Peter Jackson could have filmed the Hobbiton scenes around Dowth. It's that beautiful.

Dowth is one of the three necropolises in the Brú na Bóinne world heritage site, situated on a slope rising from the river Boyne near Slane, Co. Meath. In contrast to the other sites at Brú na Bóinne, Dowth is not restored and beautified, but this is a plus as some feel Newgrange and Knowth are a little too well-manicured. Also, access to the Dowth site is free and not controlled via the visitor center. After a morning spent being shepherded around the other two sites, everyone will revel in the freedom to explore Dowth and the ruined churchyard beside it on their terms.

Dowth was once a large mound like Newgrange (possibly of of a taller, conical shape, if old illustrations are to be credited) but amateur archaeologists (although treasure seekers would probably be a better description) damaged the mound severely in the 19th century, and at another point it was used as an easy source of stone for building projects. Miraculously, despite these desecrations, two passages remain intact, although both are tight, cramped and safely locked to keep the public out. (Although you can see some of the carvings inside one of them in this documentary.)

Newgrange as seen from the top of the Dowth mound.

The mound is just off the road; a simple road sign points the way through an old iron gate. Like much of Ireland, parking is on the grass verge along the edge of the road. As you walk along the path towards the mound, the side of the mound that has been dug away is clearly visible. The rim of the mound remains in a horseshoe shape, and the views of the Boyne valley and Newgrange from the top are excellent. Children love to scramble up the mound — but beware of the thick clumps of waist-high weeds growing in the center; these are stinging nettles!

As you walk around the site in a counter clockwise direction, you come upon two low stone-lined entrances, of a size better suited to sheep than humans. (In fact, you’ll probably share the site with sheep, as Dowth, although owned and managed as a heritage site by the state, allows the local farmers’ sheep to graze around the mound — a not uncommon arrangement given the vast number of ancient ruins in Ireland.) These are the entrances to the smaller of the two burial chambers. It’s rather unusual to find two separate entrances to a single chamber; perhaps this reflects a change in burial ritual during the building of all three monuments or perhaps one afforded entrance for people, and the other allowed the passage of the sun for some ritual reason?  Unlike Newgrange and Knowth, which were built to allow people to walk more-or-less standing up, this passage is tiny, designed for crawling only. The chamber is a short distance from the entrance, and you should have enough light to see inside fairly well. Be sure to take a few pictures holding your digital camera , the flash will show detail you miss otherwise. This is one of those times you’ll be grateful you have a flashlight in your pocket.

Like Newgrange, the South chamber is aligned with the winter solstice. However, a recently planted row of trees on the neighboring property are gradually impeding the sun, and will likely eventually block it altogether. At the back of the south chamber is a convex stone which is reputed to reflect the sunlight back against some carvings on the other side of the chamber. As the chamber is locked year-round, I have sadly been unable verify this phenomenon. It should be noted that the roof of this chamber had caved in — a legacy of the quarrying, maybe — and was rebuilt with concrete at some point in the past, so it’s not known how much later interventions has altered the precise layout of the chamber.

The curious aspect about this chamber is that the setting sun illuminates it not just on the winter solstice, but from sometime in November through February. This suggests the sun alignment had some other purpose than simply celebrating the return of the sun at the solstice.

When you’re done looking into these entrances, look over your shoulder and you’ll see a concrete “bunker” at the edge of the field, covered by a thick wire cage. This is the entrance to the second and third passages — one of which is believed to be a souterrain, an underground storage space or place of refuge, rather than a burial chamber. The construction of this souterrain is dated some 2000 years after the construction of the mound and the other chambers.  Only archaeologists get to enter, but most dads and teenage sons like to check out the cage and think about how they could get in “if they really wanted to.”

