The Spirit of Ireland [antikvár]

If there is a land on earth dominated more by the heart than the intellect it is Ireland. The beating pulse of that ancient heart is to be found on an empty windswept hill standing above the valley of the River Boyne. The Hill of Tara stands between three worids. It is very much a solid and substantial physical presence in today's worid of reality. Its prehistoric past takes it back to the period before Christianity came to Ireland, when this was the seat of the High Kings of all Ireland. And Tara reaches into a third worid, the world of legends, where ancient gods and heroes pursue their age-old feuds and loves, breathing the spirit into modem Ireland. When Daniel O'Connor led his movement against British mle in the 19th century he came to Tara. About one million people gathered to hear him speak here in 1845. Today Tara is an impressive grass-covered hill, the smooth crown of which is dotted with the monuments from its great past. These earthworks date back at least 4,000 years and show Tara to have been a site of great importance for many generations. The oldest of the monuments is a huge tomb which contained around 100 bodies, known as the Mound of the Hostages. One body, that of a teenage boy, was buried with magnificent jewellery. Clearly, even then Tara was the home of noblemen and heroes. As with so much about Tara, the Mound of Hostages stands on the border land between legend, history and modem science. Its name derives from a well-known legend concerning King Cormac Mac Art, the great lawgiver. During one of the many wars of his reign King Cormac took hostages, whom he imprisoned in a hall. When his enemies broke their word Cormac caused the hostages to be killed. Romantic historians have linked the legend of the hostages to the ancient burial mound on Tara. North of the Mound of the Hostages is the Banqueting Hall, a vast sunken depression some 750 feet long and 90 feet wide. It is named after the great feasting hall of the Fiarma, the warrior band that served King Cormac Mac Art. Here the fighters, poets, historians and noblemen gathered to celebrate the great pagan festival of Samhain, in die autumn. Early texts describe the magnificent ceremonial and ritual division of foods and the never-ending flow of beer. The feasts of Samhain were great and orgiastic affairs filled with drunken laughter. Unfortunately for such romantic views, the Banqueting Hall is almost certainly a thousand years too old to have been the home of Samhain feasting in the court of Cormac. It was probably a sunken processional way leading to the summit of the hill. Other earthworks, such as the House of the Kings, Tomb of Tea and Fort of Loiguire Mac Neill are similarly misnamed. Undoubtedly there were fortified palaces, feasting halls and pagan sanctuaries on Tara, but the purpose of those earthworks which remain had litde to do with their modem titles. Only the most mystic of all survives under its original name. This is the sacred stone, the Lia Fail or Stone of Destiny. This provided the climax of the crowning ceremony of the High Kings. The man wishing to claim the honour of being High King had to clamber on top of the stone. If the holy stone roared its approval three times the new High King was deemed to have been accepted by the gods. In Christian times this pagan stone was given a veneer of respectability by the claim that it was the stone which Jacob had used as a pillow. Today the stone is carved with the inscription '1798 RIP' in memory of those Irishmen who died in the rebellion of that year. King Cormac Mac Art himself is known from many legends and histories written down between the ninth and 12th centuries, and much of Tara's mystery is linked to his name. In legend he was the High King who ruled all of Ireland from Tara and had at his command the mighty Fianna, a warrior elite of 20,000 men under the leadership of the hero Fionn. Cormac was said to be 'wise, learned, valiant and mild, not given causelessly to be bloody as were his ancestors.' He ruled all of Ireland and the lands of the Irish Scots, now Galloway in Scodand. He died as the result of a Dmid's curse, by choking on a salmon bone.