The Whispering Land by Irish Academic Press

THE WHISPERING LAND Myths, Legends and Lore from the Wild Atlantic Way

CARSTEN KRIEGER

C ARSTEN KRIEGER is a photographer, author and environmentalist based in County Clare. He has published numerous books on Ireland’s landscape, natural histor y and heritage. When not working on a new book, he spends his time as an editor for the Crossbill Guides Foundation and as a project manager for AstonECO.

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Page 1

THE GREAT PENINSULAS Counties Cork and Kerr y Page 9

THE RIVER AND BEYOND Counties Kerr y, Clare and Limerick Page 57

BURREN KARST Counties Clare and Galway Page 97

TRUE WEST Counties Galway and Mayo Page 127

‘UP HERE IT’S DIFFERENT’ Counties Sligo, Leitrim and Donegal Page 173

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page 216

VIII

THE WHISPERING LAND

INTRODUCTION

reland is a land of stories and storytellers. This small island hosts a vast heritage of folk tales and legends, which are being kept alive by the last of the seanchaí, the bearers of

old lore. These collectors and tellers of stories once travelled the country, sharing their stories in exchange for food and a place to sleep, and were highly respected by the settled folk. Unfortunately, not many seanchaí are left today. I don’t see myself even remotely as a storyteller, but I have always enjoyed listening to the tales others tell. In fact, it was a story that brought me to Ireland in the first place. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, it is said, was inspired, at least in parts, by the landscapes of Ireland’s west coast, first and foremost the Burren in County Clare. These landscapes have also had a great impact on my life over the past three decades. During this time I have travelled the island from south to north, east to west, exploring and photographing its landscapes. I learned

quickly that the wild and pristine sceneries I was looking at were anything but, and that the Irish countryside has been shaped by humans for millennia. Ireland’s history is engraved in the landscape; the land itself has become the story of the country. Every field, every mountain, every stream and lake, every road, every stone wall has a tale to tell. What makes these stories so special is that you never really know where reality ends and the yarn begins. The seanchaí have been collecting stories since the dawn of Irish civilisation and most, if not all of these have grown over time into the wondrous folk tales they are today. There are heroes, witches

I ntroduction

and magicians, maidens, kings and queens, monsters and many other improbable beings. Archaeologists on the other hand have been trying to piece Ireland’s history together by exploring and finding tangible clues in the landscape. And here the intrigue begins. Scientific facts and legend start to blend together, and the line between tale and fact becomes blurry. It has long been thought that the first people came to Ireland around 8,000 years ago (although some recent discoveries suggest that man may have arrived on the island much earlier than this), when the glaciers of the Ice Age had only just about disappeared and the country was covered in a mixture of grassland and forest. These hunter-gatherers, who left little sign of their presence, were soon joined by Neolithic farmers, who began to shape the landscape into the storybook it is today. * * * Ireland’s early ‘history’ has been documented in four cycles of tales: the Mythological Cycle, the Ulster Cycle, the Fenian or Ossianic Cycle, and the Historical Cycle, also known as the Cycle of the Kings. It is in these tales that well-known characters such as the Tuatha Dé Danann, Cúchulainn and Fionn Mac Cumhaill make an appearance. The first of these cycles, the Mythological Cycle, also known as the Book of Invasions, starts with the arrival of the first farmers. According to this early cycle, Partholan and his sons, who allegedly came from Greece in search of a new life, settled in the west of Ireland. Partholan’s tale and the others of this cycle had been passed on orally for many generations before being written down after Christianity established itself in Ireland. Unsurprisingly, the Christian monks who documented the old lore had their own agenda, their own story to tell, so it is likely that the legends of old were tweaked a bit to fit the Christian narrative. According to these written sources, Partholan came to Ireland after a great flood. Whether or not this was part of the original tale, its likelihood is widely doubted, and some experts even suggest that Partholan and his family were made up by the monks to build a connection between Irish history and the stories of the Bible. In any case, Partholan and his descendants disappeared after residing in Ireland for 520 years, when the whole clan was wiped out by the plague. Some thirty years after these events, a new group arrived, and this is where the story really begins. The Neimheadh, a name derived from nemed meaning ‘earlier’, settled in County Armagh. They soon ran into trouble with the Fomorians, a mysterious group 2