Continuing to walk around the mound clockwise and you’ll see several large kerbstones peaking out of the lush growth at the base. It appears that Dowth originally had both a ring of kerbstones and was covered in white quartz rocks like Newgrange — now mostly removed for local building projects. On the south side, you come upon a beautiful tree growing out of the slope of the mound. In summer, this looks like something out of the Lord of the Rings, and you half expect to come across a Hobbit hole just past the tree. Instead, you come across one of the most intriguing pieces of neolithic art in Europe, The Stone of the Seven Suns.

Click through to see The Stone of Seven the Suns up close...

Although most of Dowth’s kerbstones are overgrown or buried, Kerbstone #51, known as The Stone of the Seven Suns, has had the vegetation stripped away to reveal what appears to be celestial notations depicting the sun, the moon, and stars. Whether this is some sort of solar calendar, a record of eclipses and celestial movement, or some kind of teaching tool, we simply do not know. One of the seven “sun wheels” appears to show a lunar eclipse in some detail. Significantly, this kerbstone is carved on both sides, suggesting the key to its purpose could have lain more in the act of its creation than in a means of recording or transmitting information. Then again, perhaps the kerbstones where simply an abstract means to beautify the site and please the gods or spirits of the ancestors, or maybe the images on the back were simply a design that went wrong — the chisel slipped and the stone was turned to save the effort of quarrying another? An indentation in the mound has been cut behind the kerbstone to allow people to see these mysterious carvings in full. (There is speculation that this indentation may conceal the entrance to another chamber.) Encourage your children to try to guess at the meaning of the various symbols; their guesses will be as good as anyone else’s.

Across the field at this point, you will see the ruins of Dowth Church, destroyed during the 1641 uprising. A short walk across the fields brings you to the present day Netterville House and the ruins of the church.

The history of Dowth is a fascinating blend of the historically important and the farcically eccentric. The tomb sits on what was once part of the estate of the Nettervilles, an old Anglo-Norman family. When the Insurrection of 1641 began, the then lord, Viscount Nicholas Netterville, allegedly first offered his services to the Crown, but when he (as a Catholic) was not greeted with open arms, he threw his lot in with the rebels. He lost his estates for his trouble, and saw the Dowth church and castle reduced to ruins, but ironically had his possessions restored a decade later when Oliver Cromwell came to power and recent enemies of the crown were recast as heroes.

One century later, the sixth Viscount, John Netterville, built a gazebo on top of the Dowth mound from which he “attended” mass in the nearby church by telescope! In the 19th century, misguided amateur archeologists used dynamite to blow a hole in the mound searching for a fabled inner chamber they thought might contain the lost Ark of the Covenant. It’s not recorded whether these would-be Indiana Joneses found anything they could recognize after their destructive excavation. The heavily damaged site was then used as a quarry for stone for many years, until the mound was overgrown and forgotten.

Oddly, while Newgrange and Knowth have been extensively excavated and restored, little appears to have been done to Dowth other than rebuilding the roof of the south chamber and securing the entrances to the chambers and souterrain. But the contrast between the decay and damage of the ages on one side, and the glorious (if controversial) restorations on the other gives an indication of the magnitude of both the achievements of the restorers and the artistic skill, engineering know-how and organization of the original builders.

As you wander around the overgrown acreage of Dowth, you can draw on the insight gained at the Brú na Bóinne visitor center, inside Newgrange, and around Knowth, to fill in the blanks, to allow the mind’s eye to show you Dowth as it might once have appeared, and ponder what life at this bend of the river Boyne might have been like 5000 years ago.

Knowth (L) and Newgrange (R) seen from the Friary on top of the Hill of Slane. Could an overgrown mound behind the church be the grave of the man who legend says cleared the site for these famous tombs?

You can wander around the church and friary/college on top of the Hill of Slane all morning without noticing the mound known as “the motte” because it’s in a wooded area behind the church. I know I (who grew up in Co. Meath) didn’t even know it was there until I read about it somewhere or other. There now seems to be a very interesting project to investigate this mound under way. Archaeologists have been scanning the motte and its surroundings (an earth resistance survey) to discover what it’s made of (a cairn of rocks brought from elsewhere, a mound of local clay?) and detect any subsoil evidence of the remains of buildings on top. The resultant 3D mapping gives a great view of the physical features of the Hill and suggests future locations to explore.

