The Joys of Local Journalism (or How I Discovered I Was Heir to the Throne of Camelot)

Local Man Arthur O'Neill

I mentioned a while back that I’d recently found a new job. Well I haven’t lost it yet, I’m glad to report. It’s up at my local newspaper, where I’ve worked on and off over the years. I love where I live and I love being a journalist so it’s pretty much perfect really. Especially when you get stories like the one I wrote last week; the one where I found out that not only was King Arthur actually an honest-to-god real-life person, but he was from Inishowen!  And there’s more - it turns out there’s even a chance I’m descended from him. You could be too! Seriously folks, the King Arthur.

Let me explain. According to new research by English historian Dane Pestano, Arthurian legend may very well have originated from a historical sixth-century High King of Ireland. Said king being Muircertach MacErca, who ruled from An Grianan and was the great-grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages. For any of you  not familiar with him, Niall was a legendary Ulster king who was apparently quite the ladies’ man. Genetic studies have found that around 20% of males in the north of Ireland and south-west Scotland carry his Y-chromosome and it’s believed up to six million people in the world today could be descended from him. As I said, he must’ve got around a bit.

An Grianan- the original Camelot?

That means there’s probably a fair chunk of the population round these parts who are related to MacErca too. Until recently not much was known about him, but a few years back Mr Pestano uncovered a lost tale in an old manuscript which led him on his Arthurian adventure. In his short book, Dane explains how the life MacErca, who also ruled from Grianan, almost exactly mirrors that of the man the Welsh and Britons knew as Arthur. Drawing upon both historical record and old folktales, here are just some of the links he identifies:

• MacErca was supposedly the first Christian king of Ireland and ruled at the same time as the mythical Arthur;
• His name can be translated as ‘Arthur’ and his wife’s name mirrors that of Gwenevere when translated into Welsh;
• As a child he was fostered by a driud;
• He conquered Gaul and assumed sovereignty of Britain, The Saxons, Scotland, The Orkneys, and Denmark;
• He was in possession of the Lia Fáil (the Stone of Destiny);
• There was a Merlin-type character, the bishop Cairneach, who guided him in his conquests and who could apparently perform magical feats;
• The idea of Morgan LeFey may also have originated here since there is one folktale which tells of a fairy woman who tried to seduce then murder MacErca;
• Finally, according to legend MacErca succumbed to the symbolic ‘triple death’.

MacErca was also the grandson of Eoghan, whom Inishowen is named after, and he was the uncle of another famous local lad, St Colmcille (aka St Columba), who had the gift of prophecy and was a bit of an Irish Nostradamus.  I think the Glastonbury tourist board are going to have to review their brochures because if MacErca is indeed Arthur then his links to this area are incredible. When I was chatting to Dane on the phone about his work he said that Bettina over at Guarding Grianan Aileach may even have discovered the actual Round Table at the ring fort. How cool is that!

I think by now you lot know how much I love history and folklore, especially anything to do with Grianan, so you can imagine how excited I was about this story. I’m such a geek I was as thrilled working on it as someone else might’ve been if they’d gotten to interview their favourite actor or singer or something. Niall and Arthur are like celebrities to me :) 

 I think everyone at the paper thinks I’m a wee bit loopy for getting so excited about it, but I’m not just saying this - I think it’s the most fun I’ve ever had writing a story.  I even discovered a new favourite word, toppling ‘troglodyte’ from it’s long-held first place spot. It’s ‘Galfridian’, as in ‘pre-Galfridian’ meaning ‘existing before Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his famous twelfth century work on Arthur’.  Nice, isn’t it? The stories about MacErca are pre-Galfridian.

Dane’s introductory book, ‘King Arthur in Irish Pseudo-Historical Tradition’, is available to download or order here. It’ll soon be on Amazon etc too and I’ll add those links as soon as I get them. He plans to publish a full edition next year so watch this space.

Midsummer Dawn

You’ll have to forgive me this evening if I’m not too chatty.  When I’m tired my brain tends to turn to mush and basic things like constructing a sentence can be a challenge. So I’ll be keeping the words to a minimum tonight since I’m just the tiniest bit exhausted from traipsing about the countryside at all hours of this morning.

A few of us from my local camera club set out at ridiculous o’clock so we could catch the dawn of the solstice sun. And not just from any old place, from the home of the sungods themselves, An Grianan of Aileach. During daytime hours you can drive right up the fort, but at 4.30am the road was closed and we had to climb (ok, walk) a large part of the 800ft hill while still rubbing the sleep from our eyes. (It’s at this point I want to add that, cliches bedamned, I’m just not as young as I used to be!)

