Endurance

by Dermot Somers

  The people’s Flag is deepest red;

  It shrouded oft our martyred dead

  And ere their limbs grew stiff or cold,

  Their hearts’ blood dyed its ev’ry fold…

  Seen from an Iron Age perspective, the most potent feature in this landscape is Sliabh na Caillí (Hag’s mountain) crowned by Lough Crew megalithic cemetery just a few miles away to the northwest. This low ridge of limestone hills has been described as ‘a virtual necropolis’. Dozens of tombs in various stages of exposure dot the hilltops, some clearly visible from Crossakeel. Dating from roughly 3000 BC, the passage-grave cemetery has a sense of casual access that makes it in ways more attractive than the highly managed Boyne Valley tombs of roughly the same period.

  Sliabh Caillí offers historic views, mythic perspectives. Those would have been the summer uplands of a cattle culture, and highlands too of the imagination. The ridge provides a hill-walk among clusters of passage graves in a part of Ireland where the average walker would swear that no hill exists.

  For the early Irish, including those travelling with the Táin, the passage graves and cairns were the homes of Otherworld communities living within the earth. These mounds were called sidhe and this word gradually came to be attributed to the beings who dwelt in them. The lore was transmuted into the later cult of the fairies, or the Sí.

  As the Táin army pondered its route at Crossakeel and opted for a detour south to avoid Cuchulainn, the warriors were probably looking over the tops of trees at the tombs of Lough Crew rising above native forest. The rich lands around Crossakeel were farmed sporadically from the Neolithic Age onwards, beginning five to six thousand years ago. During the centuries to which the Táin belongs, there was a dramatic decline in Iron Age agriculture. Wild woodland prevailed for several hundred years, until roughly the beginning of Christianity. This was a dark period, possibly of strife and population decline, accompanied by phases of poor weather. It is not difficult to imagine famine, plague and campaigns of war.

  An early Irish army would have followed well-trodden general routes. There was an axe-wielding engineer corps to facilitate sudden detours. The charioteers, and there cannot have been many, were skilled in tackling obstacles. A small amount of seasoned timber would be carried for running repairs. Ash must have been particularly useful where lightness, flexibility and strength were required. Although only the wheel appears in early carvings, some version of the slide-car seems more likely for ease of passage over wet ground and unavoidable areas of bog. The horses were small and light, a trend that was to continue in the military exploitation of Ireland. When an army moved under pressure, as in the retreat at the end of the Táin, a trail of debris and baggage would have been left behind.

  TABOO

  Cuchulainn imposed a ritual prohibition on the progress of Medb’s army. His geis, or taboo, was carved in Ogham script on a wooden peg, inscribed with one hand only, an echo of some ancient magical practice, a druidic ritual perhaps. The geis in heroic tales often reads as a kind of tedious mannerism, disrupting the narrative logic. But it suited a cultural mindset where superstition and belief in the forces of the Otherworld were powerful influences.

  Rather than challenge Cuchulainn, the army made a detour to the south, and the trees were hacked down before the chariots. The diversion was known as Slechta, the hewn place. This is a self-evident image of how roads came into being. It took them south towards the present Kilsceer and east to Ceanannas, or Kells. This historic little town has always struggled with its identity. (Ceanannas means ‘great residence’ while Kells means ‘churches’.) It used to be called Cuil Sibrille as well. It was to be known as Kenlis, an Anglo-Norman corruption of Ceanannas, before it became Kells; then it reverted to Ceanannas, which seems not to have caught on, because it is still widely known as Kells.

  During the night, a great snow fell on the Connacht army camped at Ceanannas. It reached ‘over the men’s belts and the chariot wheels’. This was unseasonable, to say the least, as they were hardly travelling in winter. The snow was a narrative flourish, provided by some thoughtful storyteller, and it was dismissed afterwards by a sudden thaw. Having spent the night with a woman, in dereliction of his sentry duty, Cuchulainn was tracking Medb’s army. Cuchulainn’s skill was immense but the count confused him, until he guessed that one troop of three thousand had been dispersed among fifty thousand soldiers. These were the Gaileoin of course, broken up and scattered on Medb’s orders before crossing the Shannon.