Going by the annals, it seems likely that there was an ancient grave of some importance on the hill: reputed to be the Fir Bolg king  Sláine, from whom the hill gets its name. (Yes, that’s the same Sláine on whose legends the classic 2000AD comic was inspired. I daresay a generation of British and Irish megalithomaniacs had their imaginations kick started by that story.)  The type of grave this may have been (cairn, passage tomb, dolmen, etc.) we don’t know. Likewise, whether  that grave site was later exploited to build a Norman motte and bailey-type fortified position or whether the church was originally built on the tomb site is unknown. It seems the use of the motte as a fortified position dates from around 1170AD, but the mound now known as the motte could be much older.  Sláine was reputed to have cleared the site for Newgrange, which would place him circa 3200BC.  However, the earth resistance survey results from this project are intriguing, suggesting that the mound is man-made and revealing a second earthwork (possibly a ring barrow dating from 2500BC–although all dates seem approximate at this stage in the project) partially overbuilt by a rath surrounding the motte. Given the history of adaptive re-use of sites with strategic or symbolic significance by successive cultures in Ireland, there certainly seems to be a strong case for further investigation.

All the fieldwork seems to have been completed in 2010, so whether this project is still active or not I’m not sure. But, it’s definitely a project to bookmark and watch for future discoveries.

Links:

2010 Research « The Hill of Slane Archaeological Project.

My fellow megalithomaniacs should check out this documentary from RTÉ Television. The first part looks at the evolution of megalithic tombs from “simple” dolmens (if manhandling a 12 ton rock could ever be called simple) through huge cairns, to passage tombs with elaborate carvings and solar alignments.

The second deals with the development of Christian churches and monasteries, from the beehive huts of Skellig Michael through to the high crosses of Durrow and Monasterboice.

Unusually for the rather staid world of RTÉ  in particular and TV documentaries in general, the program-makers focused on the controversial theories, the exciting new research, and the minority reports. There are also some nice computer-generated artists’ impressions of what places like the Hill of Tara and Caherlehilla (site of what may be the oldest church in Ireland) might have looked like in their heyday, as well as bold denunciations of St. Patrick as base propaganda, and tantalizing hints that several of the high crosses may have been carved by a single artist, a Michelangelo of the midlands. 

Fascinating stuff!

The first primrose of the year has arrived earlier than usual in our garden and peeks uncertainly above the blanket of leaves that will hopefully keep it sheltered through the worst of the winter weather to come. I admire these hardy early bloomers who impetuously put on their sunday best and stride out to meet the world head on, regardless of propriety or the expectations of others.

May we all have the self-confidence of the primrose in this new year, and may all our contributions beautify the drab world in our own ways.

There’s an old board game in Ireland called rings. It dropped out of fashion at some point in the mid-twentieth century, but it appears to be making a slow comeback here and there. It’s simply a wooden board with 13 hooks mounted on the wall, at which you toss six rubber rings (like the small belts in old vacuum cleaners). Think darts, but a heck of a lot less dangerous if when the rings bounce back. As far as I know, there are only three pubs in my hometown that have ring boards these days, but there is a small and dedicated groups of “ringers” who frequent these pubs to play.

Kudos to my brother, Stephen Rennicks, who is one of the artists involved in the Engage Collective’s recent art activistism “Talk About Fracking.” Over the past couple of years, energy companies appear to have begun exploratory hydraulic fracking largely in secret around Co. Leitrim in Ireland’s NorthEast. As awareness grows, local opposition is building.

Fracking is a bad idea around the world, poisoning local water supplies and causing localized earthquakes. Thankfully, local stakeholders in Ireland are beginning to make their opposition clear.

To me, one of the most damning things Stephen uncovered is the evidence of fracking exploration over the past 30-40 years, in the shape of abandoned well heads, derelict sites left to rot, and the apparent lack of any comprehensive attempt to clean up the operations. What chemicals have been left behind for decades nobody knows.

