Sadness and the monuments: remembering the ancestors and embracing this one life

(Or 'Ramblings and Reflections upon sadness', part II)

Another aspect of sadness in relation to the megalithic monuments is the feeling of melancholy  engendered by thinking about the ancestors, and the lives that they endured, and the sometimes harsh existences they lived through. And to what end? So that we can exist on this day? So that we too can endure the fullness of life, and all its agonies and all its ecstasies?

I think part of the sadness relates to the temporal, and temporary, nature of our physical existences. As I wrote in Newgrange: Monument to Immortality, "we are here only for a short time". We look at the magnificent megalithic edifices, those wondrous temples of stone from the ancient world, and we stand in admiration of a society of people who created something so powerfully enduring, so permanent, in an ever-changing and ever-vanishing world. And that sums up a powerful part of the human experience on this earth. We are born. We live a short life. We die. And what do we leave behind, as a memorial of our brief existence here?

The builders of Newgrange created something powerfully enduring in an ever-changing world.

In Land of the Ever-Living Ones, I addressed the issue of ancestors in the beautiful dialogue between the sean-draoi, the wise old man, and the young boy. The sean-draoi tries to impress upon the boy that we must never forget the ancestors, because we are them and they are us.

"We are the ancestors," the sean-draoi declares, to the bemusement of the young boy.

"We are on a winding trail, an ancestral pathway that is much longer than any road we will ever walk in this world. It winds out of the furthest reaches of the past, and leads onwards to some unknown destiny, far off in the distant future. If we were to forget from whence this path emerged, from our own mothers and fathers of the long forgotten yesteryear, if we were to forsake our own journey along this path, would we not also be denying the magical future, the unknowable destiny that awaits our myriad descendants yet to come? Are there not a thousand, nay a million, even more, of our offspring who will look back along the path to remember us, their distant progenitors, those who continued the pilgrimage on this great path that leads back to the very dawn of time itself?"

"We are the meeting point of ancestors and descendants. The track leading from the past, and the road heading off into the future, are joined, here and now, with us. We are what binds ancestors to progeny, forebears to descendants, yesterday to tomorrow. We have a very special place in the life of the world, and we must recognise and honour it, holding fast to the onerous pathway beneath our feet, and all the time remembering ancestors who have brought us to this point. Some day we will be the ancestor, lifted off this worldly trackway and brought aloft towards the heavenly realm, and although our own feet will no longer tread the sacred pathway of life, those of our children and our children’s children will, we hope, find their way on the never-ending trail from ancestor to descendant."

It's so beautiful. And yet to tragic. And poignant. None of us will endure the harsh contract that life imposes upon us. "We are locked into a binding and irreversible contract with life, a treaty that insists upon death for every last one of us, with no exception".(1) The 17th century poet James Shirley, in his poem Death the Leveller, wrote:

The glories of our blood and state

     Are shadows, not substantial things;

There is no armour against Fate;

     Death lays his icy hand on kings:

               Sceptre and Crown

               Must tumble down,

And in the dust be equal made

With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

The following short film that I made a few years ago tries to capture some sense of the sadness relating to the passing of the ancestors, and of the temporal and fleeting nature of our earthly existence:(2) 

 

Remembering the ancestors at Dowth, Ireland from Anthony Murphy on Vimeo.

Faced with this awful reality, that we must all tumble down into the dusty grave of death, what are we to do?  We have but one choice. To live life, and all the consequences that that choice entails. Joseph Campbell has some good advice for it:

“All life stinks and you must embrace that with compassion.”  (3)

“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.”

“You can't say life is useless because it ends in the grave.”

Of course, all the above is predicated on the belief that "this is it", that this life is the only life, and that when we die, we are going into a grave, and we will be extinguished forever.

If there is one thing that can be said about the ancient mound of Síd in Broga/Newgrange (and there are many great things that can be said about it), it's that the people who built it were keenly participating in life and its mysteries, at the same time, preparing themselves for what might lie beyond. In Newgrange: Monument to Immortality, I postulated that the design of the monument is in tune with aspects of the near death experience (NDE), with its dark tunnel leading towards the light. We might call them primitive, but our distant forebears were pragmatic about life and death. They sensed that there was something beyond this life, and aspects of this belief survived into later times in the form of stories about wondrous otherworlds and places or realms where people lived on in happiness.