  Coincidentally, when St Patrick was on the nearby Hill of Tara, launching Christianity in the late Iron Age, he got into a contest of miracles with a druid who covered the countryside with snow for openers. St Patrick removed it in response. Maybe this was the same snowfall and thaw that took the Táin by surprise, dating the journey a little later than was thought – to the fifth century!

  ATTACK

  The journey continued past the Hill of Slane and veered northeast of the Bend of the Boyne. This brought the army onto the route of Slí Mhidluachra (one of the so-called Five Great Roads) heading northwards from Tara to Emain Macha, royal centre of Ulster. This ancient route crossed the Boyne at the famous Ford of the Brow just below Newgrange. A few miles further north, it forded the River Mattock, close to the point where Medb’s army joined the route. It was at Ath Gabhla, Ford of the Fork on the Mattock, that Cuchulainn first attacked Medb’s warriors, killing four of the finest, who were travelling in front, ‘keeping their rugs and cloaks and brooches from being soiled by the dusts of the multitude’. For all their pains, their garments and their gear were soiled in gore and their heads impaled on a forked tree-trunk, thrust into the bed of the ford. Too late to turn back then …

  This is one of the most densely historic areas in Ireland, with a number of symbolic sites within reach, each marking the climax of an era, or a major turning point. Just behind, to the south, the Bend in the Boyne itself was created as recently as twelve thousand years ago, as the glaciers of the last Ice Age retreated. The glacial soil left in the new loop of the river allowed the development of a Neolithic culture rich enough to construct the megalithic tombs, Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth, five thousand years ago.

  What did the Iron Age warriors think as they ploughed their way through the landscape of the Boyne? It’s a good bet that the Connachtmen were grumbling about the quality of their own land compared to these verdant plains of Midhe. Thoughts of their bony cattle on the sour grass of home must have sharpened their taste for the pillaging and raiding not too far ahead. In time, as they expanded, the Connachta would take over these lands and push the Laigin/Leinstermen southwards out of Midhe.

  Early in the first millennium AD, the Roman Andalusian, Pomponius Mela, wrote of Ireland: ‘… the weather does not suit the ripening of grain, but there is plenty of grass that is juicy and even sweet; with the result that the cattle are full after part of the day, and if they were not kept from eating they would burst.’ He added, ‘The people are uncivilised; more ignorant of virtue than other nations ….’ This was sour grapes, of course, as the belief that the grain necessary to feed an army could not be grown here was partly responsible for keeping the Romans out.

  The sequence of Christian sites on the Táin journey demonstrates the monastic eye for good land close to a major route. Today, the impact of the ruins depends on the approach. The broken tower of Monasterboice seen from the N1 motorway at 70 mph is not an arresting sight. It arouses a transient curiosity, a sense that it might be nice to visit sometime, but not now. However, if Monasterboice is approached by the oldest local road, travelling north from Drogheda on the Táin-route called Belach nAne (‘the way they drove’), the tower thrusts powerfully through a canopy of trees and looks like a volcanic plug from which the ground has fallen away. The real treasures in the enclosure are the huge stone crosses, silently revealing the confidence of their makers, and dwarfing the modern imitations. But there was no trace of Christian building in the landscape as the hordes of the Táin moved north.
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br />   SLINGSHOT

  Beyond the fringes of the march, Cuchulainn met a Connacht charioteer cutting wood for repairs. Thinking he was one of Medb’s men, the driver asked him to trim the holly-shafts he had cut. The young warrior pulled a thick pole through his fist, stripping off the knots and bark, and paring the shaft clean. The Connachtman was terrified but Cuchulainn reassured him that he had no quarrel with drivers.

  The broken chariot belonged to a son of Medb and Ailill, who was waiting nearby. Cuchulainn lopped the prince’s head off, placed it on the charioteer’s back, and told him to bring it to Medb and Ailill in that exact position. Otherwise he too would lose his head.

  The charioteer ran up to Medb and Ailill with the news. In his fright, he lifted their son’s head from his back. Immediately, a stone from a slingshot shattered his skull.

  ‘It is not true therefore,’ the tale declares, ‘that Cuchulainn did not kill charioteers; he killed them if they did wrong.’

