Paul Malpas

Hello and it is so good to return to the land of the living to meet you all again after three and a half months of researching the life of a 62 year old dead man who passed from this world 42 years ago and who caused great grief to many young boys in Manchester, that he pastored for 16 long years all that time ago. Readers of this column will know of whom I speak and I just wonder whether it was the manner of his humble birth which made young, intelligent and gifted boys such an anathema to him.

Anyway, I am back amongst you, but not in a joyful or carefree mood, although I should be with that pair of burgeoning boys, born to my daughter in June this summer and winking at me from the wallpaper put on my computer screen and also another birth in August, in Bradford, of my sixth grand child, Hamzah, which means I think, Lion. Slightly built but with long fingers, he has time to grow tall and I expect him to play for Yorkshire one day and hopefully for Bangladesh or England, he has the choice and anybody with choice is half way there. I should be joyful after seeing the twins suck Northern France dry on our holidays there last month and I am not carefree because only just over a week ago, a man I held in the highest regard, a man who, more than anyone I know, kept his hometown of Boyle, in North Roscommon, in the artistic and intellectual spotlights of Ireland, died suddenly. It was his management and organization of the Boyle Arts Festival, an annual event of some magnitude, that kept the modern day artists of Ireland on their toes and it was him, alone, who captured the imagination of the Arts media. Except for him, Boyle would have been some little backwater bypassed on the road to Sligo and dreaming of its military and musical past.

I watched the blaze and pageantry of his funeral service, the blaze and pageantry that only the Catholic Church with the help of the local community can throw on occasions such as these and accepted that that is what they do well to bigfish in small ponds. I started thinking would he have liked all this hype, he went so quickly, he might not have left a protocol to be followed but knowing the man, I would suggest his favourite modus mortatis would have been in a blaze of glory, so he would not have been upset by his requiem.

Continuing along with that train of thought I realised that that kind of celebration would not be for me, not the pageantry or a blaze of anything other than the gas fired jets of a burner in some damp crematorium. I am no big fish in any kind of pond, I am not even plankton, possibly a minor diatom drifting around in a puddle caused by an imprint in the soil of some well worn wellington boot . When I go I want to be treated as such, first of all pinched for reaction, to ensure my mortality and when satisfied that life no longer exists, shovelled into some form of container, a body bag or even a shopping bag and taken to the firing chamber as soon as possible once all legal niceties are resolved, and there turned into clinker or ashes and when cooled, placed in some humble container. A cardboard box will do.

It is at this moment my family, if any still hold me in regard and a friend or friends can gather and drink my supernatural health and think of days when I did my best and there were not many of those. It would be a pleasure at this time if some kind burgher would dribble a few drops of life giving nectar over my cardboard contained dust. Just on the off chance so to speak. My mate, Charly’s, hooch would be just the thing. When satisfied that this elixir is only snake oil then take me off to South Sligo.

I want what is left of me to be bisected, roughly will do, if no scales are to be had, and the first half taken to the top of the Bricklieves, the Speckled Mountains, a place my ancestors of 5500 years ago held in high regard and it is there that my acolytes will await a gentle westerly breeze and allow this moiety of my roasted powder to slip away and be carried by this zephyr, over Dunaveragh, that ancient resting place of pilgrims and on over the latter day N4, to rest on the calm waters of Loch Arbhach with the lightest haze finally stopping on the walls of Ballindoon Abbey, where the Dominicans held sway 500 years ago.

Back in the car again with care being taken of my final remnants, a zephyr up there can soon turn into a tempest and this final grit has another place to go. To the historic Plains of Boyle we will be destined. Here on this vibrant pasture land, Irish cattle have been fattened up for thousands of years. In this much prized upland plateau is the townland of Eastersnow. It is here John Mcgahern, my most favourite wordsmith, in his much praised book “Amongst Women” buries the first fictional mother of the family. I can only say that he did this for the beauty of its name, certainly to me a better sound than, Aghawillin in Leitrim where his own mother lies and it has the added advantage of being within walking distance of Cootehall where he lived as a boy.