Links:

Talk About Fracking « ENGAGE Collective.

Gallery of Stephen’s work…

Now and Then. A seminal image of Ireland in ruins. (L. Photo by Pól Ó Conghaile)

Is there a better metaphor for the willful neglect of Ireland’s heritage (our most-marketable asset) than the way the cottage made famous in The Quiet Man has been left to rot for the past 25 years? The gold rush of the Celtic Tiger years blinded us to what we had, and as a result the cottage, a potential tourist attraction, was allowed to fall apart.

I see parallels with the quiet way fracking exploration has been allowed to quietly begin in Co. Leitrim. Again it looks like we’re allowing the shiny potential of the new to distract us from our most-valuable asset? The landscape may seem commonplace to us, may seem of little value, but our vistas and way of life have been  a huge tourist draw for decades, and poisoning the water table and allowing  our heritage to fall into disrepair is not the way to safeguard Ireland’s uniqueness before 2013′s potentially huge “The Gathering” event.

Links:

The fight for ‘Quiet Man’ cottage – National News – Independent.ie.

Pól Ó Conghaile’s blog…

A fairy ring is any free-standing circle of trees. In Ireland, most farmers will not cut them down even when they take up valuable space in a field. Signe Pike tells a tale of one ring frequented by a faery disguised as a big black dog. The ring was eventually bulldozed, but decades later a large black dog can regularly be seen where the ring once stood.

Having grown up in rural Ireland, I’ve always been more in tune with the darker faery stories (perhaps because my childhood home is literally equidistant between a fairy ring and an old churchyard) and really only caught up with the world of Disney fairies after becoming a dad. So, Pike’s interest in real faery lore interested me, and her skeptical but still eager to believe perspective struck a chord.  She was quite concerned that she might encounter bad “spirits” in some of the hot spots of faery lore, and this serves to both make the reader warm to her voice and hints at possible drama later in the book.

In case you’re not familiar with the caprice of non-Disneyfied faeries, there’s a chilling short story (one of my favorites) by Sylvia Townsend Warner (“Stay, Corydon, Thou Swain” in her collection The Music at Long Verney) about a man in a small English village who goes cycling with an attractive young woman from his draper’s shop. Mr. Mulready is obsessed with a piece of church music about nymphs. He wanders around thinking about them, wishing to meet one, and abruptly realizes a young women who works for him embodies his ideal of a nymph. They come upon a wood and stop to rest. Up to this point, the reader suspects this to be a tale of an older man seducing a young woman, although Mr. Mulready does not act particularly lecherous. The woman, whom he thinks of as his nymph, hardly speaks, except to declare that she is perfectly happy in the woods. As Mr. Mulready starts to leave, the nymph stops at a blackthorn tree (an auspicious tree in Celtic lore) and simply vanishes, the implication being that she was a fairy living for a time in the human world and has now made the decision to return to her realm. The man is left devastated because he knows she will be regarded as a missing person, and as he, her employer, was seen by the inhabitants of the small town walking into the woods with her, from then on he’ll be regarded as a killer and his life as he knew it is over. It’s a devastatingly sudden twist and powerful ending. (Sylvia Townsend Warner published one standalone collection of her faery stories, Kingdoms of Elfin. It’s sadly out-of-print, but brilliant. Her faeries are not your average faeries.)

The nymph in Warner’s story is not evil, she’s simply being true to her nature without thought for what that might mean for anyone in the human realm. The real faeries of the British Isles do things for their own reasons. There is often a price to be paid by mortals who get involved (no matter whether deliberately or accidentally) with Faery, and this is the world of magic, mystery and sticky ends that Pike is both fascinated with and frightened by.