It was well worth it, though, and we were even lucky with the weather for once. It was raining all yesterday evening, and then all afternoon today, but at dawn this morning the clouds parted just long enough for the sun to peak its proud head over the hills so we could get our snaps. After that it was all tea and biscuits and picnic blankets- at five o’clock in the am, on the solstice, at a millennia old site of sun worship. I could think of worse ways to pass a few hours.

Well folks, I hope you’re all having a lovely Midsummer and now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to conk out somewhere…

p.s. Is anyone else having trouble viewing their dashboard? I swear, Blogger’s really beginning  to try my patience!

The Fort on the Hollow Hill

High atop the royal hill of Aileach, at the gateway to my own fair Inishowen, sits the fort of An Grianan. It is a place of myth and magic, cutting through the mists of time to transport receptive visitors to an otherworldly age… And to hell with how cheesy that sounds; it’s only cliched ‘cause it’s true, goddamit!

In fact, Grianan is so steeped in legend and history that I’ve been putting off this post ever since I started blogging.  The only reason I’m writing it now is because I said I would the other day. Why so reluctant? Because there’s so bloody much to say about the place! 

How could I describe to you just how utterly amazing it is without telling absolutely everything about it? And how could I do that without boring the arse off everyone bar those with a very particular interest in pre-Celtic Irish monuments?  (Or those from Donegal, who’d probably already know everything I had to say anyway.)

So I’ve decided I’m not going to - describe each myth and chronological event associated with the fort right up to the present day, that is. Besides, there’s already a wonderful website and blog dedicated to doing just that, hosted by a lovely German girl I know named Bettina Linke. Ever since Bettina moved to the area many years ago she’s committed herself to the promotion and protection of An Grianan with unparalleled passion.  With a book on the way, she’s now even set herself to translating Old Irish poetry about the site in her spare time. That’s dedication for you!

Anyhow, instead of getting bogged down in the details, which is what happened each time I sat down to write this post over the past couple of days, I’m just going to run quickly through the facts and move swiftly on to the folk tales. Those of you still interested in finding out more afterwards can then call over and pay Bettina a wee visit.  I’ll try my best to keep this as succinct as possible, though be warned - I do tend to drift when it comes to subjects I care about. Right, let us begin…

More important than Tara- FACT.

To sum it up in a sentence, An Grianan of Aileach is an iron age ringfort, built on the remnants of a much earlier fortification (thought to be up to 5000-years-old, in your face Pyramids!), with the current stone structure undergoing heavy restoration in the nineteenth-century following it’s destruction during a conflict between two Irish chieftains in 1101. Phew! That was a long sentence. But the place does have a long history, and an important one at that.

Indeed, it is my guess that if it wasn’t for its geographical location Grianan would likely be as famous as Newgrange, and undoubtedly more well-known than Tara. For, just like that other royal hill - and that’s all it is these days, a hill, with hardly any visible fort worth talking about - Aileach too was seat to the High Kings of Ireland at various points over the centuries, and for an even longer period served as the centre of power and culture for all Ulster. (And we still have our fort intact.)

It is also interesting to note that while Grianan shares good company with other sites of high mythological and historical regard, such as Emain Macha, in that it is one of only a handful of Irish locations to be marked on Ptolemy’s 4th century map of the world, Tara gets no mention on the famous document. Mmm…

As I said, the reason most of you have probably never heard of it till now is down to where it is. For one it’s relatively far away from the major airports, and secondly it’s also only a few miles from the border with Northern Ireland,  which meant the area was shunned for decades by foreign tourists afraid of getting blown-up. (Kind of silly really considering the chances of getting blown-up in Donegal were so miniscule it was ridiculous.)

Anyway, enough about all that ‘real’ stuff, I want to talk about the stories!  

Built by the king of the fairies, no less.

As I’ve said, it would be easy for me to ramble on and on about the ‘true’ history of Grianan, which in itself is pretty darn interesting,  but it’s always been the myths and legends surrounding the place which have captured my imagination. And there’s certainly no shortage of them.

The word ‘Grianan’ comes from the Irish word for ‘sun’ and one thing that is agreed upon by archaeologists is that the original structure was most likely built by pagan sun worshipers. That’s fair enough, but it’s who these sun worshipers were that’s most intriguing; ask anyone round here and you’ll only get one answer - An Tuatha De Danann. The Children of Danu themselves.

Now I think I know you, my dear blog readers, well enough at this point to assume that most of you are already well acquainted with this mystical race, and their gods and leaders. Many of you will probably also be aware that they were, in fact, the descendents of Ireland’s fairy aristocracy. (Those who aren’t as familiar with this can find a wee bit more about it in my introductory blog post, and then of course there’s always Google.)

