Peter Harbison - Ireland--A Luminous Beauty

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CONTENTS

ICONS AND ARTIFACTS

A LAND OF CONTRASTS

IMAGINATION AND STYLE

Wild flowerssea pinkson a cliff at the edge of the Atlantic, along the west coast, at sunset.

INTRODUCTION

Island light is magical, and none more so than Irelands. Irelands light, a theme of this book, lures the senses with a restless presence, flooding the landscape from all directions. The water surrounding and carving through the island reflects back to us the ever-changing movement of the clouds, the wind, the light, and the color.

Irelands sky is full of motion and color. The motion is the result of the wind sculpting and sweeping masses of clouds across the landscape. The clean air above and around the island (well situated in the north Atlantic, without a lot of dust and pollution) means we experience the dazzling colors, from deep, rich blues to pink-purples and fiery red-oranges, that accompany the spectacular sunsets.

Ross Castle, built in the fifteenth century on the banks of Lough Leane in County Kerry by ODonoghue Mor, one of the Irish chieftains, was the last stronghold against Cromwell. Legend says that ODonoghue still sleeps under the water of the lake and on the first of May every seven years he rises from the depths and circles the lake on his glorious white horse. It is said that anyone seeing the figure would have good luck for the rest of his or her life.

Many of the landscapessun-drenched, rain-filled, or cloud-brushedhave been captured in the photographers golden hour, the hushed first light of morning or the end of day when the sun streams down to the sea. Lady Augusta Gregorys comment that Ireland is a land of mists and mythic shadows, of weird silences in the lonely hills, and fitful skies of deepest gloom alternating with gorgeous sunsets expresses the luminous drama of Irelands wind-swept skies.

From the icons and artifacts of the ancient world to the dramatic landscapes of the natural world and the enduring sense of place of the cultivated world, this fascinating island with its magical light is rich with imagination and style. That spirit is everywhere. It moves our souls.

Morning mist on Maigue River, County Limerick.

Utilizing the wrinkly limestone of the Burren region in northern County Clare, Stone Age builders, over five thousand years ago, constructed a stunningly dramatic monument to their dead. The four stone legs of the dolmen known as Poulnabrone, the hole of the sorrows, carry a capstone stretched like a bird about to take flight to explore eternity in the skies.

T HE A NCIENT W ORLD

I CONS AND A RTIFACTS

It is, perhaps more than anything, the use of stone that forms the link between Irelands past and present. It is the impressive ancient stone still present in the landscape in the form of dolmens, passage-tombs, stone circles, high crosses, round towers, forts, and, eventually, castles and monasteries, that informs our sense of the past. Other structures, presumably made of wood, have long since vanished.

When excavated in the 1950s, the Mound of the Hostages on the Hill of Tara was found to contain burials, most from the Bronze Age. When these were cleared out, one of the stones revealed ornaments of circles with central ring marks, a kind normally associated with the Bronze Age rather than the Stone Age and different from the spirals at Newgrange (see ). It would seem, therefore, that the Mound of the Hostages came probably centuries after those in the Boyne Valley, including Newgrange and Knowth.

The Stone Age hunter-gatherers who took up two-fifths of the time that mankind has been inhabiting the islandfrom about 8000 to 4000 BChave left little for us to admire, simply because they spent most of their time foraging for food. But their immediate successors of the late Stone Age respected their dead so much that they cared far less for the abodes of the living than for those of the dead, building great stone tombs to house and commemorate the departed. These tombs were often set on heights so their visibility was assured from miles away, and with such large stones that we should see their builders as giants in genius, if not in stature.

Of all the Stone Age megalithic (great stone) tombs of Ireland, the dolmens, for their size, are the most dramatic and graceful. They have been dubbed the earliest public sculptures in Europe. The word dolmen comes from two Breton words meaning stone table. Dolmens consist of between three and seven uprights, which support a massive capstone (possibly weighing up to one hundred tons), usually tilting toward the entrance, where a large stone sometimes acted as a door. Some observers have imagined the dolmens to be druids altars, but folklore sees them as the beds of the legendary fleeing lovers Diarmuid and Grinne. Excavations have unearthed human bones within, indicating they are burial sites. The most remarkable characteristic of dolmens is the almost weightless way they carry their capstones, which must have required considerable skill and manpower to raise into position.

Dolmens may be the most dramatic and graceful of the megalithic tombs, but the passage-tomb is the most dominant, although not necessarily the earliest type. The passage-tomb has a stone-lined pathway leading from the rim of a usually circular mound to a burial chamber roughly at its center. Certainly built by a people bent on making a permanent mark on the landscape, these burial places were frequently set on eminences that could be seen for miles. Among the most visible are Queen Maeves Grave on top of Knocknarea, which offers a spectacular panorama over Sligo Bay, and the Mound of the Hostages on the Hill of Tara in County Meath, from which it is said that seven counties of Ireland can be seen on a clear day. But the most famous passage-tombs in Ireland are the three in the Boyne Valley, on a prominent ridge overlooking the river BoyneNewgrange, Knowth, and Dowth. These three great monuments can be taken as the high point of megalithic construction in Ireland, not only because of the sophisticated techniques required for their construction and the masterly decoration, but also because they seem to be the culmination of a series of tombs stretching back many hundreds of years.