Irish historian Michael Slavin points out Tara's fabled Stone of Destiny.Posted on 10/09/2008 8:19:10 AM PDT by BGHater
HILL OF TARA, Ireland–It is a battle worthy of the old Irish legends, pitting history against modernity. But as a controversial highway creeps ever closer to the spiritual home of the early Celtic kings, it now appears both sides may lose.
For advocates of the twin ribbons of asphalt called the M3 now under construction north of the Irish capital, there is no choice but to live pragmatically with the roar of a commuter corridor in the shadow of the sacred Hill of Tara, because getting to nearby Dublin is a nightmare without it.
For opponents, the new toll highway is the most painful example of the Celtic Tiger's propensity for gnawing through all obstacles – up to and including "the very soul of historic Ireland" – in the pursuit of the almighty euro. Worse, they say, the highway is arriving just as the economy curls up into what many expect will be a deep slumber, worn ragged by a broken property bubble and the global credit squeeze.
Scheduled to open in 2010, the M3's loudest critics concede much of the damage is already done – 38 archaeological sites unearthed during construction thus far have been carved from the landscape. Among the now vanished finds, a newly discovered national monument at Lismullin that one leading archaeologist described as "the wooden equivalent of Stonehenge."
"All these sites, including the monument at Lismullin, were part and parcel of the greater whole that is the Hill of Tara complex and now they are gone, demolished. The damage is complete and irreversible," said Vincent Salafia of Tara Watch. "Some would say, `Give up the fight. The deed is done.' But we're not giving up because what we are most against is the building of the motorway through the valley that is at the heart of the Tara complex. It's a long ways from completion and there is still time to come to our senses.
"We say reroute it. Turn the M3 into a heritage trail and it will make much more money than a toll road, which is now looking at ruin as a concept with the economy today, because nobody is going to use it."
A walk to the summit of Tara itself, with the guidance of local historian and author Michael Slavin, reveals the multiplicity of historical layers at the heart of the quarrel, from a Neolithic passage tomb predating the Celts to Iron Age earthworks within which as many as eight centuries of Irish High Kings are believed to have been crowned.
Slavin points to a standing stone, thought to be the fabled Lia Fail, or Stone of Destiny, which legend holds would scream loud enough to be heard throughout the island when a would-be king met a series of challenges and was deemed worthy of royal rule. Another layer still commemorates the 1798 Battle of Tara, when some 400 rebels died fighting against British forces, encoding the hill even more deeply as a symbol of Irish independence.
Other earthworks reveal 20th-century excavations conducted on the mistaken belief that the Irish were part of the Lost Tribes of Israel and that the hill contained the Ark of the Covenant.
"In the time of the pyramids, a spiritual people were on this hill. And for centuries to come, Tara was a place to project power through ceremony, right through to the time of the later Irish kings. That's why it matters," said Slavin.
Slavin admits he has "a bit of a jaundiced view" toward the great wealth that flowed through Ireland for the past generation. It brought a building boom to the nearby town of Navan, which swelled from county town to a northern outpost of Greater Dublin.
"Money was something we never had. But now we have thousands of people in Navan living in these new houses that have to get to Dublin every day. Can you say to them, `Sorry, you can't have a road?'"
The answer, according to the overwhelming majority of Irish archaeologists, is yes. Foremost among them is George Eogan, professor emeritus of archaeology at University College, Dublin, who has invested a lifetime of excavation throughout County Meath, becoming famous for the discovery and understanding of the rich belt of Neolithic passage tombs that ring the Boyne River valley, from Tara to nearby Newgrange and Knowth.
"This highway is shocking. It is one of the great scandals," Eogan told the Toronto Star. "People need motorways. Fine. But the evil thing they've done is to build this motorway into crucial areas alongside Tara. They could have found a way around it. But instead we are left with a depressing, cannibalistic and ruthless plan that runs directly through virgin territory."
With the Irish economy falling into recession last month, the Tara Watch campaign is now shifting tactics, arguing "the radically new economic landscape" calls for the scrapping of the government's six-year National Development Plan, under which the M3 is being built. The downturn, the group says, requires that Ireland rethink the assumptions of what kind of economy it will have moving forward.