Anyway! One of the most famous tales regarding the origins of Grianan states that it was built by no less than Daghda himself, High King of the Tuatha De Danann who later achieved godly status. The story goes that, following their invasion of Ireland in pre-Celtic times, it was at the hill of Aileach that the Tuatha De Danann first made contact with the natives of their new land. They must’ve liked the spot, or it must’ve already been an area of some significance, for when Daghda’s own son, Aeah, was slew in battle it was here that the god king buried him and built the fort to protect the grave.

Other tales also hint that Daghda’s predecessor,  Nuada of the Silver Hand,  may also be interred beneath the mound.  Indeed, it is what is under the fort rather than the stones themselves that hold the deepest magic and mystery.

Take the little portal pictured below for example, one of several in the interior wall. When we were little the gates weren’t there and we used to crawl inside. My mum used to go crazy at us, though claustrophobia usually got the better of me before I ventured far enough to make her really mad. Now that they’ve been sealed off to curious children and I’ve grown much too large, I often wonder what I would’ve discovered if I’d been a little braver.

You see another of the local legends of Grianan, and one which is inextricably tied to Irish fairy mythology in general, tells of an extensive network of tunnels that run from these little holes in the wall deep down into the hill. Within there is believed to be a hollow where a band of Tuatha de Danann horsemen still slumber, waiting for the day when “the sacred sword” is removed and they can awake to reclaim their ancient lands.

A more detailed account of this tale can be found here on Bettina’s blog, though as a child I always heard the Irish nationalist version in which the sword was British rule and those inside would only wake once Ireland was united again. Considering Ireland as a whole entity has for the most part only ever been united while under British rule, you’ll have to forgive me if I declare this to be bollocks. ‘Ireland’ of the past was an island of five provinces, those again divided into kingdoms, and not one unified state in the modern sense. But once again I digress…

As you might imagine from it’s name, An Grianan is also associated with other ancient Irish sun dieties such as Lugh and Gráinne, though I’m not going to talk about them now. A little tale I will relate is one from my dad, who often tells of how after a night out partying in his younger days he and a friend decided to go up to Grianan to watch the sun rise. Now it’s very likely considering the context of the story that what he saw may've been in some way influenced from the previous night’s indulgences, but he swears that from his position atop the stone walls he saw the sun dancing in the sky - looping and diving, jumping forward and falling back. In fact, to this day he finds it hard to describe his experiences of that morning exactly. And I’ve heard others tell similar stories so there must be something in it.

Well my friends, you’ll be happy to hear that I’ve finally exhausted myself and have to decided to wrap this thing up now. God, this was a post and a half! Believe me when I tell you I could’ve written twice as much. Anyway, thanks to anyone who stuck with me to the end and sorry for rambling on so much. I just want Grianan to get the recognition it deserves for being so super amazingly awesome. 

I suppose every little corner of the world hides it’s own treasures, and we all like to defend our own wee plots. What about you folk, do any of you have any little under-appreciated gems nearby? I’d love to hear about them!

Adding An Old Grungy Feel to Photos: A Gimp Tutorial and Two Free Textures

Ok, so today I’m taking a wee break from my usual sort of posts to instead bring you a little photo-texturing tutorial. I’ve had a number of questions both online and offline regarding my recent Flickr photos, and I thought this would be the clearest way of answering them.

Be warned though, since I’m still only a relative beginner at this whole carry on myself, this will pretty much be a case of the blind leading the blind. I’m sure there’s probably much better and easier ways to apply this technique, and the instructions I’m about to give are based on a process learnt simply from messing about and experimenting. That’s what it’s all about really, playing around with your photos until you get the look you want.

It should be noted that while I happen to use Gimp, the method is pretty much the same for any programme that supports layers etc.  For anyone who isn’t aware of it, Gimp is image editing software pretty similar to Photoshop. While not quite as sophisticated as PS, it does have one major plus - it’s totally free! Download it here.    

Before we begin, here are the two textures I used in the tutorial - click on the thumbnails for the larger size. Feel free to use them in your work as you please, though if you do a little credit or link would be much appreciated :) 

I tend to make my own, but there’s tons of places on the web that offer really lovely free-to-use textures. It’s important to choose the right one to suit your photo, and that will just depend on your own personal taste. Anyway, let the lesson commence! 

STEP 1

Open the photo you wish to texturise.  I’m using one I took of An Grianan of Aileach a few months back, but which I thought was a bit boring on its own. (By the way, for my regular blog readers, I’ll be doing a post on this magical place very soon!)

Next, open the texture of your choice as a new layer [File > Open As Layers]. I’m using the first of my textures above.

Resize the new layer if needed [Tools > Transform Tools> Scale]. At this stage it will look like this:

To ‘blend’ it with your photo, play around with the layer mode and opacity in the right-hand window, shown below, until you like what you see. Here I’ve chosen ‘multiply’ mode and an opacity of 70%.

STEP 2

At the minute the image is still looking quite dull. You could experiment with the curves or colour balance at this stage to brighten it up, but to make things simpler I’m just using another texture. In this case it’s my second, lighter, one above.

