I've been finding my way around mid-Ulster with a little more ease of late. It's only taken me the best part of five years since I moved from Belfast but I know how to get to far-flung places like Crossmaglen, Omeath, Monaghan and, yes, even Cookstown and Dungannon. Indeed, I even know of alternative routes to those places. I can find Monaghan via Armagh or via Aughnacloy, Co Tyrone. I discovered the second route very recently - leaving Monaghan I missed my turn and ended up in the wilds of Co Tyrone. Dr O Muiri, I presume.
I'm enjoying my exploring. As part of a Irish-Scots Gaelic song festival, I recently went on a guided tour on the Creggan graveyard in Co Armagh. (In my Belfast ignorance I had once assumed that the Creggan must have been in Derry. After all, mention Creggan to most people and it's the Bogside's sister they will think of. Creggan is simply Irish for "rocky ground". And there are any number of "rocky grounds" in the North.)
Neat wee place
This Creggan is in south Armagh. Note too that I'm using a lower case "s" in south. South in this case is just a geographical description, not a political one. Creggan churchyard, a neat wee place with a small church belonging to the Church of Ireland, is the burial place of, amongst others, the poets Seamus Mor Mac Murchada and Art Mac Cumhaigh, author of Ur-Chill an Chreagain, an 18th century aisling poem: Ag Ur-chill an Chreagain chodail me areir faoi bhron,/ is le heiri na maidne thainig ainnir fa mo dhein le poig,/bhi griosghrua ghartha aici agus loinnir ina ceibh mar or,/is gurbh e iocshlainte an domhain bheith ag amharc ar an rioghain oig.
(By the churchyard of Creagan in sorrow last night I slept/and at dawning of day a maiden came up with a kiss./ She had ember-bright cheeks and a light in her locks like gold/it would cure the world's ills to behold that young princess. - Translation from An Duanaire: Poems of the Dispossessed)
I was fortunate that the singer, Padraigin Ni Uallachain, sang the poem for the tour group I was with. It was one of those artistic acts of reclamation which both honour the dead and fortify the living. I was grateful to be there.
As a writer I felt it was time to pay my respects to my literary ancestors. Admittedly, Art has been dead for over 200 years but it's never too late. Still, there is something disconcerting about Gaeilgeoirs in graveyards. You'd think we'd do our best to avoid them. The opposite is in fact true. We seek them out in the search for our roots.
Mac Cumhaigh was the last and certainly the most wellknown of a line of Ulster poets in the Irish-language tradition stretching back over centuries. Ur-chill an Chreagain is a lament for the fall of the O Neills of the Fews, the local sept, and the old ways.
Menial tasks
It can't have been easy for him to be a poet in a world which was fast becoming alien in manners and language. He spent his life in menial tasks while composing his work for his listeners. It is in the roots of the poor and marginalised that Irish poetry draws its authority. There is no element of the soiree attached to it. Look at the lives of Northern poets in the 17th and 18th centuries - Mac Cumhaigh, Cathal Bui Mac Giolla Ghunna and Seamus Dall Mac Cuarta, to name but three - and you see artists who toiled for a living as best they could. Lost souls without patrons and, eventually, without audiences. We have other examples in the modern era - Sean O Riord ain shuffling between Cork County Hall and the TB ward; Mairtin O Direain enduring internal exile from the Aran Islands in the Dublin civil service. Not exactly the Bloomsbury set.
Vicious satire
Mac Cumhaigh wasn't adverse to a little bit of controversy. Enemies found themselves viciously satirised. He took on the parish priest's sister for her lack of hospitality to him and dubbed her Maire Chaoch (Blind Maire). He even took on the parish priest. Mac Cumhaigh wanted to marry his cousin and the priest forbade him. No problem. He simply went to the Church of Ireland and got the local vicar to do the necessary. Now that's what I call cross-community co-operation.
The churchyard is home to the O Neill vault which contains the dead of the sept from 1480 AD to 1820 AD. There are over 70 skulls therein. Lore has it that it was at the tomb that Mac Cumhaigh composed his aisling. However, the tomb became lost during the 19th century.
It was discovered again after 150 years when workmen stumbled across it while clearing up. Appropriately enough, they were working on the churchyard as part of the commemorations which marked the anniversary of Mac Cumhaigh's death. The graveyard itself is also cross-community, as our guide, Eamon O hUallachain, pointed out. In the confines of Creggan you will find raparee and peeler, priest and parson, rebel and loyalist, poet and philistine buried under the one green sod. Sooner or later, we all meet our Maker. But not all of us are remembered in song.