The graveyard at Eastersnow is a pleasant site, quadrangular in shape with the four walls of an old chapel standing in its centre. It has been the home of rich man and poor man for a long time and I would like my remaining bits scattered within these four walls. If John McGahern had high regard, so do I and it has the added advantage of being close to Byrne’s Public House. If any mourner ravished with the drouth, after so long a pilgrimage, would just knock on the door, I am sure Mrs. Byrne would offer them a drink.

So my time will be over and I hope there is great merry making in the community as one more thorn is picked out of people’s lives and the lovely Helen can settle down to an old age with little to worry about except for the untidiness of the kitchen. I, unfortunately will not be there to keep everything shipshape and Bristol fashion.

But before I go for today, I want to reiterate the thoughts in my first paragraph and thank you all once again for your support throughout the Summer. There was a steady flow of people logging on every day for, even though I say it myself, a better read than the newspapers.

I thought for a moment that I had made up a new word but I knew I had not. I had used it before but I wanted a precise definition.  I reached for “The Times” dictionary but it was not there, I went into the next room and picked up “Collins” and it was not there either.  The word was marketeer in the context of someone who sells on a market as opposed to the more common word marketer, someone who goes to a market.  I eventually found it in the “Shorter Oxford” and was surprised to see the word was first used in 1832 in the US of A a long way before my time so my claim was vanquished before it hit the Publish button.  However to get back to my original thoughts, marketeers and ad-men world wide have spent the best part of the 20th century and the ten years of this one, struggling with the idea of changing tastes and the fickleness of people.  Well I can tell them now it is not true.  People’s tastes remain on a level plain, they are not fickle, they have always known what they like and what they like has always been the same.

For example here in North Roscommon just a mile or two out of Boyle on the Carrick Road (the N4) there is a townland called Rockingham Desmesne within which is The Loch Ce Forest Park set in and around a picturesque bay on the southern end of Loch Ce.  Since the birth of Christ and most probably for hundreds of years before that people have found that this place has such an innate beauty that it was a place to live and fight for, which means that for possibly 2500  years people’s tastes have remained the same, it surely is a lovely place.

The archaeological record shows that:-

1)  There are crannogs galore in Loch Ce and the smaller lakes in the park.  Watery summer residences for the rich and famous over 2000 years ago, retreats of last resort.

2)  One of the finest bowl barrows in Europe, a massive burial mound of 3000 cubic metres of earth to honour some magnate 2000 years ago sits on a hill on the south side of the park looking out over Loch Ce.

3)  Ring forts by the score.  Dozens of these oval patches of land surrounded by an earth embankment which was not a fort but more a farm house and yard for the people from about 500 to 1000 AD.

4)  Monasteries and churches built by the missionary monks of Premonstre in the 12th and 13th centuries.

5)  The island fortress, moated site and market town encouraged by the fighting Macdermot clan from the 12th century on.

6)  The various follys, church and buildings built by the King Family who were granted the land in the 17th century as an attractive way of developing the park and other West of Ireland beauty spots for the burgeoning English tourist trade. They left the park 60 years ago but roughly what you see now is what they left.

7)  The governing bodies of Coilte Teorante, Roscommon County Council, The Irish Government, the European Union and Failte Ireland who all stepped in to boost the vacuum caused by the King’s withdrawal and build wonderful 20th and 21st century creations which might welcome but eventually put off the interested visitor.

So you marketeers only need to give it as it is, peoples tastes do not change.  Spend your efforts selling tripe, chitterlings, tails, hearts, livers, brains and tongues because that is what people have always liked and will still like, and in their present reduced circumstances is all they can afford.  Offal is the Rockingham of the culinary world, so eat away.

One last item has caught my eye.  In the wake of the Murphy Report on child abuse The Garda Commissioner has announced the appointment of Assistant Commissioner Kieran Kenny to re-examine the file on Bernadette Connolly, a ten year old girl who was sexually assaulted and murdered 40 years ago. There were witness reports saying a green van belonging to the Passionist monks from Cloonmahon Monastery had been seen on that afternoon in the area from which she had disappeared.  However nothing came of it but shortly afterwards the case was reinvestigated and the evidence pointed again to this Passionist priest.  The senior detective on the case later told journalists that he was told to bring this man in for questioning but the night before his inquisition the detective was told to forget it.  The priest was then relocated to Africa immediately afterwards where he has since died.  Bernadette’s mutilated body was found in the bog at Limnagh, on the north side of the Curlews, about three miles from Boyle, three months later.  I do hope  this time her three surviving sisters get closure.

