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Feature Articles 

The Irish stellar giants

/In the west of Ireland, the area of Knocknarea and Carrowmore forms an
enigmatic but incredibly old sacred landscape, which archaeology has
only recently begun to understand. /

Philip Coppens

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Knocknarea is the magical cairn decked mountain just West of Sligo town,
at the end of the Coolrea Peninsula. The mountain is a 320 metres high
limestone hum sculpted by the retreating glaciers at the end of the last
Ice Age. The area around Knocknarea is covered in ancient remains,
including Carrowmore, which is one of the largest megalithic sites in
Western Europe, and the largest in Ireland.
I climbed the hill on a grey, soaking July morning. These were the days
that the ancient Egyptians had labelled the ?Dog days?, the end of July,
when the temperatures are normally the hottest of the year; but Ireland
was drenched in grey wetness.

The panoramic view from the mountain top has few equals and a number of
travellers have recorded their impressions, but none more eloquently
than William Bulfin in his Travels in Eirinn. Obviously making his
ascent in sunnier conditions, he wrote: ?Knocknarea has an epic
suggestiveness which you cannot miss if you climb the mountain. It looks
down on wide Tir Fiachra, where dwelt the music-loving hosts of fierce
engagements. Away to northward and eastward and southward are mountain
and valley and river and lake and woodland. To the westward rolls the
thundering ocean. The mountain has no partner in its glory. It stands
proudly over the rocky coast in solitary grandeur. The mourners who
erected the burial mound on its stately summit could not have chosen a
more royal throne for their kingly dead.?
Vast amounts of land (five counties) are visible from the top on a good
day. Originally, the hill and the land were believed to be under the
?patronage? of the goddess Maebh. The hill became the central place of
worship for her, and as such, the hill and the cairn remained identified
with her throughout the ages.
Who was Maebh? She was the Warrior Queen, who lived in Crúachain, in
Roscommon, where she lived with her husband Ailill. The Queen takes part
in one of Ireland?s most famous sagas, The Cattle Raid of Cooley or Táin
Bó Cúailnge, which is linked with another Irish county, Louth. Similar
legends in Connacht state how Maebh is not buried under the cairn, but
instead stands there, waiting, spear in hand, with her best warriors,
facing to attack Ulster, the county which did not allow her to have her
Brown Bull, as stated in the legends.

The link between the goddess and Knocknarea is because of a gigantic
cairn at its top, known as the ?Tomb of Queen Maebh?, a large collection
of medium to large-sized stones. More than 40,000 stones make the
monument rise to 35 feet high, measuring 200 feet across. ?Such immense
labour as went into the making of this monument would only have been
undertaken to perpetuate the memory of some person or event of the most
outstanding importance?, wrote Richard Hayward. It ?had? to be a tomb,
and it ?had? to be an important figure buried there.
Though the cairn is visible for miles around, even in the grey
conditions I encountered it, no archaeological research has occurred on
the pile itself, though some digs have occurred on surrounding, much
smaller cairns near the top of the hill. The earliest date recovered so
far suggests that the monument was built in approx. 3000 BC, making it
much older than e.g. Stonehenge.
Folklore says that Maebh?s remains are buried in an inner chamber in the
cairn, and hence archaeologists have stated that the cairn probably
covers a passage tomb similar to those at Carrowkeel and the Boyne
valley. But, in the absence of excavations, this is speculation.

In the valleys surrounding Knocknarea is the important Neolithic site of
Carrowmore (from the Gaelic Ceathrú Mór, meaning Great Quarter), one of
the most important Neolithic cemeteries, together with Carrowkeel,
further inland, in the Bricklieve Mountains.
Carrowmore hosts the remains of the oldest and one of the largest
collections of Stone Age structures in Western Europe. 27 monuments
remain today, in varying states of preservation. The remains of at least
65 monuments are known, and it is thought that there may have been up to
120 monuments at Carrowmore in its original form. The tombs were built
in a ring surrounding the largest monument called Listoghil, their
entrances usually facing inwards towards it.
Carrowmore was mapped by the antiquarians, including Beranger, Peitrie
and Wood Martin. A local landlord, 'the notorious' R. C. Walker looted
many of the monuments and sold off his finds to collectors. The site has
more recently been excavated by archaeologists from Sweden who have made
a number of interesting discoveries. The oldest date recovered so far
from Carrowmore is 5,400 BC, an extremely early date which most Irish
archaeologists have dismissed. The general opinion today is that
Carrowmore is an early site from around the time when Mesolithic
hunter-gatherers were turning into Neolithic farmers.

