Houses for the Dead

Monday - Stories from the Studio

Needle felted Passage Tomb

I have always been fascinated by passage tombs and portal tombs. I think the first one I ever saw was Poulnabrone Dolmen in the Burren of Country Clare in Ireland (my middle name is Clare, after the country).

When I was wee we would often make the summer journey from Scotland over to Ireland to visit my gran in Galway and the massive clan that was my Irish relatives. (I’m far more Irish than I am Scottish).

Needle felted dolman & Poulnabrone Dolmen

I can clearly remember my first sight of Poulnabrone dolmen, which struck a chord - a very deep cord, evoking something ancient. It sits on a limestone plateau in the Burren - a very dramatic landscape. I was always curious to how it looked back in the early Neolithic when it was built in 3800 and 3200 BC. Poulnabrone is the best known of all of Irelands 172 dolmens, known also as the Hole of Sorrows.

Needle felted passage tomb

There are four main types or classifications of megalithic burial chamber or tomb to be found in Ireland. The boundaries between these classifications frequently blur and overlap, and in the past many different terms were used to describe monuments. The four main kinds of Irish megalithic monument are Court Tombs, Passage-graves, Portal Tombs and Wedge Tombs.

One of the most exciting trips I’ve ever taken was finally getting to visit Newgrange. Walking up the passage tomb, I reached out my hands to touch the sides and think of all those who walked this is ritual and ceremony. The narrow passageway, perhaps likened to a birth canal, leading into the liminal space which houses three chambers and great stone basins.

There were so many people in there on the tour that when the lights dimmed, and the reconstruction of the Winter light of the solstice coming up the passage way and into the chamber, I couldn’t quite see the lights 0 but in my mind I was the only one there to experience this amazing rite.

While the light may well have illuminated the central basin, and the bones gathered - to give the promise and blessing of rebirth to those who had died. I performed my own little ritual with thoughts and plans, laid within the great basin.

The return of the light at Winter Solstice - The lights offer that aspect of renewal and rebirth - lighting up the inner chamber

'As he spoke, he paused before a great mound grown over with trees, and around it silver clear in the moonlight were immense stones piled, the remains of an original circle, and there was a dark, low, narrow entrance leading therein. "This was my palace. In days past many a one plucked ere the purple flower of magic and the fruit of the tree of life..."

And even as he spoke, a light began to glow and to pervade the cave, and to obliterate the stone walls and the antique hieroglyphics engraven thereon, and to melt the earthen floor into itself like a fiery sun suddenly uprisen within the world, and there was everywhere a wandering ecstasy of sound: light and sound were one; light had a voice, and the music hung glittering in the air....

"I am Aengus; men call me the Young. I am the sunlight in the heart, the moonlight in the mind; I am the light at the end of every dream, the voice for ever calling to come away; I am desire beyond joy or tears. Come with me, come with me: I will make you immortal; for my palace opens into the Gardens of the Sun, and there are the fire-fountains which quench the heart's desire in rapture."'

AEON, A Dream of Angus Og, 1897.

Written by George Russell, the mystic, poet, and prominent Gaelic Revivalist - on the impression Newgrange made on him

Selection of passage tombs

Newgrange, is of course Ireland's most famous megalithic monument and along with Irelands other passage tombs have been the inspiration for making little needle felted passage tombs.

Click on the photo for website

Modern place for the dead

I was fascinated to learn that there are modern Barrows in use today, which take their inspiration from the past and offer a contemporary version of this ancient tradition provides a final resting place for cremation remains in an ashes barrow.

Click here for news video on the building of a modern barrow

Links:

Fr. O'Flanagan's History & Heritage Centre

If your interested in hearing moe about Pounabrone - the above video is a talk by Dr. Ann Lynch, a graduate of University College Cork.

The presentation ‘Poulnabrone, a tomb for the ancestors’ includes an account of the excavations carried out at this iconic site in the late 1980s. The excavation revealed well-preserved human remains and the artefacts deposited with them which have provided insights into the builders of these little-understood monuments. A comprehensive dating programme has been carried out which places Poulnabrone at the very beginning of megalith building in Ireland. The results of recent research into ancient DNA will also be presented.