To divert away from yesterday’s theme I want today to try and paint a picture in words of the beautiful, rich and sometimes wild and rugged landscape that surrounds us here in Boyle and how that landscape formed the archaeological heritage we have today.  It is hard to understand how much the reader knows of the past and its timescale but if we assume that known human life in Ireland started approximately 8000BC with hunter/gatherers at the start of the Mesolithic, which lasted  to about 4000BC.   The Neolithic and farming began then and lasted until 2500BC.  The Bronze Age and the understanding of power lasted for 2000 years until 500BC and the Iron Age and mythology until about 500AD.  The Medieval period then and the start of written history lasted up until 1600AD. This inept summary should help the reader to understand the time frame to which I refer.

If we picture the map of North  Roscommon and place the Boyle River in its centre, running from left to right, or west to east or from Loch Gara to Loch Ce, 11kms of winding river starting placidly enough as it exits Loch Gara at Derrymaquirk, quickening up after the ancient ford of Tinnacarra, hurtling with force through the rapids at Assylin and quietening down again at Mockmoyne before forceably pushing down through the town to the Abbey and slowly coming to a halt in Drum to enable it to enter Loch Ce with a whisper. A fall in 11 kms of 23 metres.   At its western end Loch Gara is a shallow lake in normal times having been lowered in the 1950s by 3 metres with the blowing of the rock shelves at Cuppenagh and Tinnacarra.  The recent poor weather and floods brought the lake up to previous levels making it twice as large as it normally is and turning the Boyle River into a one km wide lake of water as opposed to its normal 20 metre width.  Loch Ce at its eastern end can be as much as 17 metre deep in its main navigation channels and this lake was risen by about 1.5 metres in 1847 with the construction of Knockvicar Lock and Weir which was done to improve the Shannon Navigation System. The Boyle River actually continues through Oakport and Eidin Loughs to meet the River Shannon one km north of Carrick town, but for the purposes of this exercise we will ignore this stretch of water interesting though it is.

The Boyle River and The Cistercian Bridge, Abbeytown

To the north of the river between the two lakes, the Curlew Mountains rise quickly, with Derrinoghron and Brislagh to the west and Sheegory leaning over Loch Ce to the east.  These hills are only 220-230 metres above sea level but historically have been notoriously difficult to cross, with many a fighting force coming to grief on its blanket bog covered slopes.  Not least the English forces under Sir Conyers Clifford who in 1599 marched from Athlone to put down a seige of Collooney Castle by the Donegal force under O’Neill.  The local boys led by MacDermot and O’Roarke soon put them to flight as they bunched up along the narrow path over the bog.  This Battle of the Curlews was the last time an English army was defeated in Ireland.

To the south of the river the land improves tremendously and throughout history the people who controlled this rich and fertile land controlled the area and from the 10th century onwards, Moylurg as this area was called and especially the Plains of Boyle, an upland plateau of about 50 square kilometres which offered some of the finest grazing land in Ireland was owned and kept by the MacDermot clan, but throughout the neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages this land was the place to graze cattle who were the currency of the day.

In these prehistoric times travel by land was almost non-existent, the River Shannon and its tributaries were the highways but gradually roads were formed for traveller and pilgrim going north and cattle drovers going south to the Plains and the fertile lands further beyond.  They were squeezed into a narrow channel between the two lakes because of the expanse of bog to the west and the River Shannon and the lake and river infested county of Leitrim to the east. So the north/south road Bothar an chorrain crossed the east/west road Bothar na Sliabe, the road over the Ox Mountains to the sea at Ballina, at Drumanone just 300 metres north of the Tinnacarra ford.  This crossing point and you would hardly notice it today was for over a thousand years the Spaghetti Junction of its time.  Just north of this crossing point the jewel in this areas archaeological crown, the Drumanone Portal Tomb stands. Not by coincidence has it sat there for 5500 years from the middle of the Neolithic but it was registering the ownership of the ford by some elite family group who were laying claim to this land 2000 years before the pyramids in Egypt were built. All its main megaliths are still standing with the capstone reputed to weigh 24 tonnes, however the cairn built around the megaliths has gone, taken by farmers for boundary walls.  The standing stone erected much later is a memorial to this tomb and the adjacent Bothar.

