DIARY: Ruminations, Occasional thoughts & happenings - as they arise
Amazing World - Amazing Universe - 4 January 2006:
Scooting down the main road between the North and the South of Ireland I have
often passed by the Boyne Valley, where in 1690 King William of Orange defeated
the Catholic King James of Scotland - the Protestant King Billy backed by the
pope of that time, Alexander VIII ! Irish / English politics, with an international flavour,
can be confusing!
Before motorways were invented I would squeeze through the narrow streets of the
nearby town of Drogheda, infamously sacked by Oliver Cromwell in 1649 - slaughtering
some 3,500 people, including armed defenders, citizens, and Catholic clergy
unlucky enough to be present. The memory lives long in the area.
On occasion I would pause to visit the local church in Drogheda, wondering as I knelt before the wizened, distorted head of St. Oliver Plunkett, why exactly the English government of the day beheaded him at Tyburn in 1681. Ach well, that's history! Bunk? I fear not.
I have also been vaguely aware of souterrains in the area, ancient graves (though some maintain that in some areas they were hidden underground food stores for use in times of strife). I had heard that in the Boyne Valley there were many such underground buildings, so with my son Conor and my future wife Alexa we made the effort and turned off the motorway.
New Grange
I was astounded to learn that the souterrain at New Grange, a few miles from Drogheda,
had been built some 3,200 years BC, 5,000 years ago, before the pyramids
of Egypt or the standing stones of Stonehenge in England.
It was discovered by a farmer, searching for building stones, at roughly the
same time as supporters of Kings Billy and James were slaughtering each other a few miles
away. The farmer, a Scotsman, uncovered a small entrance hole at the base
of a green mound, and a narrow passageway that lead into the centre of the
mound. A few bodies were found, later carbon dated to around 3,200 BC, so
this souterrain was a ceremonial burial place, whether for community use
or privileged chieftains is not clear.
This is how the mound appears now. The exterior rim of white quartz stones had collapsed and was rebuilt under the direction of Dublin based archaeologists.
Another view on the day we were there.
The white quartz exterior is impressive. The regularity made me suspicious about modern reinstatement procedures, but I was assured by the guide that all of the quartz was found where it had collapsed round the 300 foot diameter mound and was quite simply rebuilt in the format that had existed before the collapse.
The guide was pretty well informed, conducting a mixed party of Chinese, Italians, Germans, English and Irish.
She gathered us in front of the mound and pointed out some of the salient features - - -
---- the fact that the single entrance, protected by a mound of carved stones at ground level, had a small aperture above through which light penetrated to the burial chamber inside the mound, but only at the time of the winter solstice.
You can see the set-up more clearly in this photograph.
The carvings on those massive stones, dated to 3,200 BC as the rest of the structure, are a circular whorl - to my mind a representation of the sun. More about this later.
The walls of the narrow passage leading to the centre of the mound are lined with huge stones, fitted vertically ... .....
Making one's way through the narrow entrance is a bit of a squeeze.....
Unfortunately I cannot show the interior chamber - photography is forbidden.
There are three compartments, in cruciform, each about 10 feet by 10 feet,
the whole covered by a corbelled roof of huge flat stones that have kept the
grave waterproof for 5 millennia.
The compartments are obviously designed as a final resting place for
bodies.
I say final, but it is possible that corpses were placed there only for a
period before being buried in a permanent grave.
It is possible that bodies were placed for ceremonial purposes only. This
fits in with the rather astounding fact that our primitive ancestors had
orientated the complete mound so that on the winter solstice - 21st December
each year - the rays of the solstice sun would shine along the corridor and
light the centre burial compartment.
The small aperture above the main entrance is the source of light at that time, the only time of each year.
It would appear that these people of 5,000 years ago worshipped the sun - the immediately obvious source of heat and light, the source of life.
Were they so primitive, these our distant ancestors? Not to my
mind. Not only were they able to construct a building that has lasted for
5,000 years, they angled it so exactly that the sun can shine through a small
aperture at one special time of the year, expressing their appreciation of the
part that the sun plays in our lives, hoping even in the dark days of winter
that it's beneficent rays would continue to bring growth and life through the
rest of the year.
Not a bad attitude in the face of a tough, unexplained world in which life
expectancy appears to have been around thirty years.
The guide explained to us that many hundreds of people from all around the
world put their names forward in a ballot for a limited number of places during
the three or four days of the winter solstice, hoping that they will have the
unique experience of seeing the rays of the sun light up the inner chamber. She
related that on one such occasion her name came out of the hat, and that for
three days the sun did not shine. On the fourth day, when she was among
the dozen people present, it did shine, with such power that the whole inner
chamber was full of light, the main beam striking the central burial
compartment. An eerie, moving experience.
ADDENDUM:
It was a contrasting experience to later find oneself eating a delicious lamb dinner in my
son's Dublin house, washed down with delightful red wine.
Gas fired central heating and an open fire seemed a million miles away from the
primitive life experience of our ancestors.
My son Raymond, grandson Oisín and Alexa, my beloved.
I wonder how we would have survived in the primitive Boyne community of 5,000 years ago....
..... also my granddaughter Maya
Good to be alive ....