Category Archives: Uncategorized

The coastal burial grounds of north Mayo perch precariously on the edge of the world, clinging to the earth as though unwilling to give up their dead. They sprawl across sandy hillsides, and hide among vast dunes. They tumble down … Continue reading →

The mist cleared. And for a moment, I thought I saw it – the enchanted island of Manister Ladhra. Far out in the Atlantic, it hovered high and green and swathed in cloud, while the gulls danced on the wind … Continue reading →

It was just a folk-memory. A story that grandmothers told to children at the fireside. Once upon a time, so this story went, the King of Munster invaded Erris with a great army. There was a terrible battle among the sandhills … Continue reading →

The little protestant church in Belmullet has been closed for half a century. Stark and forlorn, it stands on the edge of town, surrounded by its dead, waiting for revival or resurrection. You can find redundant Church of Ireland churches … Continue reading →

Synge got three Guardian articles out of Erris, each illustrated with one of Jack Yeats’ oddly haunting drawings of thatched cabins, empty roads and half-formed faces. One day, they drove to the village of Geesala and walked out along the … Continue reading →

It is late. The square is full of flaring fire and people. In the falling midsummer light of a St John’s Eve crowds laugh and gasp at the antics of the boys as they hurl flaming paraffin-soaked sods of turf … Continue reading →

Cillíní, children’s burial grounds, gathered folklore to themselves, stories and beliefs that suggested that even if we forgot the unbaptised, the landscape would remind us of their presence. It was thought that if you walked on certain pieces of ground … Continue reading →

There are several hundred children’s burial grounds, cillíní, in Mayo, and at least eighteen in Erris – probably more, since some sites must be lost to memory. Most of the Erris survivals are on or near the coast, like the … Continue reading →

Like so many of the burial grounds in Erris, the graveyard at Doohoma looks out to sea. The square two-acre plot lies on a quiet hillside a mile out of the village, close to the strand, walled and gated and … Continue reading →

Keats accused Newton of destroying all the poetry of the rainbow ‘by reducing it to the prismatic colours’. When I first started to notice the rainbows of Tullaghanbaun, part of me didn’t want to see the poetry drowned in a … Continue reading →