THE WHISPERING LAND

who will make appearances throughout this book. The Fomorians are often described as pirates based on Tory Island off the County Donegal coast. While they never seem to have claimed the Irish mainland as their own, they also didn’t want anybody else to claim the island and become too powerful, which would have made their regular raids more difficult. Their conflict with the Neimheadh escalated into a full-blown war, out of which the Fomorians emerged as the victorious party, scattering the losers all over the known world. As so often in these stories, fate had a way to balance things out. One group of the fugitives made it to Greece, where they were enslaved. These became the Fir Bolg, which translates into Bag-Men. They eventually escaped and made their way back to Ireland, where they soon became the ruling party, introducing kingship and dividing the country into provinces. It is said that for thirty-seven years the Fir Bolg ruled in Ireland, despite being locked in ongoing conflict with the still-present Fomorians. I ntroduction

THE WHISPERING LAND

I ntroduction

A second group of Neimheadh made it to Denmark and flourished. They called themselves the Tuatha Dé Danann, the people of the goddess Danu, and they also returned to Ireland, where they fought the Fir Bolg as well as the Fomorians and took possession of Ireland after the First Battle of Moytura. Some stories relate that the defeated Fir Bolg retreated to the offshore islands, where they left behind monuments like Dún Aengus, while the Fomorians laid low on Tory Island and continued their career as pirates in Irish waters. After a prolonged time of peace, the Tuatha Dé Danann were overthrown by new arrivals, the Milesians, who in all likelihood came from Spain. The defeated Tuatha Dé Danann retreated into the Otherworld, a magical realm that can only be reached through mysterious portals. It is said they still live there today. From here the story continues into the other cycles of tales, with kings, heroes, cattle raids, magic salmon, epic battles, love triangles and more. * * * Whether the Tuatha Dé Danann and all the other characters were real will likely forever remain a mystery. Still, many aspects of the old tales are reflected in the archaeological timeline. Each of the mythological groups brought something new to Ireland – cattle, sheep, grain, the art of brewing, tools, weapons – which fit into what we know as the Neolithic, the Bronze and the Iron Ages. All of these groups also left something behind – large monuments, homes for the dead and places of worship in the shape of portal, wedge and passage tombs, stone circles and standing stones, or more common structures, such as field walls and dwelling houses. It is in these places that stories materialise and it is these places I sought out for this book. I believe that every legend, every folk tale is more than just a made-up bedtime story. Once, these tales and legends must have been a record of factual history, of real events and of real people doing real deeds in a real landscape. I hope you enjoy this journey along Ireland’s west coast. For me it was very much a rediscovery of and reconnection with the landscape that has been such an integral part of my life. It also allowed me to look beyond the grandeur and the beauty to discover more intimate layers in the Irish landscape. It allowed me to hear the land whispering … Carsten Krieger February 2024 6

THE WHISPERING LAND

I ntroduction

THE WHISPERING LAND

CHAPTER 1

THE GREAT PENINSULAS Counties Cork and Kerr y

reland’s south-west is characterised by a serrated coastline featuring a multitude of islands and five distinctive peninsulas, which extend from the mainland out into the Atlantic

Ocean. This was once one continuous stretch of land made up of valleys and mountains covered in dense and damp Atlantic rainforest and the remains of Ice-Age glaciers.1 Along with the temperature, the sea level rose and eventually the Atlantic Ocean broke the rocky barriers in the west and flooded five large valleys, creating the unique topography of the area. Today these flooded valleys are known as Roaringwater Bay, Dunmanus Bay, Bantry Bay, Kenmare Bay and Dingle Bay. The peninsulas of Mizen, Sheep’s Head, Beara, Iveragh and Dingle present a striking landscape of rugged coastlines, dramatic mountain ranges, vast peatlands and pockets of ancient woodland. Ireland’s south-west experiences the highest amount of precipitation in Ireland, which falls as driving rain, soft showers, gentle drizzle, hail, sleet and sometimes snow. Brooks and streams tumble from the mountains to feed the rivers and 1