At Carrowmore, passage graves and standing stones rise with the mountain
and Maebh?s Grave in the background. By the time I had descended
Knocknarea and made my way towards Carrowmore, the grey clouds had been
slowly lifted by the ocean winds. It revealed the unique relationship
between the megalithic stones in the valley, the sacred hill of
Knocknarea and the tomb on top.
The visitor centre at Carrowmore states how the interplay of landscape
and the Neolithic burial site was not haphazard. The graves in the
cemetery have been orientated towards key solar risings and settings,
such as the spring and fall equinoxes, and the summer and winter
solstices ? the four points of the calendar, marking the four seasons.
It showed how the builders of the tombs held specific reverence to the
sun ? and seemingly brought that reverence in relationship with the
souls of the deceased.
At the same time, observations by scientists and amateur archaeologists
had revealed what possibly might have set Knocknarea apart from all
other hills in the county ? i.e. what gave the hill its sacredness. The
documentation handed out in the visitor centre stated how ?the viewer
who stands on Maeve?s Cairn on Knocknarea can watch the sun or full moon
rise over Lough Gill, which translates as ?The Lake of Brightness? at
the equinox. Then at sunset, the observer may stand on Cairns Hill,
another important megalithic site just south of Sligo Town, and watch
the Knocknarea alignment.? Other observations have shown that the summit
of Maebh?s Cairn was at the same altitude as Cairn K at Carrowkeel, the
other megalithic cemetery, which is oriented to Queen Maebh?s Cairn. ?If
you draw a circle from Cairn K which touches Maeve?s Cairn on
Knocknarea, you would find that it also touches Maeve?s Palace, the
mound of Rathcroghan in Roscommon. Coincidence? Whatever the case, it is
one of the most important and visually dominating Neolithic monuments
left in Ireland.?
Author Cary Meehan adds the observations of Martin Byrne to this already
impressive list of interrelations between the megalithic sites and the
landscape: ?He [Byrne] has noticed that the lunar standstill is an
important time at Knocknarea. The Moon?s cycle takes 18.6 years to
complete as it moves from its most northerly to its most southerly
position. At its most southerly rising position, which last happened in
the summer of 1987, the moon, when viewed from Maebh?s Cairn, rose over
the Carrowkeel sites in the Bricklieve Mountains. If the inner passage
in Maebh?s cairn was open, maybe the moon, as its most southerly point,
would shine inside it.?
The observation cannot be tested, as archaeologists have not excavated
Maebh?s cairn, or have verified the existence of a passage.

Knocknarea is linked with Cairns Hill. The latter?s name is obviously
derived from Neolithic cairns discovered on its slopes. Importantly,
Cairn Hill is due east of Knocknarea. The east-west alignment is
important, as sunrise and sunset on the equinoxes are always due east
and west, irrelevant where one is on Earth.
Knocknarea is also linked with Queen Maebh, but the west cairn on Cairn
Hill, visible from Knocknarea, is said to be the tomb of Daghdha,
husband to Maebh, chief of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and the father God of
the Celts. It is clear how the interplay of solar and lunar phenomena
was transposed on the landscape, and was specifically linked with sacred
hills, on whose tops were cairns, who were later identified with the
tombs of gods, particularly linked with the moon and the sun.
As such, Knocknarea (Knock na Ré in Irish) is known as the ?Hill of the
Moon? and Maebh must be seen as the moon goddess.

If indeed built around 5,400 BC, they would be older than more famous
Irish prehistoric sites such as Knowth and Newgrange. Further
radiocarbon dating has supported the Mesolithic date for Carrowmore's
inception, but conservative as archaeology is, it places the bulk of the
megalith building to between 4300 and 3500 BC, more in keeping with
Neolithic dating but still unusually early. Excavation of other tombs in
the area has indicated that although they employed different
architectural styles, they were all contemporary with Carrowmore. It
shows a long presence of a megalithic culture in the area.
Almost all the burials at Carrowmore were cremations with inhumations
being only found at Listoghil. Even from the cremated remains it is
apparent that the dead underwent a complex sequence of treatments,
including excarnation and reburial. Grave goods include antler pins with
mushroom-shaped heads and stone or clay balls, although other tombs
outside Carrowmore held entirely different assemblages of items. The
setting of the graveyard suggests a careful selection, in which the dead
were seen to be sleeping in shadow of the goddess, who herself was set
within an intricate sacred landscape. It shows how the people in western
Island, so many years ago, already seem to have been able to rely on
even older observations of the stellar phenomena, and how they
interplayed with their environment. But almost seven millennia later,
the archaeology of these sites is unfortunately still in its infancy?