The Drumanone Portal Tomb

When you look at the web site constructed by the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government and go onto the maps showing the Archaeological Survey of Ireland and zoom into North Roscommon, each red dot is a site found on the survey.  To the north of the river the land is virtually red dot free until you come to the Bricklieves 12kms away whilst to the south of the river you cannot see land for red dots.  So historically the south side was the best side, I wonder whether  is the same with every east/west river system?

So let us start with Loch Gara and its entrance into the Boyle river.  Certainly 2500 years ago this was a well populated place and had been for a 1000 years previously and possibly up to 1ooo years ago.  So for 3500 years this was the place to live, the D4 of its day.  Christina Fredengren in her marvelous book Crannogs published by Wordwell in 2002 which recorded her in depth survey of the area and in particular the crannogs built on this stretch of water found plenty of evidence of Neolithic life and even remnants of 20th century poteen making on the many crannogs she surveyed.

Crannogs are manmade islands on lakes and rivers formed by piling fill material into a cofferdam construction of timber piles driven into the bed of the water.  These islands rose out of the water and were protected by a timber palisade fence and were used for a variety of purposes but I suppose in the main were a place of last resort when confronted by an hostile force, surrounded as they were by water. They were not permanent homes, these being the ring forts that cover the country, but a retreat for the wealthy who could afford to build these costly structures.  They were primarily used from the end of the Neolithic until the end of the first millenium AD and in some cases into the 16th century.  So when Fredengren found 18% of the known Irish crannogs, some 180 number in just a few kilometres of river and lake, it has to be assumed that this area was a place of power, wealth and prosperity.

A Crannog on Loch Gara

Nowadays so few people live at this end of the river, with hardly anyone living round the lake, with Monasteraden the only village, about one kilometre from the lake.  In fact there are probably more archaeological sites than people.

At the other end of the river Loch Ce, originally a volcanic site, stands beautiful and brooding, its waters ruffled only occasionally by local pike fishermen in their lake boats and cabin cruisers coming up through Knockvicar Lock to Rockingham and Boyle Harbours. It has no Neolithic or Bronze Age connections and does not spring into life until Early Medieval times just as Loch Gara was fading into a backwater.  What caused this sudden shift in fortunes?  Well I suppose you could say Christianity.  St. Patrick came to Boyle twice, so the Annals tell us, but really Columcille, who is considered by many to be the saviour of the western Christian Church, came here in the 550s AD prior to his leaving for Scotland and founded the Culdean monastery of Eastmacniere on Church Island on the west side of the lake and the church at Drum about one kilometre up the Boyle River.  These Culdee monks lived for 650 years in these foundations before being replaced by the missionary orders sent by the Pope, to reform the laxity of the Irish Church in the 12th century.  The Augustinians made their home at Inchmacniere, the Premonstratensionists built their abbey on Trinity Island, the Cistercians in Boyle and the Franciscans at Knockvicar.  With these foundations came the people and the lake side and country round it was soon cluttered with ringforts (the house of choice for many for a thousand years from 500AD onwards.

These monks ruled the roost along with the Gaelic chieftains until Elizabethan times when the Reformation and Plantation families came over from England to change things around. The local plantationer was the King family and Loch Ce became its playground as they speckled it with follies, hunting lodges and houses and managed the land round the lake admirably and much of what they did can be seen to this day.

So having jumped from one end of the river to the other, a quick trawl downstream between the two expanses of water,  reveals older treasures. We have mentioned the crannogs and their long historical use and the portal tomb at Drumanone all of which would be missed by all but the intrepid traveller. In fact in this whole litany of archaeological sites there is not a sign or a notice of their existence. The Irish Authorities faced with this absolute plethora of sites tend to be rather blase and like water allow the sites to find their own level.  You could live round Boyle for years and know nothing of its riches.  Further downriver on its southern side are a chain of trivallate ringforts all along the northern approaches to the plains. These trivallate forts were the homes of royalty for it is only those people that could call on the vasselage or the markers that would bring in the labour to construct these massive structures and today they lie in farmers fields slowly being flattened by cattle, only preserved this long because the poor country folk thought them the homes of fairies.  To the north of the river, at Ballylugnagon is a large ringfort with a commanding view over the river and Assylin, the ancient ecclesiastical centre where St. Patrick was supposed to have stopped on his journey to see St. Attracta at her hostel in Killaraght.