After a close encounter with a mysterious creature and learning about Los Aluxes (Mexico’s equivalent to faeries) on a trip to Cancun, Pike’s childhood interest in fairies is fully reawakened. A couple of years later, she finally takes a long-planned trip to the British Isles to check out some of the famous sites of fairy lore. Along the way she sprinkles in stories of her friends, fellow seekers, and the people she meets along the way. Faery Tale is a winning, curious story of discovery and mystery; one can really feel Pike’s excitement as she describes sitting in a dark garden in Glastonbury inviting fairies to make themselves known, and her fear as she gets lost in a forest on the Isle of Man and comes across a derelict house with an aura of evil about it.

As somebody who’s spent years exploring old ruins and overgrown tombs, I was very interested in what Pike writes about the etiquette of exploring faery sites. She asks leave from the spirits of a place before entering and believes that everything that lies within a fairy ring or grotto belongs to the faeries, and should be left there. I’ve always refrained from souvenir collecting out of a belief that ruins belongs to us all and should be left as found for the enjoyment of the next visitor, but I’ll be careful in future to make the point to my kids that even the odd rocks and beautifully colored leaves belong to the spirits of a place (as I think of them — Pike would call them faeries, and there’s probably no real difference) and should be left alone. I think that’s a good practice whether one believes in faeries or just wants to respect the dead. Happily (or luckily) we’ve long been in the habit of leaving gifts for the fairies, as we’ve been building fairy houses in the woods or wherever seems to need one for years (mainly thanks to Tracy Kane’s wonderful picture books: Fairy House, etc.).

I read the first 200 pages of Faery Tale in one sitting and came away amazed this book wasn’t topping bestseller lists and being devoured by every Eat, Pray, Love devotee. The freedom she expresses while following her dreams and discovering places she’d only read about before is infectious, and you really want her to succeed, to encounter faeries and get some answers. However, the next day I came back to finish the book and discovered why it hasn’t crossed-over to the mass market. Pike’s travel writing is for the most part wonderful: she tells the stories of her encounter in Mexico, her pilgrimage through England, over to the Isle of Man with charm and immediacy. There are many serendipitous encounters and happy accidents along the way and one can easily believe she was being led from one discovery to the next by an invisible hand. When she tries to sum up her travels and reach some kind of conclusion, she falters. It’s clear that although she has had several encounters with unexplained phenomena or creatures, which I’m happy to call faeries, she’s still searching for understanding, for answers.

Pike seems to feel compelled (perhaps by the conventions of the memoir format, or perhaps by the dictates of her editor) to offer up some conclusions, synthesize some wisdom gleaned from the journey, and that falls flat. It feels as if she doesn’t believe she’s found enough answers yet, and for me it would have been perfectly acceptable for her to acknowledge that she still has questions, still seeks to know more, but has moved away from the skepticism and suspicion she first felt. The journey as the all-important process may be a hackneyed given of self-help books, but it’s still completely true and would have been a fitting conclusion to this absorbing chronicle of Pike’s journey into faery lore. Still, that doesn’t spoil the rest of the book for me, and I can honestly recommend it to anyone interested in faeries, celtic lore or travel in the British Isles.

After reading Faery Tale, I’m investigating my own trip to the Isle of Man in order to see some of the places Signe Pike brilliantly describes. And, though I’ve spent decades exploring old Irish ruins and tombs, I think her influence will make me a little more mindful of the spirits of a place, whatever one chooses to call them.

An old Abbey near my family home In Ireland. The picture was taken last June, but I didn't notice the purple blur at the bottom left until after I read Faery Tale and checked out some of Pike's photographic evidence on her blog (link below). I suspect this is "just" lens flare, but could it be a something else?

Lens flare or faery?

Notes

Signe Pike’s website…

Faery evidence Pike collected on her journey…

]]> http://wordhoarder.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/book-review-faery-tale-by-signe-pike/feed/ 1 Rich Faery Ring long verney Faery Tale by Signe Pike Lens flare or faery? insert http://wordhoarder.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/spitfire-pulled-from-co-donegal-bog/ http://wordhoarder.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/spitfire-pulled-from-co-donegal-bog/#comments Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:31:22 +0000 Rich http://wordhoarder.wordpress.com/?p=1346 ]]> Fascinating story about a WWII Spitfire (yeah, that’s probably redundant) that crashed in a bog in Co. Donegal in 1941. Last June, it was found and removed from the bog. The unique conditions had preserved it so well that the machine guns could still fire.