Opinions on how rapidly Ireland became forested after the last glaciation differ: some say the country transformed swiftly from tundra to forest, others think the process took longer and that any sign of ice was gone by the time the forests had established themselves. I don’t know the right answer, but I find the vision of forested valleys and glacier-capped mountains very appealing. T he G reat P eninsulas

lakes in the valleys. All this water sustains the endless blanket bogs that cover much of the landscape from shore to summit. Here and there, forests disrupt the vastness of the bogs, the younger ones standing straight and clean, while the few old-growth forests show a bit more character: a thick blanket of old leaves covers the ground, in places deadwood and undergrowth have created an impenetrable thicket and the old trees proudly display gnarled trunks and branches covered in mosses and lichen. This is a landscape of fairy tales and legends. When dark clouds roll in from the Atlantic Ocean and a storm rises out of nowhere, bending trees and driving waves, when mist and low clouds shroud the mountaintops and drench the valleys with millions of tiny water droplets, and when the dark canopy of the Atlantic rainforest closes in and blocks out all light, leaving the forest floor covered in an uneasy grey twilight, it is easy to believe in banshees, ghosts, monsters … and witches.

THE WHISPERING LAND

THE GODDESS, THE WITCH AND THE BEARA PENINSULA The ‘Old Hag’ is a recurring character in legends and fairy tales all over the world. In some stories she appears as the one-dimensional personification of evil, the fairy-tale witch, muttering spells, devouring children and riding a broom. In others she is the wise woman, the healer, knowledgeable in the use of plants and the workings of nature but outcast and feared by her community who don’t understand her doings. In Ireland, as well as in Scotland and on the Isle of Man, this character is known as the Cailleach, which translates into ‘old woman’ – over time, this became the more disrespectful ‘old hag’. According to one story she was born on the Dingle Peninsula, where she lived on her own on top of a mountain overlooking the sea. The people in the village below avoided her as well as they could and most stayed away from the mountain altogether. Stories about her dealings circulated among the villagers, most of them dark and frightening and regularly used to get children to do their chores or go to bed. One of the most-told tales was about the treasure chest she kept under her bed. In this chest she supposedly harboured many rare and magic items, some of which were valuable beyond belief. One early morning the hag was on her usual foraging trip, which brought her from the mountain down to the shore and along the fringes of the village. Outside one of the houses there, she spotted some lobster pots and in one of them a live lobster was struggling to get out of its prison. Its owner must have just put it down to attend to another errand as both pot and lobster were still dripping wet. The hag didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the situation; she took the animal and brought it home with her. Back in her cottage she put the lobster in the safest place she could think of: her treasure chest. The fisherman who had caught the lobster earlier that morning soon discovered that his dinner had gone missing and, not surprisingly, thought of the old hag as the most likely culprit. The following morning, when the hag was out foraging again, the fisherman hurried up the mountain and sneaked into the hag’s house. After some searching, he found the treasure chest. Curiosity (and his appetite for lobster) got the better of him and he tried to open the chest, but even after close examination, and some hitting and banging, he couldn’t find a way to do so. All he discovered was a small hole in the side of the chest. The fisherman managed to wriggle his hand through the small opening and started to feel around. The shaken-up and irritated lobster inside grabbed the man’s hand and