"All the greatest spiritual traditions of the world...have told us clearly that death is not the end. They have all handed down a vision of some sort of life to come, which infuses this life that we are leading now with sacred meaning. But despite their teachings, modern society is largely a spiritual desert where the majority imagine that this life is all that there is... Believing fundamentally that this life is the only one, modern people have developed no long-term vision. So there is nothing to restrain them from plundering the planet for their own immediate ends and from living in a selfish way that could prove fatal for the future."(4)

And so it becomes clear that the sadness that I sometimes feel at the monuments is not always one that's inherently part of those monuments, but rather a sadness that I bring from my modern world and its attendant psychosis, and its bulldozers. We see fit to destroy in order to create. We deem it normal to rip the earth asunder, because in our own shortsightedness, we think that this is all there is, so we'd better make the most of it, even if that means depriving our descendants of a hospitable planet.

Despite my great love for the monuments, there are yet some hard questions that must be asked. To shy away from them would be a disingenuous act. An honest appraisal of our relation to the mounds, and the landscape, and the past, and the ancestors, requires us to remove the mask and to see ourselves as both ancestors and descendants. What would we have done, in the same situation, in the past? And what are we likely to do in the future? Does anything really change? Do we change at all?

We might ask Newgrange if it should ever have been built at all.

At Newgrange, "we wish that we could scale the fence, walk right up to its gleaming facade, and ask the very monument to speak to us of matters cosmic, of creation and the journey of life and, ultimately, why we are here and where we are going".(5)

Could I even dare to suggest that, at Newgrange, I might even ask it, "should you have been built at all?"

Was its construction not the beginning of this sometimes awful phase of humanity, the one in which we rip the earth up to build our castles of mortal life on foundations of sand? Has the result of this "civilisation" of ours not been the gradual removal and detachment of humans from the natural world? And has that divorce of human from wilderness not been one of the greatest crimes against the planet? (I'm not blaming the construction of Newgrange for the state of the planet, but merely opening up a line of enquiry here.)

"Modern industrial society is a fanatical religion. We are demolishing, poisoning, destroying all life-systems on the planet. We are signing IOUs our children will not be able to pay ... We are acting as if we were the last generation on the planet. Without a radical change in heart, in mind, in vision, the earth will end up like Venus, charred and dead."(6)

When we left the forests, and the antediluvian hunter-gatherer life of the Mesolithic, were we not beginning on this frightful march towards oblivion? Could we yet contemplate the notion that there was someone who stood watching the construction of Síd in Broga all those 50 centuries ago, who observed with bewilderment the emergence of a new phase of human madness?

To be continued...


References and footnotes:
(1) Murphy, Anthony (2012), Newgrange: Monument to Immortality, p.134.
(2) I should add that several times in this movie I mention the "men" who built Dowth. This is not an intentionally sexist statement, but rather a repetition of the myth about Dowth, which says that the king commanded "all the men of Erin" to build it.
(3) Campbell, Joseph, Pathways to Bliss.
(4) Sogyal Rinpoche (2002), The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, p.8.
(5) Murphy (2012), p.10.
(6) Former Brazilian Minister for the Environment, Jose Antonio Lutzenberger (quoted in the Sunday Times, London, March 1991)

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. 

An early morning trip to Loughcrew to observe whether the passage of Cairn U is aligned to Imbolc sunrise

In his 1983 book, The Stars and the Stones: Ancient Art and Astronomy in Ireland, Martin Brennan suggested that the passage of Cairn U, one of the smaller cairns on Slieve na Calliagh (known today as Carnbane East) at Loughcrew, was aligned on the November/February cross-quarter sunrises. One team of observers was situated in Cairn U on November 3rd 1980, which was five days before the correct date for Samhain cross-quarter on November 8th. Brennan implies, although falls short of explicitly stating, that Cairn U is aligned to the cross-quarter sunrises. Regrettably, no further observations were possible, due to weather (not altogether unsurprising due to the Irish climate!) until November 12th.(1)

The passage of Cairn U in the pre-dawn sky of February 3rd.

