Earthing the Myths. Daragh Smyth
Cesair possibly entered by Dernish Island, where her landing would have been sheltered by the peninsula known as Conor’s Island. The Book of Ballymote and the Book of Lecan mention that Cesair and her womenfolk landed at Cairns which is now known as Mount Temple ‘to flatter a local landlord’; according to Morris the territory of ‘Cairns’ extended from the present day Drumfad to the coast. Morris gives a number of reasons for his contention that Cesair landed in the estuary between Dernish Island and Trá Tuaidh [16]. Among the reasons Morris gives is that Dún na mBárc is a landlocked harbour with a fortress commanding it; the name ‘cairns’ was still in use when he was writing in the early twentieth century. One could also add the number of references to the area, many of which are mentioned above.
Cesair and her followers travelled south towards the Boyle River and, having crossed the Curlew Mountains, arrived on the wide fertile plain of Magh Luirg or ‘the Plains of Boyle’. It is in a tumulus overlooking the Boyle River [33] that she is buried (as her burial place is in Roscommon, I have included this part of her story with that county). The area is regarded as a meeting place from ancient times.
Inishmurray (Inis Muirdeach, ‘Muirdeach’s island’) [16] is a low-lying island one mile long and half-a-mile wide, with a maximum height rising to about seventy feet. Its name is derived from Muirdeach, who was bishop of Killala and was consecrated by St Patrick. The island is four miles from Streedagh Point in Co. Sligo, at the entrance to Donegal Bay, and is ten miles south-west from Mullaghmore Head. Muirdeach was also known as St Molaise and is credited with founding the monastery on Inishmurray about 520 AD. The remains of the monastery are fairly intact after 1,500 years – in stark contrast to the houses, which have gone to ruin after just 100 years. The remaining islanders left on 12 November 1948. It is a sign of their strength and persistence that in 1926, seventy-four people were able to make a living from the island and surrounding waters. The decision to abandon the island is said to have been due to isolation rather than poverty, but more likely was influenced by the letters and parcels coming from America and Britain telling of a better life.
A possible reason for the preservation of the monastic settlement is that it is enclosed behind a thick circular wall or caiseal, which was built during the Bronze Age. The wall is fifteen feet at its highest and is between six and nine feet wide. It encloses about a third of an acre of land. The presence of cursing stones and the name of a chapel as ‘the temple of fire’ would suggest that it may have been a druidic site before the arrival of the monks. There are three internal walls that result in the enclosure being divided into four areas. The largest enclosure contains Teampall Molaise or ‘Molaise’s church’. It was also known as Teampall na bFhearr or ‘the men’s church’. North-west of the church, there are two praying stones, and to the west is a font. To the south-west are Na Clocha Breacha, literally ‘the speckled stones’ but generally translated as ‘cursing stones’. The stones were turned about while ‘praying’ by the person wishing to curse another. The ritual involved fasting for three days, and if the reasons for applying the curse were justified, it would have its effect; otherwise, the curse would rebound on the person who turned the stones.
In one of the smaller enclosures within the cashel is a building known as Teac na Teine or ‘the house of fire’. This may have been the kitchen of the monastery, but some authorities say that its real name was Teampall na Teine or ‘the church of fire’. This could place its origins in pre-Christian druidic times. The remains of the stone at the centre of the church are known as Leic na Teine or ‘the stone of the fire’. Tradition has it that if all fires on the island were extinguished, then a sod placed on this hearth would spontaneously ignite. This ‘miraculous hearth’ was broken up by workers reconstructing the gable in the 1880s. When the antiquarian John O’Donovan visited the island in the 1830s, he recorded that there was a flagstone on the floor of this church which ‘was always kept lighted for the use of the islanders’.
The enclosure contains three clocháns or beehive huts, each of which has a corbelled roof. There are also two standing stones and a holed or fertility stone where women prayed in order to have a healthy child. Outside the cashel there is a sweathouse, known as a teach an allais, from the Irish allas, meaning ‘sweat’. This has been compared to the Turkish bath: the house was filled with smoke, presumably from turf, and when it became very hot, the embers were swept away and water was thrown on the hot stones; then a person wrapped in a blanket entered to breathe the steam and ‘sweat’ for a while, after which they washed in the nearby well. Although we often refer to these baths as Turkish baths, in Germany and Bohemia they were known as Roman-Irish baths. The sweathouse was used as a cure for rheumatism as well as several other ailments, and there are hundreds throughout Ireland.
According to legend there is an invisible enchanted island between Inishmurray and the mainland, which is said to be seen every seven years. In the nineteenth century, a Sligo man named Patrick Waters claimed to have seen it. The island is said to be inhabited by the invisible ‘gentry’. Hy Brazil, another enchanted place, is said to have been seen at the same time. Some say that Hy Brazil is associated with a place known as Bruach Gráinne or Grace’s Bank, about one mile south of Inishmurray, which appears occasionally on the surface of the water. The last ‘sighting’ of Hy Brazil was during the summer of 1908; it too ‘appears’ every seventh year.
As on Tory Island, holy clay was used on Inishmurray to expel rats, and thus no rats are said to survive on the island. The clay was apparently given to St Molaise when he was on a pilgrimage to Rome. Swans on the island were never harmed, as it was felt that they might be the Children of Lir.* Other customs persisted on the island; for example, when pointing to a boat, you never pointed with your finger but rather with your thumb or with your whole hand. As on much of the mainland, it was always better to move clockwise in order to avoid bad luck; this particularly applied to boats, for when bringing a boat around it was always turned clockwise or deas sol (‘right to the sun’).
LEINSTER
CARLOW
Ceatharloch, ‘four lakes’
The four lakes, according to tradition, were formed by the River Barrow (An Bhearú), but today of these lakes there is no trace. The tradition of the lakes existed up to the end of the eighteenth century, as the following verse from a 1798 song shows:
That glorious plan, the rights of man,
with sword in hand we’ll guard it;
the power to quell these infidels,
down by the lakes of Carlow.
The plain surrounding the River Barrow is called Magh Fea, after one of the oxen of Brigit in her role as fertility goddess.
Dind Ríg (‘the fortress of kings’) [61], the palace of the Kings of Leinster and the ancient capital of the province, is on the River Barrow, a quarter of a mile south of Leighlinbridge in the townland of Ballyknockan. It has been equated with Dunon as listed among the city names given in Ptolemy’s Geography of Ireland written about 150 AD, in which the Barrow is named Birgos. Dind Ríg today stands well off the tourist track, and the visitor may see it either as ancient and neglected or as a royal fortress and residence untouched by time and retaining its Iron Age atmosphere in a calm river setting. Dind Ríg is a high, steep-sided and flat-topped mound, similar to Bruree (Brug Ríg, Co. Limerick) and to Cú Chulainn’s* mound at Dún Delca, Castletown, Co. Louth. The mound at Dind Ríg is situated at the S-end of a gravel ridge and junction of two rivers. It measures 237 yards in circumference at base, is sixty-nine feet above the river and forty-five yards in diameter at the top.
The site is also known as Duma Sláinge or ‘the burial place of Sláinge’, a king of the Fir Bolg* who died in the fourth century BC. The Lebor Gabála Érenn (‘The Book of Invasions’) states: ‘No king, so called, took the kingship of Ireland, till the Fir Bolg came, and they gave the kingship to Slanga son of Dela, for he was the eldest of the sons of Dela. A year at first had Slanga, till he died in Dind Ríg.’ It continues:
Bliadain do Shláine, is fír so,
conerbailt