BBC News – Spitfire redux: The WWII guns firing after 70 years buried in peat.

They don’t build them like that anymore.

Some notes on terminology: a hot whiskey is often called a hot toddy, but the toddy is a name for the drink used mainly in Scotland, and as I understand it, is a fairly purist whisky, sugar, lemon & water concoction. In Ireland, we spell it whiskey — and if you can’t taste the difference between whiskey and whisky, you’re wasting your money. (A few other countries claim to make whiskey/whisky; how nice for them.)  A hot toddy is also often used as a generic name for a hot alcoholic drink (thus a mulled wine or a hot apple cider are sometimes referred to as a hot toddy). So I call just call it a hot whiskey to prevent confusion. A hot whiskey used to be known as whiskey punch. The early temperance movements vilified it (hence the phrase “punch drunk”) and the name fell out of use. The drink, however, never really went away, just fell out of fashion.

First ingredient, and possibly the least important, is the whiskey (never whisky — don’t waste good Scotch Whisky by watering it down. Enjoy it neat.). Generally, use the cheapest whiskey you can find. Living in the US, I usually use cheap Canadian rubbish that I’d never drink neat. If you make a hot whiskey with expensive, smooth sipping whiskey, not only are you wasting your money, but the resulting drink usually has much less of a whiskey taste. The smoothness of aged Scotch or Bushmills is intended for a neat nip or a pair of ice cubes, and needs nothing more. When in Ireland I use Powers or Paddy, and save the Jameson for drinking over ice.

The Glass

Start with the glass. You can use a svelte, small pub glass if you don’t want more than a single measure. This is the standard glass in Irish pubs. I prefer a half-pint glass tankard (a simple cylinder with a handle) for the simple reason that I’ve had too many thin glasses shatter after added the boiling water. However, this size is perfect for a double shot of whiskey, and means you need to leave the conversation to refill everyone’s glasses less often. (You can also use a highball.)

Fill the glass with boiling or near boiling water to warm it. Empty it out after a minute. This helps the hot whiskey stay warmer longer. Wet the top eighth of an inch of the tankard and dip it in white sugar to encrust the rim. Now, pour a measure or two (Ah! go on now…) of whiskey into the glass.

Sweetener

Add a spoonful of sugar (brown adds a distinctive and slightly different taste to white, the choice is yours). A thick spoonful of honey is great if you’re legitimately fighting a cold/sore throat and not just pretending to.

Lemon

Wash an organic lemon well in warm water to get the wax coating off (don’t be messing with a regular lemon — do you want to drink the chemicals they spray on them?) and cut it in half.  Cut a thick slice from what was the middle. Now, cut that slice in half and remove any pips. If you’ve already added a single measure of whiskey, just squeeze the other half of your slice into the glass. If a double, squeeze some of the remaining end of the lemon into it. The whole half a lemon would be a bit much, but it’s all dependent on your own taste.

Take four cloves and stud the half slice of lemon with them. Push them in fully so they won’t float out.

Fill the glass almost to the brim with boiling water. Stir to dissolve the sugar. (If you’re worried about the glass shattering, leave the metal spoon in, it’ll absorb the heat — although it’ll probably cool your drink a bit faster. Now drop the clove-studded lemon in — taking care not to splash and lose any;-) — and away you go.

Variations

Add a cinnamon stick to give a slightly different flavor to the drink. Don’t add ground cinnamon, the taste of that tends to be gone before you’re halfway through your drink and it doesn’t dissolve, it adheres to bits of the lemon instead, so you end up with this nasty looking brown sludge swirling through your drink!

One or two of these on a cold night will take all your cares away, and lubricate good conversation.

Sláinte!