  Many more heads were lost to Cuchulainn’s skill before a strange little event occurred to pinpoint the army’s position on the east coast at the mouth of the River Fane, just south of Blackrock village and Dundalk.

  With a slingshot, Cuchulainn knocked a pet bird and a squirrel off Medb’s shoulders. Two ancient place names arising from the incident refer to twin shoulders of land at the mouth of the River Fane. They are Méthe Tog, Squirrel Neck and Méthe nEuin, Bird Neck. (Tog is more accurately translated as a pine marten. The ancient word méthe, meaning a headless stump, can still be found in a modern Irish dictionary.)

  The story demonstrates in the first place that the army was on the correct route for the fording of Dundalk Bay; further, it shows how intricately oral narrative is bound into naming the landscape, and how difficult it can be to tell which came first – the place name, or its story.

  The Táin is obsessive in this practice. Plot and action are often subservient to place, or the naming of it. It reflects a powerful mechanism in early Gaelic culture which is formalised in the bardic art of Dinnseanchas, the lore of place. This focus has influenced Irish literature ever since, so that it should be no surprise at all that Ulysses, the ultimate novel of place, is located in the Irish consciousness.

  DUNDALK BAY

  They had left the Great North Road, Slí Mhidluachra, by then and were following a course that would take them across Dundalk Bay at low tide, and deep into the Cooley Peninsula. This shortcut might save a day over the long way round, which crossed the Castletown River at a ford in present-day Dundalk, passing dangerously close to Cuchulainn’s home. Apparently it was still possible to cross the Bay to Rockmarshall on the Cooley Peninsula until the central channel was dredged in 1905. But even the most credulous traveller would find it hard to visualise an army – chariots, supply train and camp followers – crossing the sludge of the bay at any time. The mud is odiously glutinous. That route could have been taken by an advance force of muck-savages working a pincer-movement while the main army kept to the west of Dundalk.

  COOLEY MOUNTAINS

  Having invaded Cooley in spite of Cuchulainn, or the border tribe he represented, Medb’s army set up headquarters at Finnabair Cuailnge, a big rath not far from the place now called ‘The Bush’, a former railway station on the Carlingford road. Densely overgrown, this rath, flanked by a local water-scheme, is still a significant feature in the landscape. Seen through briars, nettles and blackthorn, a high mound is visible within. It has a flattened top, suggesting a Norman ‘motte’ rather than a ringfort.

  The invaders were running out of time, the recovery of the ailing Ulstermen imminent. The army split up in search of Donn Cuailnge, the brown bull of Cooley. They ravaged the surrounding countryside. Medb took her troops on a blood-thirsty mission out of Cooley and deeper into Ulster, bent on destruction. Her route carved northwards through the Cooley Mountains and out onto the Midluachair road again. She is credited with having gouged out the ‘The Windy Gap’, or Bearnas Bó Cuailnge, as a deliberate insult to the men of Ulster.

  But it was not Medb who levelled the even older court tomb in the Windy Gap. That ancient monument was destroyed by the modern widening of the road. It has picked up an accretion of folklore to become ‘The Long Woman’s Grave’.

  Medb’s journey further north refused to take the simple lowland route along the Newry river to join Slí Mhidluachra. Floods on the mountain rivers forced the army upwards over the ridge of Black Mountain at almost five hundred metres, and down the western slopes to the Flurry River and Ravensdale, the area called Bélat Ailiúin in the Táin. And indeed there are extravagant river gorges in this part of the Cooleys, quite out of proportion to the little streams they now contain. It is understandable that such a landscape inspired the flood reports that saturate these episodes of the Táin.

  Medb’s route is actually a very pleasant traverse of the secondary ridge of the Cooleys (Slieve Foye being the primary). Various routes lead to the prominent cairn known as Carnawaddy, and then the broad ridge is followed in a northerly direction towards the TV mast on Black Mountain. An ancient track, a green road, leads down the hillside, heading south towards Ravensdale. An Poc Fada, an annual hurling competition, is held on these slopes. The winner is the one who traverses the mountain with the lowest number of strokes. Carnawaddy (Cairn of the Dog), where the hurlers begin their descent, is reputed to be the burial mound of Fionn Mac Cumhail’s hound, Bran. It is certainly some kind of burial chamber, but its exact nature is uncertain. Clermont Cairn, to the north along the ridge, is a megalithic passage tomb.