T he G reat P eninsulas

held on tightly, so tightly that the fisherman wasn’t able to retrieve his hand. Time went on and no pulling or shaking was strong enough to free the poor man. Eventually the hag returned to find the exhausted fisherman lying on her bedroom floor. She quickly assessed the situation, then thanked the lobster for its service and chopped off the fisherman’s head. The story doesn’t tell us what became of the lobster, but to give a somewhat happy ending, let’s say that the Cailleach set it free in appreciation for guarding her treasures. The old hag in this story is only one of many incarnations of the character in Irish folklore and many stories suggest that there wasn’t only one Cailleach. In some, the old hag appears as a trio of sisters. The origins of the Cailleach, however, lie on the Beara Peninsula, where her stony remains still stand on a rocky outcrop overlooking the sea. An unassuming rock on Beara’s northern shores, a place known today as Ard na Cailli (Hag’s Height) is known to be the petrified remains of the Hag of Beara. The story, which bears some similarities to the previous one, goes like this: while out foraging in the wilderness of Beara, the old hag came across a monk who had made himself comfortable in the shade of a large boulder to have a little nap. The hag spotted a half-eaten loaf of bread and some ham beside the holy man, making for very easy foraging in her mind. She sneaked up to the slumbering man, grabbed the food and, while doing so, noticed the monk’s very nice staff. She reached out to take it when suddenly she heard shouting behind her. A farmer on his way home had spotted her and realised what she was up to. The farmer’s shouting woke the monk, who saw the hag taking off with his bread and ham. He grabbed his staff and ran after her. The monk was a young man, so he easily caught up with the old woman. He confronted her, but she refused to apologise or show any remorse at all. The monk was equally stubborn and instead of practising forgiveness, he decided to make an example out of the old woman. He touched the hag with his staff and turned her into stone as a warning for all thieves. She has been standing in that spot ever since. Another, much older version of the story tells us that the Cailleach is standing there by her own choice, looking out to sea to await the return of her husband, the sea god Manannán Mac Lir. This version touches on the origins of the Cailleach, which, according to some experts, are a far cry from the evil old hag and witch she is mostly portrayed as today. The origins of the Cailleach lie in a distant past and are part of the very beginning of Irish civilisation. Back then the Cailleach was a goddess, the shaper of the land and seasons, ancestor of the Irish race, able to grant power to kings, present since the beginning of time and, indeed, married to the god of the sea. Her indeterminable age is at the centre 12

THE WHISPERING LAND

of her character and she is often depicted going from youth to old age in a cyclical fashion: in spring she is the young maiden clothed in beautiful flowing dresses; over the course of the year, she ages until she wanders the land as on old woman covered in rags as winter arrives. Sometimes the process is reversed and she is born at Samhain, which marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, as an old but powerful woman. As the old woman she brings darkness and storms and holds the power to designate the length and harshness of the coming winter. Over the following months she then grows younger, until at Bealtaine, the first of May, which marks the beginning of spring, she has become a beautiful young woman. In yet another version of the tale, she changes from the old Cailleach into her young alter ego Brigid, the goddess of summer, at the changing of the seasons, and in another twist, she turns into a boulder when winter is at its worst and remains that way until Bealtaine, when she springs back to life. When asked to explain her exceptional age and how she managed to live as long as she did, she replied:

I never eat till I’m hungry, never lie in bed after I wake; I never let too much cold or heat get to my head or feet; I never carry the dirt of one place to another as I travel; I thrive on the riches of the sea, dulse, wild prawns, salmon. In her early incarnation as the goddess, she is often described as an unassuming woman travelling the land and herding her cattle. In that guise she was referred to as Boí, the cow goddess, and it is said that she resided on Inis Boí, an old name for what is today known as Dursey, a small island off the tip of the Beara Peninsula. Sometimes the Cailleach is depicted holding a hammer, which she used to carve mountain ranges, dig out lakes and rivers, and shape the coastline. She is also seen as the protector of animals, especially in winter, and seemed to have been particularly close to wolves. Some stories also claim she was able to change shape and she is sometimes shown as a hare. This version of the Cailleach, and the belief system she was part of, was similar to the beliefs of many indigenous people around the world and is what we call today nature worship or nature religion, a belief system built around environmental awareness and nature conservation. T he G reat P eninsulas

The image of the Cailleach changed from goddess and wise woman to hag and witch when Christianity arrived. It is said that she refused to join the new religion and made it clear she would stick to the old ways, wandering and protecting the land. When St Cumaine Fada, who had been tasked with convincing the Cailleach to take the Christian faith as her own, realised that the goddess meant what she said, he blessed a veil and put it over her eyes. At that moment old age caught up with the Cailleach and she withered in an instant, becoming the old hag. What happened after that coincided with the first indications of the coming industrialisation, a precursor of the future, reflected in the words of the Cailleach when she was asked for how long she would be around: 16