To the south of the river at this point is possibly the most important collection of barrows in the country. Barrows are Iron Age earth structures in different configurations which are supposed to be the burial places of important people, but so little work has been done on them archaeologists cannot be sure. The chain starts at Lugnamuddagh and runs in a southwesterly directio through Knockadoobrusna, where two have been destroyed by the Golf Club, and on through the Plains, through Corbally to Killaraght.  With possibly the most important one at Knockmeeliagh at the north east end of this chain, about 100 metres north of the N4 Trunk Road.  This is a bowl barrow on a hill overlooking Loch Ce and standing as a sentinel on the northern edge of the Plains.  It contains some 3000 cubic metres of earth and must have been the burial plot of a very important contemporary of Christ.  The river then flows through the town to the the obvious treasures of the 12th century Abbey and attendant bridge before flowing out through the townland of Drum and into Loch Ce.  Incidentally the main bridge in the town is in its third creation since 1750AD, the previous two fell foul of the waters, whilst the Cistercian bridge at Abbeytown is exactly the same structure as when it was commissioned in 1220AD both taking HGV wagons on a daily basis and both sorely tested by the volume of water they let through last week in the floods.

So with over 2000 words in today’s blog, I now need a rest. Adieu (more…)

When I decided to throw in my lot with Ireland and came to live here full time some five years ago after years of living a ping pong existence between the two countries, I decided that my time should be taken up with it’s history and ideally in the explanation of that history i.e. it’s archaeology.

So as soon as I could, I sought admission to an Archaeology Diploma course at Galway University, or NUI Galway as it likes to be called. What qualified me for this course was my point blank refusal to send them my General Certificate of Education results which I had sat some 50 years previously.

What followed was a thoroughly enjoyable two years of mainly thought provoking lectures on Ireland and particularly west of Ireland archaeology, only marred for some by the Head of the Archaeology School telling us towards the end of the first year that the Celts never came to Ireland. This statement did not disturb me, but in a class of Celts it was almost like being called a bastard. So much so that three of the class never appeared again and from the rest there was constant mutterings for the remaining 15 months, so engrained is this Celtic myth in the Irish psyche. In fact a myth introduced by politicians at the end of the 19th century to give some kind of focus to the new and burgeoning state of Ireland. Therefore let me just confirm the fact that THE CELTS AS A PEOPLE NEVER CAME TO IRELAND, however it is true that a few ideas were exchanged with the intermarriage of eminent families in Ireland with their neighbours on the continent of Europe.

The course finished and my examination results were satifactory enough for me to be invited down to the University to celebrate Graduation Day. Now I had already experienced one graduation ceremony with my eldest daughter at Nottingham University some years before and at that time was overwhelmed with the gross waste of time , money and energy expended in the simple task of handing over a peice of paper.

Thousands of students with parents in tow buying gowns, hats and dresses journeying down to the university campus to wallow in their millisecond of fame in front of a stageful of multicoloured academics who should surely be doing something better suited to their intellects. Since that time all my children and I have many, have taken in my thoughts on the subject and refused to expose themselves to this financial legerdemain.

I explained this to the nice lady from the University Graduation Office who rang me wondering why I had not filled in the application form for this gratifying day. Halfway through my verbiose diatribe she put the phone down leaving me unfulfilled. However my diploma arrived by post written in a quasi Latin script, I and at least 20 other people have tried to interpret without success. No wonder doctors and scientists can be accepted for positions of authority by flashing these pieces of parchment illuminated by Book of Kells type illustration and gobbledygook script. No one can translate the document therefore no one can refute the lies in the job application.

However the course was a tremendous success for me personally and I now know more about North Roscommon Archaeology than 99.9% of the natives and it helped me greatly in my understanding of the landscape which is integral in the formation of its archaeology, but I still cannot understand the academics, people of powerful thought, who annually put themselves through this graduation charade.