Mound

[PB+J]

The Church has a lot to answer for. That's putting it mildly.

Interesting that they would put unbaptized babies in a site allege to be sacred to the faeries.

Are the ever going to excavate at Tuam?

[Nanohedron]

The Church has a lot to answer for. That's putting it mildly.

Well, let's just leave it at that, shall we?

Interesting that they would put unbaptized babies in a site allege to be sacred to the faeries.

But not so surprising, in its way; I suppose it would be the next best thing, considering. Sacred wells are also a holdover from pagan times.

[Mr.Gumby]

a site allege to be sacred to the faeries

I don't know how tongue in cheek you wee there but I don't think you should assume every enclosure is associated with fairies.

One of the fascinations of Holy Wells is how they mix overt catholic imagery with unabashed pagan/pre-christian strains. There seems to be a resurgence of the use of rag trees in the last ten years or so, I can't really tell how much it is the instagram generation and how much of it is serious. Some wells though things are serious, St Bridget's well on the back of the Cliffs of Moher was always big and well used but things seem to have boomed there, especially with members of the travelling community and there are things practised there now that weren't there ten, fifteen years ago.

I was up at a few wells and places around Dysert O'Dea once with a woman who was a local archeologist. She had whole theories about the wells and the energy channelled in them, the ley lines in the area, how the cahers in the area were all placed on ley lines and got energy and benefits from that. She was fully 100% serious and managed to marry it to her archeological background without problem or hesitation. It was a bit much and more than a little strange. Interesting too.

But whatever the way, many of the wells are in regular use. There's one in the Burren that's supposed to provide a cure for tooth ache, loads of toothbrushes are left there (and other things for further cures associated with the well as well as coins and other offerings) all the time.



If you walk across the uplands a few miles from Cahercommaun you come to the Valley of the Seven Streams (if you know your way around), there are (obviously) seven wells there, one of them providing a cure for diabetes (which I somehow think of as a disease more modern than anything I would associate with holy wells).

Another one, at St Colman's hermitage, provides a cure for backache. You basically have to lay on the slab over the well for a bit (an perhaps say a prayer), One time I was there with a number of people and they all went for it, a bit giggly perhaps but he majority took turns laying on the slab. Just in case, I suppose.

But that's a different subject altogether.

[PB+J]

I'll make no further comment as I've no wish to run afoul of forum regulations!

Enjoyed the pictures very much, thank you

[Mr.Gumby]

I'll make no further comment as I've no wish to run afoul of forum regulations!

It's not a line I want or need to pursue here but the abuse, the selling of babies, the keeping of unmarried mothers in the Laundries in what was to all intends and purposes slavery, the hideous treatment of children (and their mothers) in the mother and baby homes, the enormous rate of deaths among the children in the homes, the cover ups and the refusal of the orders to cooperate in investigations. It's all factual and a matter of record, it's undisputed. And the resentment and anger among people in Ireland is immense, some are seething when the subject comes up. These things speak for themselves. It is what it is and there no controversy in referring to it.

[chas]

I love the pictures and history, Peter.

I made a large blowup (c. 45x60 cm) of a pic taken from a bridge in Sneem, which is in my kitchen and still gets compliments. I loved the entire West Coast, and your pics bring back fond memories.

[Mr.Gumby]

It's a bit of fun. Am using the lockdown and the fine weather to paint the house, much like the rest of the country. I come in for a break and post a few pics of things I like. Makes a change from the usual pics of the musicianers Glad you like them.

[Nanohedron]

I'll make no further comment as I've no wish to run afoul of forum regulations!

These things speak for themselves. It is what it is and there no controversy in referring to it.

Agreed 100%, Mr.Gumby. But it is in how we refer to them that makes the difference here at C&F. Just a fine point, but not a hard one, to remember. For example, noting the Catholic/pagan syncretism practiced at holy wells is simply pointing out the facts, whereas condemning or valorizing it, on whatever grounds, is how we cross the line. Condemning abuses is fair game and IMO right and proper, but once we shift the focus to religion as a result, there's a line beyond which facts become opinion, and that's where the mods must step in. It's not that we want to sweep things under the rug; no one would be fooled anyway. It's that we have to be consistent in such matters, for that is the only way we can be fair to all. It's true that sometimes it takes a bit of forethought in knowing where the line is, but Chiffers are a pretty bright bunch, so I'm confident that with a bit of practice now and then, it's not too much for them.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Nice horsies. Do the parking regulations equally apply to them?

[Michael w6]

Thanks for the replies. I'm disappointed to read that some of these mounds and other structures have been altered in more recent times. I had assumed they were always as one sees them now.

[Mr.Gumby]

There is an element of preservation and conservation. The Victorian archaeologists had a tendency to rebuild things in an image they had of how these things should have been. These days the approach is a bit more sympathetic to what's there. Newgrange has had very extensive work done to it, it was in a very poor state when they began work.

Exposed stone structures left for a millennium or so tend to fall apart. The climate isn't exactly friendly to built heritage and in the middle of field, cattle will trample over anything, ivy and tree growth will tear things apart and before you know it you have nothing left but a pile of stones. And there are hundreds and hundreds of these things sitting on the backarse of nowhere that are just sitting there, not looked after, quite a few you may find them only by chance, if you go off track, walking the hills. The Ordnance survey of Ireland online maps may give an inkling of the density of archaeological remains in some locations, if you click the National monuments layer and zoom in to particular areas (these maps are very precise, even my polytunnel is mapped). Google earth aerial view is good for a bit of armchair archaeology as well, obviously.

