On Friday, June 6th, we went to Loughcrew, also known as the Sliabh Na Callighe – the hill of the witch. The callighe in the name is a reference to the cailleach, the great Celtic titanic goddess who is one of my favorites. It always burns me to hear her referred to as a witch, but this year I learned something that helped mitigate my annoyance a bit.
The Loughcrew cairns are spread over three hills called Carnbane East, Carnbane West, and Patrickstown located about 40 km west of Newgrange. They are passage tombs and over the years the stones from many of them have been pillaged for use on local farms. We visit Carnbane East, the middle hill, dominated by a large central cairn – Cairn T – which is intact. One of our guides, George Knight, said that the association with the witch may have saved this cairn with its beautifully carved stones from destruction.
This is the third year that we have met guides at the sight. The Office of Public Works keeps a little trailer mid-way up the hill at the car-park where they can shelter when there are no visitors or the weather is foul. There were three guides there when we visited and one of the others, Jean Thornton, took us into Cairn T.
Jean told us a version of the story of how the rocks got to the tops of the hills that I hadn’t heard before. In her version the cailleach fills her apron with rocks as in the others, but instead of hopping from hill to hill she flies. As she flies to the last hill, Patrickstown, she falls and breaks her neck. Some say she is buried on that hill.
Unlike Carnbane East and West, Patrickstown is densely wooded. On previous visits, our director Barry Vaughan has told us that Patrickstown is considered haunted or to be a province of the fairies and hence is not visited much. I wonder if that is also due to the witch association. It’s also probably significant that the hill where she died is called Patrickstown, since there are many stories associating him with her demise, or at least her disempowerment. The flying, too, is more what we associate with witches.
Jean also serves as a guide at Tara and at Newgrange. Since she works at Newgrange, she is allowed to witness the sunrise there at the winter’s solstice. She told me that last year the sun was absolutely brilliant. She asked, “You know that the floor of the chamber and the light box at the door are on the same level?” I nodded that I did and she went on tell me that last year she lay on the ground looking down the passage through the light box. “The light was so bright I could barely keep my eyes open.”
When Jean was a girl, her mother would take her and her siblings to Newgrange before it had been restored. They would take candles and crawl down the passage to sit in the chamber. They could stay as long as they wanted picnicking and playing on the mound and around the great stones. Now, she says, there is no time for anything because so many people must be marched in and out every day. Check here for pictures of what it looked like in the 50’s and 60’s.
Several years ago I’d read a newspaper article describing how the archaeologist who excavated and restored Newgrange, Michael J. O’Kelly, had learned from local women about the light box at the entrance and how it functioned. I’d always been fascinated with the idea that a folk memory of how the light was meant to enter the passage had been preserved for thousands of years after the site had been abandoned by its makers. “Rumors,” she said. “There were rumors in the area of how it worked.”
Back to witches. It was very windy when we visited. A few of our students, including Jared Corder and my student Ashley Bagley, were huddled in one of the smaller passage tombs with no roof when they heard the sound of children approaching. When they stood up to see what was happening, one of the boys pointed at Ashley and said, “There really are witches here!” Within a few moments they were all crowded around her. Later one cheeky lad asked her, “Hey, Miss America, come take a picture with me!”