THE WHISPERING LAND

I will not live to see this land have forests with no trees, flowers with no bees, and no fish left in the sea. Most of the tales from here on feature the Cailleach in her worst and most off-putting appearance: a wrinkled old woman with matted hair, only a tooth or two in her mouth, and dressed in dirty rags, wandering the land alone or living as a stealing and scavenging outsider. In a recurring story, she randomly approaches people – in some tales it is a powerful king or wealthy merchant, in others a poor farmer or destitute labourer – and asks for their help. If the help is given the hag turns into a beautiful young woman who rewards her saviour. If it is declined, the outcome is more sinister and often deadly for the ignorant individual. While the Cailleach is strongly linked to Beara, with the peninsula often being described as her ancestral home, many place names in Ireland are reminiscent of the old hag. A rocky outcrop at Hag’s Head in County Clare and the Wailing Woman on Skellig Michael are all said to be the petrified remains of the Cailleach. Atop Slieve na Calliagh in County Meath stands the Hag’s Chair and the legend of Loughcrew depicts the hag leaping from mountaintop to mountaintop, dropping stones from her apron, which became the cairns that crown the summits of this mountain range. Another legend that left the hag’s name on the landscape is set on the Iveragh Peninsula. Once upon a time three old hags were living in County Kerry. The first lived on the Paps of Danú, the second on Mullaghanattin (in the Dunkerron range, near the village of Sneem) and the third on Carrauntoohil (Ireland’s highest peak in the MacGillycuddy’s Reeks just west of Killarney). The three shared a comb between them, which they passed on whenever the other needed it. Sadly, the hag living on the Paps passed away one day, leaving the other two to argue about who now owned the comb. The argument got heated and ended in a fight. The Hag of Mullaghanattin rushed over to the MacGillycuddy’s Reeks to take the comb by force. The Hag of Carrauntoohil was nursing an infant at the time, which put her at a bit of a disadvantage. In order to keep her baby safe, she jumped from the summit of Carrauntoohil to the top of the Devil’s Ladder, a steep gully west of the peak. There she slipped and tumbled towards the valley floor. Both mother and baby miraculously landed safely, but the hard fall caused their footprints to become engraved in the rock and the four footprints of mother and baby can still be seen on the T he G reat P eninsulas

THE WHISPERING LAND

valley floor. The hag then grabbed her baby, ran off, jumped into a nearby lake and was never seen again. To this day the lake is called Lough Callee, Lake of the Hag, and the valley is known as Com Caillí, Hag’s Glen.

AROUND KILLARNEY Not far from where the above events took place lie the lakes and forests of Killarney. This is a landscape like no other in Ireland and one that gives a glimpse of what Ireland might have looked like many millennia ago. Gnarly oaks, elegant alders and mighty pines dominate the scenery. Water drips from the rain-soaked mosses and lichen that cover their trunks and branches. Gusts of wind rustle the leaves up in the canopies and drown out the rushing of a nearby stream. The ground is covered in a thick layer of decomposing foliage, creating a mosaic of brown, yellow and green tones. This is Ireland’s Atlantic rainforest, a once vast woodland, which has survived in just a few pockets along the western fringes of the country. It is said that when these forests were at their height a squirrel could travel from coast to coast without ever needing to touch the ground. Recent studies, however, suggest that Ireland’s forest wasn’t quite as dominant as natural history books tell us. Extensive pollen analysis paints a new picture of Ireland after the Ice Age. After the glaciers had retreated, tundra turned into grassland. Birch and hazel found a home in this steppe-like landscape and prepared the ground for the arrival of bigger trees, such as oak, Scots pine and alder. These trees became the masters of the extending forests, and it is now thought that they never covered Ireland in its entirety but that the island was instead a mixture of large woodlands interspersed with areas of grassland. Nevertheless, the ancient woodlands had a major impact on the first human settlers and subsequently on Irish history. Ireland’s first written language has a strong connection with trees. The Ogham alphabet, which was in use from around the fourth to the eighth centuries, is often referred to as the tree alphabet. It consisted of twenty letters, each made of a combination of short vertical, horizontal and tilted lines along a stone or piece of wood. These letters were known as feda (trees) or nin (branch or fork). It is widely accepted that at least eight of the Ogham letters represented a tree species – the B (breith), for example, stood for the birch, the D (dair) for the oak – and that the remaining letters were named with poetic alternatives. The L (luis) might have stood for flame to represent fiery red rowan berries, and the T (tinne, meaning bar of metal or iron) might have stood for the dense, hard wood of the holly. T he G reat P eninsulas