I suppose there's probably nothing unusual about that.

However, part of the sadness that I feel, even at this time of year, stems from the realisation that inevitably the sun will reach a certain maximum setting azimuth and, after halting there for a few days, will begin to start heading south again. No sooner do the glorious days of summer arrive and suddenly the pendulum swings against us. From Millmount, the sun at midsummer appears to set over Hill of Rath, in the direction of another hill at Collon known as the Black Hill. I wonder if this name is one of many place names in Ireland that might possibly be explained through such astronomical alignments. Is it called the Black Hill because it marks the place from which the sun turns back, towards the shorter days and darker evenings?

Today was a particularly glorious day in the Boyne Valley. It was warm and sunny and the whole valley is alive with the business of summer. People were out in droves, walking, playing, relaxing. It was one of those days when you might say to yourself, "if it was like this all the time you'd never want to leave."

But some of us are so married to the place - despite the sometimes endless rain, and the short cold days of winter - that we never leave it anyway.

The swifts and swallows and house martins, having recently arrived back from their faraway wintering grounds in Africa, perhaps conversely remind us of our own rooting to place, our connection to home, something that, until the invention of powered flight, was largely intrinsic to our lives as humans. We might have ventured across the globe as a species, but locally, once we find home, we tend to stay there. And sometimes, bound to that spot on the earth by our sense of belonging, and perhaps reinforced by our sense of community, we might wish that, like the swallow, we could just alight into the great air and fly off somewhere else for the winter, leaving the harsh chill behind.

One of the other things that makes me sad, even on these lovely long evenings of summer, is the fact that the relentless movement of the sun, and the consequent brightening and darkening of the days, is an eternal reminder of the fleeting and changing nature of our own lives. There, reflected in the everyday movements of that golden ball upon which we depend for so much, we see in vivid reality the corruptible nature of our own carnal selves. Just as the day rises tentatively in the east, and the noon comes brightly to strengthen the day, the evening arrives all too swiftly and the day is spent. All this is extended and magnified in the great drama of the seasons, and all too quickly the autumn arrives, with its fallen leaves and drooping spirits ushering in the harsh winter.

The setting sun in early May viewed from Millmount.

So even as we watch the sun dropping down onto the far green-grey hills in the warm evening, we contemplate the relentless march of time, and of season, and how the winters and summers rise and fall with alarming haste. And we think back, perhaps, to the metaphorical dark and bright seasons in our own lives - times when we might have enjoyed a fulsome vitality, or times when maybe there was darkness or a lack of light. We might think of people - friends, relatives or acquaintances - upon whose lives the sun set all too soon.

All of which gives us good reason to enjoy, as much as possible, while we have the time, and while we might be able to, the glorious coming of the long evenings of summer.

And perhaps, as we watch that sinking red orb strike the horizon, we might remember also the ancient ancestors who possibly stood at the same spot and watched that same sun disappear into the earth.

Spectacular Summer Solstice sunset over Newgrange

The clouds looked ominous as I headed out from home towards the Boyne Valley. As I got closer to Staleen, on the southern banks of the Boyne opposite Newgrange, I could sense that something dramatic was about to happen in the sky. In my rush to get out there, I left my 18-105mm lens behind (at home) and only had my 12-24mm wide angle lens. I grabbed my camera and ran down the path along the Boyne canal. I was breathless when I got to the location from which the above photograph was taken. Within moments I was clicking away as the sun appeared below a great bank of dark cloud. For a few moments, it was spectacular. The sun lit up the whole underbelly of the cloud, creating a dramatic sky. It might have been raining - meaning that I had to wipe the lens pretty much after every shot - but it was perfect! The moment had finally arrived. Sunset on the longest day of the year had come. Orion carried the golden ball of light down into the earth. And it was beautiful.

Below is a sequence of four unedited jpegs showing just how beautiful it was.

A few pictures of the completed High Man art installation

The completed 'High Man' artwork, shown on Summer Solstice.
Photo: www.facebook.com/copterviewireland

The finished High Man project, sitting on a winter solstice
alignment with Newgrange in the background and Mound A
in the foreground. Photo: www.facebook.com/copterviewireland

Artists Richard Moore and Derek McCluskey, along with Anthony Murphy
and his five kids are all shown standing in the "sun" in this image to give a
sense of scale. Photo: www.facebook.com/copterviewireland

Walking through the giant man . . . another view of the artwork.
Photo: www.facebook.com/copterviewireland

The Evening Star setting at Newgrange, Ireland

The Evening Star, Venus, setting behind Newgrange. Click image to see larger version.

More than 5,000 years ago, the people who built Newgrange peered out into the heavens and watched the movements of the sun, moon, planets and stars. They recorded some of these apparently complex movements on the giant stones which make up their enormous passage-mounds. A folk tale about Newgrange says that once in eight years, the morning star (Venus) shines into its chamber on the morning of the winter solstice. The above photo was taken coming up to summer solstice, with Venus on the opposite side of the sky to the winter solstice position. Mercury is also in this picture, higher up, above Newgrange, but is very difficult to see.

An eerie mist surrounds the cattle on the fields in front of Newgrange, with Venus to upper right.

Newgrange and Mound B with mist forming on the Boyne in the afterglow.

At the Whitechurch standing stones in Co. Wexford

This is me at the site of three standing stones at Whitechurch, County Wexford, last week. It was really something special to see an alignment of three standing stones, which are quite obviously lined up towards Slieve Coillte, which you can see in the background of the photograph. The alignment is too far north for summer solstice sunrise, but may point towards moonrise on the major northern standstill of the moon. Further investigation will take place to determine the alignment.