I was unaware of any photographic proof extent showing the sun aligning with the passage of Cairn U. Probably the best-known photographer of ancient megalithic sites and their alignments is Ken Williams of Shadows & Stone. In personal communications, Ken indicated to me that although he had been at Cairn U around the time of the cross-quarter sunrises, and although he had some photos, he hadn't been there on the exact day.

I set out from Drogheda at 6.25am with the intention of getting to Loughcrew (which can take an hour or so by road) and climbing up the hill to be ready for sunrise, which occurs at around 8.08am. With all the camera gear, the walk up the hill is quite laborious!

Cairn U looking down the passage from the end recess towards the southeastern sky.

With a red sky forming because of some cloud towards the southeast, it was clear that the sun would come up in the approximate direction to which the passage of Cairn U was pointing, with me positioned in the rear recess (photo above).

The sun was obscured by cloud for the first few minutes after the actual moment of sunrise. So I was unable to make direct observation at the moment the sun was rising above the horizon.  However, what was immediately clear was that the sun's position was still somewhat to the south of where it needed to be for a direct alignment. I observed the sun's azimuthal position from the light that it was projecting on to the clouds. Crouched in the rear recess, I couldn't see the sun or its light. However, on leaning slightly into the left-hand recess, I could see the sun coming out from behind the clouds in alignment with the passage. This is shown in the photo below.

The sun appears from behind cloud in alignment with the passage of Cairn U (sort-of!)

It was a great thrill to see the sun emerging though. I suspect it will be maybe a week or so before the sun is rising directly in alignment to the rear of the end recess - but unfortunately this is just a rough guess and there is no empirical method to my guesstimate! Perhaps a return visit next week might be in order.

A closer view of the sun's appearance from the interior of Cairn U.

The alignment today was such that I had to lean towards the left-hand recess of Cairn U in order to see the sun through the passageway. Perhaps the cairn focuses on a range of sunrises, maybe lasting a couple of weeks. This is something that requires further observation.

Megalithic art on the side stone of the left-hand recess of Cairn U.

One very, very interesting thing which I did not realise until this morning is the fact that today's sunrise, as viewed from Cairn U, was coming up over the Hill of Tara in the far distance. I imagine that is not a coincidence. Neighbouring Cairn T faces the Hill of Slane (looking across Hill of Lloyd) for equinox sunrise. Some of the cairns on Carnbane West point to cairns on Carnbane East. I put the telephoto lens on the camera to zoom in for the shot of Tara from Cairn U below:

About 15 minutes after sunrise. The Hill of Tara is located at the clump of trees towards the left.

It's such a great pleasure to be able to observe these astronomical occurrences at prehistoric buildings. There are numinous qualities to such moments because they transcend temporal boundaries and take us back, in a way that is both spiritually and empirically connective, to a remote era when our early ancestors observed heavenly phenomena. We can only conjecture at a possible greater purpose behind such alignments, and inevitably such conjecture takes us into realms that are both scientific and spiritual. On the one hand, early people were marking out the distinct patterns of the sky, making the ancient passage-tombs of Ireland primordial sundials (and doubtlessly moondials too). But their construction was such that they are a statement, tacit or explicit, of permanence, of longevity, in a world where the cycles of nature spun all too fast, especially where humans themselves are concerned. In the Neolithic, a great many people would not live to see even one completion of what was known in later Irish as the Naoidheachda, meaning "the nineteenth" - the 19-year cycle of the moon which today is known as the Metonic Cycle. The best a neolithic cairn builder could hope for was to see two complete Metonic Cycles. There were no elders in the New Stone Age, certainly not in the sense that we have elders today. Spiritual elders, perhaps, but not aged octogenarians or centenarians. At 40, you were a wise elder of the Neolithic community. At 50, you might have been seen as a freak of nature.

Furthermore, the ancient passage-cairns weave a connective web suggestive of awareness or consciousness of a greater cosmos, in which the sun and astral bodies are not so much seen as things that are "out there", totally beyond reach or influence, but rather things with which humans and the animate world have a distinct interaction. The light and heat of the sun can be seen to directly influence growth and seasonal patterns in nature, in addition to the many migratory patterns which would have been observable in the vicinity of the Boyne and Slieve na Calliagh tombs in the Neolithic. The moon's distinct and powerful effect on the tides is something that Alexander Thom remarked might have been known since time immemorial. 