  This is the area in which the brown bull was concealed by the Ulstermen. Dubhchoire, the Black Cauldron, is a deceptive little valley, hidden from sight in a fold of the hills to the west of Ravensdale. Without a map, or prior knowledge, it would be difficult to spot the tiny, glaciated valley from the main Dublin–Belfast road, no more than three miles away. A ridge of rounded hills, Doolargy and Carrabane, blends into the higher, heathery slopes behind, crowned by Carna-waddy. Dubhchoire is hidden in full sight.

  The little valley is best approached from the townland of Ballymakellett, in the vicinity of the ‘Lumpers’ pub, on the R174 between Jenkinstown and Ravensdale. Minor roads and lanes lead upwards into the folded hills. These slopes are known in the Táin as Glenn Gat, the Valley of the Osiers. The Ordnance Survey map and the Archaeological Survey of Co. Louth reveal an area liberally speckled with monuments.

  HIDEAWAY

  The most striking feature is the ringfort known as Lissachiggle (Lios an tSeagail – Fort of the Rye) on the 250-metre contour at the back of the little corrie formed by Doolargy and Carrabane. Hidden, yet accessible, plentifully supplied with water, Lios an tSeagail seems an ideal hiding place for a valuable animal. It is, however, clearly visible to anyone on the slopes immediately above. There is a more secure place of concealment a couple of miles to the southeast, in the extraordinary ravine that runs steeply down to Ballymakellett from an opening between Slievestucan and the Castle. This is a far more likely source of the willows that would have given rise to the name Glenn Gat, Valley of the Osiers, in which the black cauldron was located.

  However, the stone-built ringfort, Lios an tSeagail, holds a more romantic appeal. To the east, a short slope leads to a vantage point surveying the lowlands to the absolute limits of possibility. The traffic rushes north and south on the motorway below. There are houses, farms, factories and stables studding the level plain. Aloft, among the rocks and heather, it is not hard to feel that Dubhchoire is a fold in time, so imperceptible that it has survived. Not without threat. It appears to have been ploughed in the not-too-distant past and to have been harrowed recently by motor bikes. According to local legend, the cultivation-ridges or ‘lazy-beds’ in this shallow valley are remnants of the potato-famine.

  The enclosure itself is surrounded by a thick earthen rampart faced with stone. Traces of at least a dozen small huts were found within, during an excavation in the 1930s, and there is evidence of an associated field-system. Rin
gforts – there are thousands all over Ireland – were not generally intended to be defensive. They were the enclosures in which farm-families built huts and kept their livestock at night. Although some date from the Iron Age, they belong mainly to the early Christian period, (AD 400–1200). Lios an tSeagail might have been used until comparatively recently for ‘booleying’, the summer grazing of cattle in highland pastures.

  TRUMPET HILL

  The brown bull was captured, of course. He escaped, was recaptured and dispatched towards Connacht. Time was running out; the Ulstermen were about to arise from their labour pains.

  Medb’s army moved south from the Cooley Mountains, and the journey home began. Cuchulainn, still alone, took a stand on top of Ochaine, known today as Trumpet Hill, a rocky eminence clad in beech trees, overlooking Dundalk Bay. He hurled stones at the retreating army from the hilltop, killing so many men at night that the terrified soldiers were afraid to go about alone and went to the toilet in great bunches, presenting an even easier target. Medb herself was forced to take shelter under a barrel-shaped swathe of shields held aloft by half the army.

  Cuchulainn maintained his onslaught after they had put Dundalk behind them. ‘Not one man in three escaped without his thighbone or his head or his eye being smashed, or without some blemish for the rest of his life.’

  The Connacht army limped across the River Fane at Ath dá Ferta, Ford of the Two Graves, near Knockbridge on the R171 today. This is about five miles inland from the mouth of the river where Cuchulainn had killed Medb’s two pets on the journey north. The battered army camped at last in Crích Rois, which is the broad plain between the River Fane and the River Dee.