An Irishman's Diary

IN SLIGO recently, I made the short but steep climb of Knocknarea Mountain, whose rounded hulk lies west of the town near Strandhill, like a giant beached whale. There, not content with reaching the summit, I did what most tourists do by also climbing the summit’s man-made extension: a huge cairn comprising some 40,000 stones.

Maybe, in retrospect, I was trespassing. This was after all Maeve’s Cairn, reputed final rest place of the semi-legendary Queen of Connacht. And it only added to my feeling of guilt to learn later that I might have been standing on her shoulders.

According to tradition, she was buried upright, facing her bitter enemies in Ulster – the most famous of whom was Cuchulainn, who as we noted here last week, had killed her pet pine marten.

But in my admittedly inadequate defence, there was no sign asking people not to climb or otherwise interfere with the cairn. And the megalithic monuments scattered all over this part of Sligo have suffered worse things than being stood on. The great and ancient cemetery complex at Carrowmore, for example, endured much academic vandalism in the 1800s, when a local landlord looted it for the benefit of collectors.

It’s all the more surprising, therefore, that – much as it may be trampled upon – Maeve’s Cairn has never been excavated. Such is its cunning design, not even modern imaging techniques can penetrate the interior, preserving its sense of mystery.

But the assumption is that it contains a passage grave similar to Newgrange. And if there is a historical Maeve buried within, she may be only one of its more recent tenants, the cairn probably predating her by two thousand years.

In any case, I hope she’ll forgive me for enjoying the view from her roof last week – a panorama that includes Sligo Bay, Ben Bulben, Carrowmore, and the Ox Mountains. As an arrangement of natural features, this part of Ireland has an almost magical quality. In fact, viewed from certain angles, it’s easy to believe a local tradition that says those curves in the hills beyond Carrowmore are the sleeping form of another mythological female: the Cailleach Beara, or “witch of winter”.

WE'LL RETURNto the subject of mythological female figures in the landscape presently. But I was writing here last Saturday about the River Sullane in west Cork, and about the supposed curse by which it demands a human sacrifice every so many years.

On foot of which allegation, regular correspondent (and retired Fleet Street journalist) Paddy McGarvey has written to defend the river’s “nobility, serenity and innocence” against homicide charges.

It’s not the Sullane that’s to blame, he insists. It’s a tributary called the Launa, which joins it just east of Macroom. And he cites a case from his earliest days in journalism as evidence.

In January 1946, Paddy recalls, a young garda found the body of a woman “jammed in bracken and water under an arch of the bridge near the rivers’ confluence”. She had been missing nearly a month from a gypsy camp located on the adjacent flood plain.

But the guard promptly fainted, so that reinforcements had to be sought from Macroom. And these were joined by an eager young reporter – our Paddy – aged 18, who had arrived only days before from Armagh to open the first district office of the Southern Star.

He remembers how “a garda sergeant in a long raincoat and a caped cap” explained the all-too-common tragedy thus: “It’s the Soullane that catches the bodies but it’s the Launa that causes the trouble. One minute it’s a haven for trout, the next it’s a disaster for all, rushing down from the Derrynasaggart Mountains bringing every bit of mud, branches and rubbish with it to block the arches and cause the fatal flood.” It also emerged, however, that the Launa was only an agent in the crime. The same sergeant pointed away towards the northwest to two of the aforementioned mountains – matching peaks, close together – suggesting they were the ultimate culprits in the flooding. “The Paps”, he called them, in allusion to an old tradition by which the twin peaks are said to be the breasts of the goddess Danu.

The Paps have summit cairns too, for added anatomical suggestiveness. But being of tender years and fresh out of the land of Cuchulainn – where goddesses were less common, obviously – Paddy was puzzled by the mountains’ name. So he asked the sergeant what it meant. Whereupon the garda gave him a hard look and expressed the hope that he would meet “a nice girl” soon and find out.

Three years passed and Paddy, now with the Dublin Evening Mail,was sent to England to cover a big murder story. There, during a break in the trial, he visited the Brighton Hippodrome, where he paid 7 shillings and 6 pence to see a spectacle called the "Girl Pyramid". This was topped by a starlet who, although English, went by the doubly-strange stage name of "Paddie O'Neill". And it was while studying her contours that the now 21-year-old Ulsterman had an epiphany in which he remembered the Macroom sergeant and finally worked out why the peaks in the Derrynasaggarts had been so named.

Anyway, Paddy’s main point is to clear the Sullane’s reputation. So pending any further evidence in the case, I’m happy to acquit the said waterway of all charges. That doing, I can’t help pondering a 65-year-old academic question. Which, in 1946, was more innocent: Paddy or the river?