The labour involved in creating cairns on hilltops must not be underestimated. Even a fit young person finds the climb to the summit of Slieve na Calliagh an exertive and physically demanding activity. Imagine repeating this exertion, with the additional burden of carrying a boulder, or several boulders. When one factors weather and the lack of any significant capable engineering or construction technology into the equation, the building of the cairns on the hills of Loughcrew seems a gargantuan task. These structures certainly deserve to be described as immense and monumental. As well as being prodigious feats of construction, they are monumental memorials to the humans who laboured hard to complete them. Their fastidious observations of discernible natural phenomena were ingeniously combined with an imaginative vista which opened towards realms that were supernatural, transcendental and otherworldy while retaining a physical connection to the telluric, sublunary sphere. At Loughcrew, this world and the next are seen to coalesce. Up there, on the hills of the hag, one gets a sense of detachment from the ordinary mortal dimension. Reaching out towards the sky above and the horizon beyond, the young humans who had just discovered agriculture and who were setting in place the foundations of civilisation, stepped out through the inter-dimensional threshold of the cairns into whatever realms of the spirit or imagination lay beyond.

There is yet at least one place on the earth where the ancient spirit dwells. When the fast-revolving clock of astronomical circuits ticks down on each of us at our own appointed time, we might aspire to those realms that were so anciently envisioned. Can we yet countenance the possibility that we will perhaps some day meet those who left their bones behind in the cairns of Loughcrew, out there, beyond that threshold?

References:
(1) Brennan (1983).

"O Men of Dea, let a high mind and high courage rise within you now in the face of the battle"

One of the most famous battles of Irish myth is the Battle of the White Strand (Cath Finntrága/Battle of Ventry), in which Daire Donn, the "High King of the Great World", comes with a massed army assembled under various other kings with the purpose of invading Ireland and putting it under tribute. The story has its known origins in 15th century manuscripts, but there are references to it as early as the 12th century, and, as with many of our ancient stories, its true antiquity is unknown.

The massed armies have one major obstacle to their ambitions - the warrior hero Fionn Mac Cumhaill and his soliders, the Fianna, who have to defend Ireland against this onslaught. The lengthy text describes a protracted and multifaceted battle between the opposing forces. Folklorists suggest the story's motif - that of an interminable battle, serves as an example of "the everlasting fight".(1)

With the might of the massed forces of the world against them, it might seem that the outcome is predetermined. However, the Fianna make an extraordinary and heroic effort, somehow managing to stem the tide, despite repeated assaults on the shore of Finntraigh by various sorties and a seemingly endless onslaught from the numberless armies of the world.

Principal among the allies of the apparently massively outnumbered Fianna, although they are initially not involved in the battle and at the first petitioning appear uninterested in helping them, are the Tuatha Dé Danann.

Taistellach (whose name means wanderer or traveller) is asked by Conn Crither to go to the house of Bran, and ask him to gather all of the Tuatha Dé Danann to help the Fianna in their mighty battle. Bran goes to Dun Sesnain, where the Dé Dananns are holding a feast.(2)

"There is a greater thing than this for you to do," said Bran; and he tells them the whole story. Sesnan replies, saying that his son Dolb will go to Bodb Dearg in Sidhe Bean Finn above Magh Femen. But Bodb Dearg (who presumably is the chief of the Dé Dananns at this time) is initially reluctant.

"Young man," said Bodb Dearg, "we are in no way bound to help the men of Ireland out of that strait." "Do not say that," said Dolb, "for there is not a king's son or a prince or a leader of the Fianna of Ireland without having a wife or a mother or a foster-mother or a sweetheart of the Tuatha de Danann; and it is good help they have given you every time you were in want of it."

Ventry beach, the setting of Cath Finntrága (Battle of the White Strand). Photo: Christian Faulhammer.

"I give my word," said Bodb Dearg, "it is right to give a good answer to so good a messenger." With that he sent word to the Tuatha de Danaan in every place where they were, and they gathered to him. The army of the Tuatha Dé Danann makes its way to the White Strand, where they are given great welcome by Abarthach:

"O Men of Dea, let a high mind and high courage rise within you now in the face of the battle. For the doings of every one among you will be told till the end of the world; and let you fulfil now the big words you have spoken in the drinking-houses."