"We're in a struggle to define ourselves," said Salafia. "With the Celtic Tiger roaring along we were able to ignore the commercial and cultural advantages of properly protecting this history. People thought, `Craft shops and Leprechauns? No thanks, we're better than that now.'
"It's ironic that we've always relied on tourism, yet there is so much there that has never been properly marketed. And there is a stupid assumption that we have so much we don't really need to protect. But the way the economy is turning now, we're asking for a chance to revisit these assumptions."
Downriver at Newgrange, the fuss surrounding Tara comes as no surprise to Claire Tuffy, who manages what is widely regarded as Europe's most impressive Stone Age monument. Dating to 3,200 BC, the estimated 200,000 tonnes of stone were arranged in such a way that daylight penetrates into the 20-metre passageway for about 17 minutes each year – precisely on Dec. 21, marking the winter solstice.
Tuffy says visitors are continually looking to attach ever-greater meaning to the site. One theorist claimed a drawing in the chamber constitutes the first map of the moon. Another declared the stones at Newgrange were acoustically tuned to a specific musical note.
"It is just so much to ask of our ancestors. You get the stones, you pile them up, you line them up with the sun and the stars and moon and then, oh yes, they need to make a certain note," Tuffy laughed.
"What it says that humans are always looking for answers. And in the backs of our heads we have a notion that at some time in the past there was a golden age where people knew exactly what they were doing and they weren't struggling to find their way."
Tuffy doubts it was so. She points out that after the completion of Newgrange, the builders immediately began work on secondary monuments at the site.
"God love these poor people who were dragging these stones up the hill, they were searching for answers as well ... And obviously they didn't get all the answers, because the guys in charge said, 'Now we've got to start building another one on Monday,' " she said.
"That same spiritual fascination is what keeps Tara and the rest of these monuments special. They are real, living spiritual places where people connect to the past. And if we lost that, we'd all be a lot poorer."
Irish historian Michael Slavin points out Tara's fabled Stone of Destiny.
ping. maybe for inventory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_F%C3%A1il
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_of_Tara
Looks like Dolly Parton from the air.
Yeah, scaled down, no less!
As an American of Irish descent, I have to say that all this mystical garbage my ethnic compatriots love to wrap themselves in is pathetic and embarassing.
Paganism is over. It never did the Irish any good.
Go to Mass and shut your mouth, Slavin.
“Shut your mouth, Slavin!”
Ha! Better be careful, those pagans cast mean curses, ‘bend your legs’ or something to make you walk funny ;^)
;-)
Well that is certainly....phallic.
I’m with you Randy.
Those pre-Christian people are all burning in Hell anyway, since they weren’t saved.
Pave their pile of rocks over and make something useful out of them.
Your loathing for your own heritage is sickening to me. I was there last spring, and it was fantastic to get some sense of depth, of the road we’ve traveled, where we’ve come from and what we’ve accomplished. History is important, ya damn idiot. I can’t pass judgement on the road project, because it’s a big issue I don’t know the details about, but your attitude is despicable.
This fake, invented "heritage" isn't my heritage.
Pre-Christian Ireland was a barbaric and primitive place about which very little is known - and what is known is extremely disedifying.
All the Irish myths and legends about the pre-Christian past were authored by Irish monks in the 800s-1100s.
All the Irish legendary manuscripts - the Book of the Dun Cow, the Book of Invasions, the Cattle Raid Of Cooley, all the tales of Aengus and Cuchulainn, the Firbolg, the Tuatha De Danaan, etc. were literary inventions of Christians.
I was there last spring, and it was fantastic to get some sense of depth, of the road we’ve traveled, where we’ve come from and what we’ve accomplished. History is important, ya damn idiot.
Wow, you're quite the sophisticate.
In all of Ireland's real history and accomplishments: the preservation of the Roman and Christian classics, the illumination of manuscripts, the evangelization of the North, the successful war against the Vikings, the heroic but failed war against the Normans, the heroic resistance against Cromwell, the courage exhibited in the Penal Times, the diaspora following the Famine, the Irish role as the vanguard of the West and the victorious independence movement - all of this real history was accomplished by Irishmen formed and schooled in the Catholic faith.
I can’t pass judgement on the road project, because it’s a big issue I don’t know the details about, but your attitude is despicable.
