Mythical Ireland: New Light on the Ancient Past

In the fascinating book Mythical Ireland: New Light on the Ancient Past, Anthony Murphy invites us on a journey to several ancient megalithic sites along the river Boyne, such as Newgrange, Knowth, and Dowth, unveiling several archaeological facts related to their excavations and highlighting some of their distinctive characteristics and artifacts. Many of these places connect to myths that circulated orally in the ancient Irish past and came to us in narratives compiled by Christian monks during the medieval period. Such is the case of Newgrange, mentioned as the home of The Dagda and his son Óengus in the texts of the mythological cycle Tuatha Dé Danann, ancient gods of Ireland, and recounted in, for example, Tochmarc Étain (The Wooing of Étain), where the sacred abode of the gods relates to the lunar cycle. This tale, which probably dates to the eighth or ninth century, refers to the megalithic monument as “Síd in Broga”: “síd” meaning “hill or mound of the áes side,” the fairy people descending from the Tuatha Dé Danann, and “Broga” signifying “abode” or “house” (p. 35). As the toponym “Newgrange” appeared only in the twelfth century, the previous designation of the site clearly testified to its sacred status.It comes as no surprise that among Murphy's medieval sources are the “dindschenchas,” literally meaning ancient tales about noteworthy places, where place names are associated with legendary or mythical stories that relate to their origins. These texts attest to the importance of the territory for its former inhabitants and how language combined with myth concurs with the identification of names, places, and landscapes, thereby proving, as Pyrs Gruffudd observed in 1995, that myth and memory create archetypal national landscapes. That certainly is the case of Ireland, where the Celtic peoples were never Romanized and came into contact with Christianity only in the fifth century, thus leaving a perennial mark of their religious beliefs both in the very concrete and outward geographical features of the country and in the internal structures of its imaginary.One of the most distinguishing aspects of that religiosity lies precisely in the importance of the cyclical dimension of time, visible in the passing of the seasons, in the lunar phases, and in the transition between solstices and equinoxes. Living in agricultural-based communities depending on the season's cycles, these prehistoric peoples envisaged the land as an all-powerful goddess, whose forms were engraved in the geographical contours of the land and who presided over the forces of life and death as a permanent and never-ending continuum.Since those times, a variety of goddesses that are manifestations of that one and only primeval deity have personified Ireland: Whether Cailleach, Éire, Buí, Étain, Englec, Bóinn, or Cathleen, Ireland has a feminine identity that has persisted in myth, literature, and history. The overarching presence of this goddess in the landscape is so absolutely underlying that it is impossible to separate the two. Moreover, as Murphy points out, the cairns that dot the valley of the Boyne are believed to be formed by the huge rocks this goddess drops from her apron, leaving, at the same time, a hint of her intervention in some of their names. In examining the figure of the Cailleach, Murphy postulates that this dropping of the stones relates to the orbit of the stars.Thus, in this revised and expanded edition of the 2017 book with the same title, Murphy tightens the bonds between archaeology, astronomy, mythography, literature, language, landscape, geography, and folklore to reflect upon how the mythical stories related to places and place-names may inform astronomical facts that, in his opinion, are at the core of these prehistoric monuments. Throughout more than 300 pages, he explains why they were erected both as astronomical and sacred sites, with some of them aligned with one another, thus revealing, on the one hand, their deep connection with the land in which they were constructed and, on the other, a concern with the vaster aspects of life and death and of the relation between humans and the cosmos. In this sense, as Murphy underlines, these chambered cairns emerge as liminal spaces, following Victor Turner who, in 1966, took the concept of liminality from the folklorist Arnold van Gennep, who coined the term “liminal spaces” in 1909. For both authors, liminality is a phase that occurs in the middle of a rite of passage when the no-longer neophytes have not yet achieved the completion of their initiation. They are at the threshold, in a space of in-betweenness, as named by Homi Bhabha (1994), ambivalent and hybrid, or, again in the words of Bhabha, echoing Fredric Jameson, a third space that grants a moment of spiritual revelation, allowing for the transformation of the individual and the restructuring of time and identity.As liminal spaces, the megalithic sites belong to an in-betweenness where past and present, order and chaos, light and dark, sun and moon, this world and the Otherworld, humans and gods, humans and nature, history and myth, and Ireland and the cosmos intersect in a juxtaposition of science and spirituality that the author believes we must take seriously.Reflecting this balance between science and religion, the book either delves deep with more scholarly material, based on scientific evidence, or tends toward a more confessional tone, particularly after the first five chapters, where the author expresses his spiritual beliefs and his understanding of the cairns and stones as passages to self-enlightenment and regeneration, doorways to death and rebirth. As such, his individual journey through the Boyne Valley is, as all journeys, a long spiritual path of self-discovery that everyone who is willing to follow his example may take. Wearing the robes of the ancient storytellers, Murphy guides us in a visit both magical and scientific to megalithic monuments that come alive through the wonderful photos he himself took in specific moments of the astronomic calendar.In his reinterpretation of the Boyne Valley's ancient megalithic ruins, Murphy reclaims an ancient Irish heritage, contributing to the maintenance of Irish myth and tradition and fostering both collective and folk memory. Mythical Ireland is a hymn to the beauty of the Emerald Isle and its wondrous landscape, reconciling past and present in an attempt to bring to contemporary, more material days a glimpse of the cosmic and transcendental times of yore.