"Rise up, Glas, son of Dremen," said Bodb Dearg then, "and tell out to the King of the World that I am come to do battle."

References:
(1) MacKillop, James (1998), Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, Oxford University Press, p.78.
(2) The retelling of this part of the story is either quoted or paraphrased from Lady Gregory's Gods and Fighting Men.

All the dead kings came to me - Francis Ledwidge and the legend of the sleeping horsemen of Rosnaree

There's a poem by Francis Ledwidge that I really love. Ledwidge was born at Slane and died in the Great War in 1917 at the age of 29. He loved the Boyne Valley, and shortly before he died he wrote of his great longing for home in a letter to fellow poet Katherine Tynan:

Francis Ledwidge

"I want to see again my wonderful mother, and to walk by the Boyne to Crewbawn and up through the brown and grey rocks of Crocknaharna. You have no idea of how I suffer with this longing for the swish of the reeds at Slane and the voices I used to hear coming over the low hills of Currabwee. Say a prayer that I may get this leave, and give us a condition my punctual return and sojourn till the war is over."

Unfortunately, he never came home. He and five others were killed when a shell exploded beside them at the Battle of Ypres.

The Boyne Canal and River at Staleen at dusk, looking upstream towards Rossnaree (on the left).

One of his poems, The Dead Kings, interests me greatly.

All the dead kings came to me

At Rosnaree, where I was dreaming,

A few stars glimmered through the morn,

And down the thorn the dews were streaming.

And every dead king had a story

Of ancient glory, sweetly told.

It was too early for the lark,

But the starry dark had tints of gold.

I listened to the sorrows three

Of that Eire passed into song.

A cock crowed near a hazel croft,

And up aloft dim larks winged strong.

And I, too, told the kings a story

Of later glory, her fourth sorrow:

There was a sound like moving shields

In high green fields and the lowland furrow.

And one said: ‘We who yet are kings

Have heard these things lamenting inly.’

Sweet music flowed from many a bill

And on the hill the morn stood queenly.

And one said: ‘Over is the singing,

And bell bough ringing, whence we come;

With heavy hearts we’ll tread the shadows,

In honey meadows birds are dumb.’

And one said: ‘Since the poets perished

And all they cherished in the way,

Their thoughts unsung, like petal showers

Inflame the hours of blue and grey.’

And one said: ‘A loud tramp of men

We’ll hear again at Rosnaree.’

A bomb burst near me where I lay.

I woke, ’twas day in Picardy.



Rosnaree (more often spelt Rossnaree these days) is on the southern bank of the Bend of the Boyne, overlooking the famous Fiacc's Pool, where Fionn Mac Cumhaill is said to have caught the Salmon of Knowledge. It is close to the river ford (áth) which would have been the main crossing point over the Boyne in ancient times. It is the place where the Boyne river swelled up so that Cormac Mac Art's body could not be brought to be buried at Brug na Bóinne.

I wonder, when reading some of the lines of Ledwidge's poem, whether it is perhaps infused with elements of a familiar legend from Rosnaree, one that might involve dead kings and the spectre of a loud tramp of men returning to haunt its woods. Being a native of the area, Ledwidge would have undoubtedly been familiar with some of its stories.

There is a legend about Rosnaree which tells of sleeping soldiers. It is a familiar story, being similar to that told about Garrett's Fort(1) at Hacklim, outside Ardee in Co. Louth.

Rossnaree and the River Boyne from Bing Maps.

The Rosnaree version of the story talks about a man who encountered a light at a fort near Rosnaree, close to the Boyne. He entered into the fort to find a lot of bags hanging on the walls and one of the bags had a sword stuck in it. This story was recounted to a collector from the National Folklore Collection in 1938 by Navan resident James Neill (aged 74), who in turn had heard the tale from an elderly gentleman called Johnny Murray:

He went over and he was lifting up the sword and according as he was lifting it there was a man's head lifted up from this big bag and a horse along with him, and he was riding the horse, and as according as he drew out the sword there were horsemen rising all around the wall. They were nearly clear out of where they were and he got afeerd and he let the sword drop back in, and as soon as he did he was told, 'Go home, you coward.'  I disremember the regiment he'd have lifted out of prison if he lifted up the sword altogether.(2)(3)