The despicable attitude is the attitude of fools like Slavin who ignore the facts of history - that is was Jesus Christ and his disciples who took a savage backwater filled with warring clans and made its inhabitants the light of Europe.
Not illiterate druids wandering around in groves, casting spells in honor of the rough stone phallus that Slavin is caressing.
Mythology isn't tradition and history - it's modern invention designed to take the place of authentic tradition and history.
So I’m with you, comrade. Tear down that historical POS and put a strip mall on it.
No one's tearing it down.
S___ on those Irish kings, what did they ever do but guide and shepherd a people who made a great impact on the World, for the better.
The kings of Ireland - who usually ruled areas the size of an American county - didn't do a whole lot of "guiding" and "shepherding."
What they did do a lot of was fighting in an endless series of tribal wars and raiding the subjects of the neighboring king and stealing their livestock and other possessions.
The kings of Ireland were such incompetent leaders that only one king in Irish history ever fought a successful battle against a foreign invader. They spent most of their time allying with foreign invaders to get their assistance in killing fellow Irishmen.
When I think of them sitting there, before the first Christian ever came to them, being all smug in their ignorance, I just want to reach back through time and murder them for not knowing the Good News.
The historic reaction of the pre-Christian Irish nobility was to murder the unarmed monks who came to preach the good news to them.
I guess condemning them to hell would be useless since they’d never heard of it.
Interesting theological analysis.
Compassion is another conservative principle.
Let's recap. I'm apparently insufficiently "conservative" because I'm not showing enough "compassion" for a long-dead caste of professional thieves and braggarts.
Fascinating.
Thank you! Its amazing how many Irish Americans WANT their ancestral homeland to be poor and superstitious. You don’t see me mythologizing Jagiellonian Poland or the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies under the Bourbons.
It's much more picturesque that way.
One of the most hilarious but common comments from the usual Irish-American making the pilgrimage to the motherland is that Ireland is "too built up" and "modern" now.
This from Americans living in Hovnanian homes that were put up 10 years ago on land that used to be farms in second-ring NJ and NY suburbs.
You don’t see me mythologizing Jagiellonian Poland or the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies under the Bourbons.
Hop to it. I'm sure you could do a profitable business running a tchotchke shop to sell glassware and sweaters at a 300% markup to deracinated Italo-Poles.
Despite your deep love for authentic European history, you apparently never encountered Dante.
Pave their pile of rocks over and make something useful out of them.
No one is paving over any artifacts.
Why the need to lie to make a point?
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Thanks BGHater. Farty shades of green ping. |
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You are SO RIGHT! Everyone knows NOTHING worthwhile happened anywhere in the world until Christ came! Definitely NOTHING worth ANYTHING happened before Catholic monks settled in Ireland! NOTHING!
I mean the Ogham alphabet and such — just a bunch of lines - it didn’t mean ANYTHING! They were all just super-bored in between battles and all...
And, you know, the medicines and such that those illiterate druids discovered, well of course NONE of them actually WORKED or anything, it’s not like any of their wisdom was EVER passed down to those glorious Catholic monks — because they didn’t NEED any wisdom besides what Rome and the Bible gave them!
And those magnificent swords and such — they were really just wood with shiny paint! And that jewelry they made - mere trinkets worth NOTHING!
People don’t need to learn anything from history - much less be able to see it with their own eyes! After all we have BOOKS now! It’s much better to destroy numerous archaeological sites with backhoes! Don’t ya know???
****
You should be totally ashamed of yourself. SERIOUSLY. And I say that as a devoted Christian, who just happens to be an ex-Catholic, and was raised to respect my ancestors who came over from Ireland.
May your future progeny wipe your memory from existence, just as you wish to wipe away your past and everything that went before you, and made you who you are today. Their sacrifices obviously mean nothing to you - so why should yours mean anything to anyone else in the future?
Been there. The sweet lady at the reception center advised us that the Stone would recognize the next King and would call their name. She told us to be sure to come back and let them know if it was one of us!!
This place is serene yet has a marvelous sense of history about it. While there’s really not much to see, like large buildings or beautiful windows, we stayed half a day just soaking it all in.
Later.
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