QUEEN MAEVE and US

Meeting Medb 1988

QUEEN MAEVE and US

(Meeting Medb) 1988

There’s a bit of a mystery about County Sligo and that old wild west of Ireland.  It has stayed with me across continents, moments prized.  Nooks, caves and crannies never to be forgotten and sweeping mountains of impending size overlooking it all, especially the great table top of Benbulben that I admired but never climbed and Knocknarea that I struggled up a few times in my life.  Never anything more magical, the strain and the strife, and then the roar of pleasure and searing happiness that, all told, overwhelms the soul.     

“Park the car and it’s no time till you’re at the top,” says some old boy at the gap.

Well said and well-meant but where to start?  No path to be seen, just a bit of an enclosed stream.  Do we have to paddle to get up there?  The water doesn’t go over the shoe, but I feel every pebble from heel to toe.  My five-year old is splashing ahead, wet to his knees, not a care in the world.  We make a good team.  Follow the stream, across a field, too soggy down here for sheep, and I wonder how high and how steep.  When must we leave the water?  Then I see it, a giant stile, and wonder who built that pile, a too tall ladder to get over a wall.  I climb it, helping R-J on the steps.  The contraption is shaped like an ‘A’ straddling from one side to the other and once my feet hit the ground I know I am in another realm, a faery place, and I think of W.B. Yeats and wonder if I have taken the faery’s hand in my own.  I can’t help but smile.  The incline begins softly at first, then, with heart-race, starts stealing my breath, the rest of my body on loan, for I’m not rightly sure if I am climbing or flying.  My child is already over the brow of the hill and there is another one still, this one shrouded in mist, a strange fog at eye level, shrouding one’s torso and head, with only human half-legs below, yet whole sheep to be seen.  “Mammy, half of you has disappeared!” says the wee one in wonder.  Yeats said this hill was haunted and I know it now for I am cold to the bone and can’t wait to get to the top to rest on Queen Maeve’s tomb, that raised nipple seen from the road for miles, crowning the head of Knocknarea’s breast.  I assume Maeve borrowed a Neolithic grave.  Going over the brow, I think I am there but no, another mount to climb like a great giant stair.  “There’s more, Mammy, more!”  Panting and parched, I hear the chuckling of the stream, and the soft murmuring faeries, calling me on, as if in a dream.  I thank them profusely seeing spurts of spring water from their underground halls and watch my son throw himself down to drink straight from the source.  Of course, after drinking my fill too, we climb with revival and step over the brink to find yet another hill.  And I think to myself, will it never end?  Is there any such word as arrival?  The last leg of journey was toughest of all, getting stonier by the footstep and I realised why.  The tomb was all stone, piled high to the sky with ones carried anew and lo and behold it was flat on the top.  How on earth did anyone climb up with a pilgrimage rock for Queen Maeve or a loved one recently deceased.  The size of the cairn was a mountain itself.  We precariously scramble ahead to get onto the plateau, all grass, and gasp at the view, of hills and dales and funerary mounds too, Sligo itself and way beyond for miles and miles, right to the sea.  “I can see the sea!  I can see the sea!” says he, face full of delight.  And under my feet was a full-armoured Queen buried astride a horse facing her enemies in the North, it was said.  Hardly time to take it all in, when the whispering began through the stones, making me shiver.  “Somebody is talking to us,” says he.  “Just the wind,” says I, and then a wet cloud descended on that chattering wind and soaked us through and through.  Was it a blessing or a curse to chase us down?  Were we going to drown?  But the cloud wrapped around us, a blanket of night, a dense blinding fog that passed through and settled below the cairn wiping out the entire country as far as the eye could see.  We were standing on a tomb on a floating cloud, the world stamped out with just sky above and glorious sunshine, the light now blinding.  A child squealing with glee, at the big disappearance.  Just Maeve below and we above!  No-one else about.  I was mesmerised, lost in a state of wonder with immense gratitude and laughed, catching hands with the little one, dancing to the edges and back, loving nature, touching the divine.  We had crossed the line between the earth and the heavens, souls bodiless and free.  The land had given a blessing, each stone that was carried there with love and remembrance was an ancestral gift.  I sat down in reverence and absorbed the stillness, the peace and the calm, more alive than ever, in love with the mountain, in love with the land, in love with the stones, in profound respect of the bones.  The child lay down beside me.  “This is a nice feeling, isn’t it?”  I nod, unable to talk, and we smile at each other, completely content.  I swore an oath to shield this earth from harm, with hand on heart, the eye of soul and the armour given by the unseen God, Goddess.  The clouds dispersed and the sky darkened but, filled with light, the race down Knocknarea was exhilarating, no need to walk, just knowing we would not stumble or tumble, feeling every bump and lump on the way, like acupuncture on our feet, laughing with faeries, flying with angels, dancing with deities, splashing through the stream, going home with nothing to fear, knowing  it was not a dream, and why Yeats and his magic still lived here.

Dwina (remembering Sligo 1988)  2023.