Legends of a sleeping army waiting for a hero to come and rouse them for some great battle are present in other parts of Ireland too (such as at The Curragh, Co. Kildare, and Lough Gur in Limerick). Gearóid Iarla (Earl Garrett, Gerald) is sometimes the one who is the chief of the chthonic army. At Hacklim, some versions say it is Fionn Mac Cumhaill. The messianic theme of the legend in its various forms is overtly political, the clear premise being that a great leader from the past will return, from a supernatural subterranean domain, leading a great army to restore glory to Ireland. In the context of a country under the sway of foreign rule and oppression, it is no wonder that such tales might have been commonplace in Ireland.

The rousing of the army will happen because a prophesied hero (those who tried and failed are invariably referred to in less than favourable terms, such as "coward") will pull a sword out of a wall or a stone or a bag. If the sword in the stone sounds familiar, think of King Arthur and Excalibur! The notion of a hero or king sleeping in a cave can be found all over Europe and even further afield. It is so familiar in folklore that it is referred to as the "king in the mountain" motif and has been classified in the Aarne-Thompson system of folktale motifs.(4)(5)

Ledwidge's opening lines, "All the dead kings came to me At Rosnaree, where I was dreaming" are suggestive that he is familiar with that location's mythic and perhaps even historic significance. Perhaps the dead High King Cormac Mac Airt was one of those of whom he writes.

"There was a sound like moving shields In high green fields and the lowland furrow." Was Ledwidge, perhaps, describing the sound of the enchanted army of Rosnaree being awakened?

"A loud tramp of men We'll hear again at Rosnaree." Granted, Ledwidge was in the battlefields of the Great War, and although he says he is dreaming at Rosnaree, the bomb wakes him to the reality that he is, in fact, in Picardy. Nevertheless, it's an interesting speculation that he was perhaps reflecting upon cultural aspects of his homeland. Rosnaree would have been visible just across the Boyne Valley from his home at Janeville, east of Slane. Interestingly, Rosnaree is a name that comes from the Irish Ros na Ríogh, meaning "wood of the kings".(6)

Had Francis Ledwidge heard the story of the sleeping army of Rosnaree, and did he incorporate it into The Dead Kings? One might never know.(7)

However, the final lines of his poem are sadly prescient. "A bomb burst near me where I lay." He was killed on July 31st, 1917.


References:
(1) http://www.mythicalireland.com/highman/garretts-fort.php
(2) Marsh, Richard (2013), Meath Folk Tales, The History Press Ireland, p.164.
(3) A similar version, from the same original source (Johnny Murray) can be found in the Schools' Collection here: http://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/5008912/4966251/5106184
(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_in_the_mountain
(5) http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/08/the-mountain-kings/
(6) https://www.logainm.ie/en/38699?s=Rossnaree
(7) It must be pointed out here that I am not well versed in the life of Ledwidge, and have not researched it in any scholarly way. If it should transpire that someone has written of  Ledwidge's inspiration for The Dead Kings and can answer my speculation either positively or negatively, I will be duly obliged/embarrassed (delete as appropriate!)

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

New Year, New Moon - sunset, dusk and the arrival of the moon, Venus and the stars at twilight at Newgrange

The first evening of the new year was a glorious one at Newgrange in the Boyne Valley. The first sunset of 2017 was magnificent, followed by a descent into twilight that featured rich hues and colours, and then the crescent moon next to Venus, the Evening Star, made it a really gorgeous close to the day. In a couple of the shots, you might also catch a glimpse of Mars, which was trailing the Moon and Venus. I was lucky to be able to spend time there putting together this very special time lapse video. It might have been cold, but it was lovely.

Enjoy watching this time lapse with music to match. You will see the sun setting behind Réaltoge Hill, and the last tourists of the evening departing from Newgrange, before seeing the gradual arrival of twilight and darkness. Shot on four different cameras from six different vantage points over the course of four hours. Well worth the effort, I hope you agree. This video captures some of the essence of a place that, as a sacred monument, sees hundreds of visitors every day, but which once evening falls becomes a lonely and lovely place.

What could be better than to watch the sun, moon, planets and stars from Newgrange, where our ancient ancestors did likewise?