[PB+J]

There are also probably unmarked mass graves all over Ireland, especially in the SW. Francis O'Neill's nephew, Phillip, in the 1930s believed that a mass grave of famine victims lay on his grandfather’s land: a hole 100 feet deep, he said, filled with the bodies of “several hundred people including three priests.”

"In my grandfather's land in Derrygrenaugh to the east of Bantry there is a big hole surrounded by a wall 30 (feet) yards in circumference, one yard high, and it is supposed to have been 100 feet deep the first day. But after several hundred people including three priests [were buried there it got filled up]. It is certain that people were buried there (because) because my grandfather heard his father talking about it."

From “Stories of the Famine around Skibbereen,” Dúchas.Ie, https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4798759/4795966/5150032

It's an interesting story to have grown up with, to put it mildly. I think he meant what google maps calls Derryinaugh to the north of tralibane, but there is also Derreengreanagh to the SW. Francis mentions relatives at Colomane West which is close to Derreengreanagh. It seems like something that ought to be discoverable.

[Mr.Gumby]

A lot of famine (mas) graves may be unmarked but they will be known, there's a surprising amount of local knowledge about all sorts of thing. And the memories of the famine linger on. Shanakyle isn't too far away from where I am writing.

There's a little island in the Inagh river, near where the Ennistymon workhouse used to be. It is said some of the bodies of the dead from the workhouse were carried there for burial (there are extensive mass graves elsewhere in the area) . Locally it is still said the island will not flood when the river is high. There are no markings or anything.

There's a medieval church not all that far away, there's a stump of a round tower next to it which has been capped with stone. It was filled with corpses and turned into a cairn, it's unmarked but again, local people will tell you the story. And you will find that repeated in a lot of locations. The School's collection can be a source of that sort of information and local lore (as well as other things).

Two miles away from there there's a lone house a fair bit up a hill. Great view. It was a safe house during the war of independence, the local IRA regiment holed up there after a bit of a botched ambush on a British army transport, which caused reprisals that got people killed and half the main street shelled and burned. Anyhow, we used to walk there and people would always tell you there was a Black and Tan buried beside it ('right under that bush there'). That sort of knowledge just exist. At the centenary of the ambush some years a go a body was returned to the family, not sure it was the one at the house or another. People know where the bodies are buried.

The Ordnance survey map (see link in previous (post) gives a number of locations for National Monuments for Tralibane, unfortunately they will only give you a reference number and won't tell you exactly what you're looking at. I would guess the famine grave is among them.

[PB+J]

Yes I've looked at that map. It's part of my pitch to my wife about an archeological tour of West Cork. I'd love to find a local informant!

To me one of the interesting things about O'Neill is how he used nostalgia for the crossroads dance to wipe all that away. He almost ever mentions the famine. It would be easy to make the argument that the landscape of Tralibane was full of ruthless colonial oppression, bitter class violence, and grief. There were Whiteboy incidents nearby in his father's lifetime: his father's family would have been likely targets for "whiteboys" since they held over 35 acres and probably subleased it. Local legends (from the schools collection) about "the murdering glen" described bandits and shootouts with police and ghosts. Then there's the civil war.

The US of course has its own bitter history--where I sit was once Indian land, and there are civil war battlefields very close by, and many many southern towns conceal memories of lynchings. It seems to me that it's closer to the surface in Ireland, despite the tourist brochures and twee.

[Mr.Gumby]

Then there's the civil war.

Yes we're into the 'decade of centenaries' a lot of sentiment still in the undercurrent, not all of it pretty. Let's put it that way.

[PB+J]

Then there's the civil war.

Yes we're into the 'decade of centenaries' a lot of sentiment still in the undercurrent, not all of it pretty. Let's put it that way.

One of the most interesting books I've read in the last few years was Ernie O'Malley's On Another Man's Wound, about the tan war, and the The Singing Flame, about the Civil War. The first is really marvelous; as much about the landscape of Ireland as about the war. My father-in-law, who was a career US Marine, thought it should be required reading for people studying insurgencies. The second book is harder: the struggle is more bitter and the "good guys" harder to find. the language is less poetic. O'Malley was an unrepentant republican, but he wrote both books I believe from the bohemian community of Taos new mexico. From Taos O'Malley got connected to John Ford and then was Ford's "IRA adviser" during the making of "the Quiet Man," which is surely a film about deliberately not remembering. You probably know all this but Roddy Doyle fictionalized the Ford/O'Malley relationship in the last book of his Henry Smart trilogy.

By all accounts Ford started out wanting to make that movie much more about the IRA , like the Maurice Walsh book it comes from, but for somewhat unclear reasons it all got neutered down to Barry Fitzgerald acting cute and spousal abuse. I have to wonder if pressure from the states to bury recollections of the civil war had an effect on Ireland: tourists want thatched cottages, not bitter grudges. Ireland should be wealthy enough now to tell the states to feck off. But wen I asked gently about the Civil War while over there it was clearly a subject best left alone.