Day out with Michael Gibbons
Monday 13th August, 2007
One of my favourite things to do when I am in Connemara is to have an afternoon out with archaeologist and story teller, Michael Gibbons. Michael is a native of north Connemara and has grown up with the old stories and discovered many of the old sites when out exploring and walking in the landscape. There is never a dull moment when one goes out with Michael. His passion for his land is unbounded and, it seems, there are always new nooks and crannies to explore – ones that open out into pathways of mystical pursuits to the past – near or far, mythic or historic and they never fail to fill me with a deepening sense of wonder for those who have gone before us.
Being out with Michael always evokes my imagination to take great leaps into the unknown, romantic, wild and always believable places that are equipped to stoke the fires of new and exciting frontiers. There is something to be seen at every moment as I discovered the very first time I went out with him. We were driving along a seemingly peaceful landscape of rolling hills and magnificent coast – oceans laced with islands, smoking mountains in the near background, I was almost lulled into a state of dreaming when Michael’s booming voice broke through the trance.
“Look across over there to the right! Can you see it? Can you spot the cairn over there?” Frantically my eyes began to search, “where? I can’t tell.” “Over there, see if you can spot it.” Try as I might at first I couldn’t make out anything unusual. Then I saw it, “thank goodness,” I thought! It was a small blip on the top of a hill way across on the other side of the bog. But it was obviously something man made, not a natural feature. And so my eye became more accustomed to seeing things with a renewed state of awareness.
This summer we decided to explore some of the places south of Clifden, the main town in Connemara. Though the amount of ancient sites drops off dramatically the further south you go beyond Clifden, nonetheless, there are some extraordinary sites that paint an intriguing image of the Connemara of the past.
Our first destination was to visit one of Granuaile O‘Malley’s castles, Bunowen.
Bun Abhann – or Bunowen in English, means the end of the river, or river foot, which is exactly where the original Bunowen Castle was built at the outflow of a stream. This castle was the principle stronghold of the western branch of the O‘Flaherty’s in the 1550s and belonged to Donal ‘an Chogaidh’ ( of the battle ) and his wife Granuaile.Set at the water’s edge, by the small estuary, which provided access from the open ocean, the only visible signs of the castle at first glance were tumble down grass covered stone heaps. As we stood across from Granuaile’s castle, roughly where the entrance bridge once was, we could see the ingenious design for defense and access. In the salty stream that divided us from the castle we also saw shoals of bream zooming back and forth in the currents, a testimony to the abundance of the location. Then Michael drew our attention towards the open water. From our vantage point we could see how inaccessible this channel was to any but those with local knowledge of its dangerous reefs, tides, currents, and sandbanks. The only way through this channel would have been with an O’Malley or O’Flaherty guide.
I loved it there – another window into the dramatic life of one of my heroines, Granuaile O’Malley, the 16th century pirate queen of the west coast . Granuaile for me, is in some way, an historic embodiment of the Earth Goddess and warrior queen of Connaught, Queen Maeve. She was bold, fierce, ruthless when she had to be and she was also a defender of her culture and upheld the laws of her people. She was sovereign and a leader, a politician, a rogue, a pirate and a spirited woman in the ilk of the old Celtic culture. Born into an era that had almost come to an end, she upheld ancient Celtic ways – for better and for worse.
Maeve is the archetypal force of soveriegnty in the north west of Ireland. Sovereignty is the principle of the divine feminine embodied in the very land herself. Maeve also represented leadership – as she embodies the queen archetype. Granuaile was the chieftain of the O’Malley clan and she ruled the waters of the north west coast of Ireland. Her home base was on Clare Island in Clew Bay, County Mayo. Clew Bay provided many wonderful hideouts with it’s myriad of islands and she knew these waters like the back of her hand. She was married for a time to an O’Flaherty chieftain and so her domain extended from north Connaght to the southern borders of Connemara. Granuaile lived in turbulent times when the face of Irish culture was changing forever. She was a bold woman, fighting, negotiating and bargaining her way through life. She seemed to have the welfare of her culture at heart, in an Irish chieftain kind of way but the old days of the Irish Chieftains had entered the twilight era. (read more in my forthcoming article “Granuile” next month in the articles section of the website ).
These thoughts filled me as I gazed at the ruins of Granuaile’s castle and imagined the life they led on the ocean. I love the sense of the sea and that the old ancestors were of the sea – the For Moir. Here it is easy to see how the link carries through. The Irish of the west coast were of the sea, many living along or close to the shoreline and on the many islands. Some of the islands are still inhabited and for centuries the sea was a way of life and families had their own small boat – just as some peoples had horse and cart – which got them from place to place. In Galway the boats had red sails – their connection to the Otherworld and the ancestors who had gone before them.
So much evoked from one place – such a rich connection I find here in this land, to the past, to the deep recesses of my own imagination, my own race memory. In these places I feel the connection in me rooting down into the Earth and I can hear the stories, the battle cries, the power and the passions that have been expressed here.
Our next port of call was a beach at Ballyconneely where we visited Neolithic middens in the sand dunes. This place was once a hive of activity, a bustling industry of shell fish harvesting for food and also, interestingly, for the collection of a particular shell that when cracked open yielded a clear liquid, purpurea, that was the vital ingredient in the production of the rich purple dye used for the chieftains cloaks. This dye was of such quality that the O‘Flaherty’s exported it as far away as the East Indies.
As we explored the middens two young men were practicing hurling across from us on the open sandy grassland. This ancient game is the national game of Ireland and dating back to the Neolithic people is perhaps the oldest team sport played on the planet.
Our outing had begun with Michael asking whether there was actually anywhere I hadn‘t seen. Naturally, true to form, he had plenty of places to show us and the best part was yet to come. We left the middens for a cliff top walk. While the rest of Connemara was plunged in lightening storms, we were in our own microclimate of sun and blue ocean. As we approached the cliffs Michael suddenly called out to Susan and I, “look, dolphins!” In typical dolphin style they heard us and swam in close. They played in the water below us for about 20 minutes. Four of them, delighting us with their antics.
We then set off along the mysterious and brooding Errislannan. I had always wondered what it was about that area. Michael shed some light when he commented that there were no old sites on the peninsula – even though there were some perfect spots where any good archaeologist would expect to find a court cairn or some other Neolithic remnants. It suddenly struck me that it is a spirit place – like at home with the indigenous people – there are some places that are not for humans and they were left for the spirits. It is only in more modern times that people have come to live there.
Later Susan and I decided to continue our adventures and explore Faheys – an old court cairn also known as Poll na Umhain, Hollow of Graves. It was magic, set deep in a green grotto, sheer rock walls sweeping high above at the back. 
We discovered there are also old famine ruins there – stone houses – that had been built nestled in the lap of the ancestors. This place is one I have wanted to see for a long time. There has been a feeling of anticipation about it – local people I had asked about it long ago had told me that it was impossible to find on one’s own and somehow, very uncharacteristically, I hadn’t gone looking for it. So it has been a treat waiting for me, and, applying my knowledge of looking at the landscape with open eyes, I spotted it immediately as we wandered along the landscape to meet it. Fahey’s – the “Green Place.” Perfectly aligned to watch and receive the incoming flow from the ocean and to view life on the shoreline – so the ancestors could keep a watch on things. Waiting for us to visit with the pilgrimage this October.