As in step one, open the texture as a new layer and set the mode and opacity. This time I’ve selected the ‘overlay’ mode at 90%.

STEP 3

Finally, once you’ve achieved a look you are happy with, simply flatten the image for saving as a JPEG [Image > Flatten Image]. It’s that easy!

This is only a very basic method but hopefully it’ll provide anyone starting off with a good basis from which to proceed. As I said, I’m still only learning  myself. There’s tons of much better and advanced tutorials out there on the interweb, and while most of them are for Photoshop even us lowly Gimp users can learn a lot from them. At the end of the day, though, in my experience experimentation is the way to go; the more you mess about with your photos, the more you’ll learn.

Well, I hope that I’ve helped enlighten those of you who were asking about this. And if not maybe somebody somewhere might learn something from it. If anyone’s interested, I’ve some more Grianan photos processed in the same way over on my Flickr page, and I’ll be back here soon with a wee post on the ring fort - one of my most favouritest places in the whole wide world :) 

Bricriu's Feast

Well it’s all over now folks and, the odd embarrassing blog post and sore head aside, I have to say- what a bloody great weekend! Right, so I know I promised photos of the festivities. I’m not going to disappoint, it’s just that nobody said anything about them having to be my photos. You see I wanted to start off with lasts night’s closing event- a retelling of Bricriu’s Feast, an old Celtic myth from the Ulster Cycle- and unfortunately my own images wouldn’t do it justice. 

I’ll get back to telling you about the feast in a minute but first I want to point you in the direction of Robert O’Dowd, the guy responsible for the pictures you see here. This boy really is a photographic genius now in my eyes; if you’d seen how horrible a night it was and just how dull my own and everyone else’s images came out you’d appreciate these shots all the more. I must have taken a hundred and hardly one was usable. (Please, check out his Flickr for more great photos of the event- and of our lovely town!)

So anyway. Sadly the weather was awful; the sky was so heavy with rain you could almost touch it. But we’re used to that kinda thing round here and, apart from a lot of really dreary photographs, it had little effect on the feast itself. Which was AMAZING, by the way. Fairy dancers, giants, warriors, druids, dragons, fire eaters, chariot racing, huge big scary crows, a whole army of bohran players, and some of the most amazing costume design ever. And that was just the opening parade, which marched through the main street of the town where it gathered up us common folk who followed it in procession down to the beach. 

There on the shore greens  they had erected dolmens, turrets, a stage with huge flags emblazoned with Celtic designs that flapped furiously in the wind, and a 14 foot replica of An Grianan of Aileach (which actually was supposed to be Emain Macha for the purposes of the story, but sure isn’t one iron age fort the same as the next). All with the backdrop of beautiful Lough Swilly. It was in this setting that they proceeded to re-enact the entire tale of Bricriu’s Feast.  Accompanied by The Henry Girls (a local traditional group) every one of the actors playing the heroes and heroines of Irish legend did such an excellent job. So lively and fun! I think my favourite bit had to be when all the kids in the audience got into it and started cheering along Cuchulain and booing the baddies.  It was just the best way to end the festival.

If anyone wants to know the story of Bricriu’s Feast you can read a summary of it here, though that could never be near as fun as seeing the whole thing acted out so enthusiastically. You know sometimes I think the Donegal Tourist Board should be paying me because I do like to wax on a bit about its greatness. Well, more festival photos to follow tomorrow. Have a nice evening!

Inishowen in Colour

When it comes to art I think my favourite medium has to be ink and acrylic. That makes me sound like I know what I’m talking about, which I don’t. Anytime I ever picked up a paint brush the only thing I made was a mess. But as the man says, I know what I like and I like these.

Maybe I’m a bit biased, though, because they are by another local artist and yet again most of his paintings are of the little peninsula where I live. The one above is of An Grianan of Aileach, for example, a place which I thought I’d talk a lot of on this blog when I first started, but which seems to have fallen by the wayside. Maybe I’ll do a Grianan post someday soon.

Anyway, they’re by a man named John Quigley. If his work reminds you of Jim Fitzpatrick then you’ve a good eye; the two men worked together for over a decade. Mr Quigley has also had art commissioned by Paramount Studios, Riverdance and Guinness, among others, while Seamus Heaney and the late Senator Edward Kennedy are just some of the notable names to have given his work a home. A local boy done good, from the way I see it.

Child of Danú

      Danu the Mother Goddess

I really doubt anybody other than myself will ever read this blog, but, on the off chance that someone actually bothers, maybe I should offer an explanation of its somewhat silly and slightly ostentatious title.

First of all, I just want to point out that I am by no means claiming to be a ‘Child of Danu’ ( that, in my opinion, would be arrogant). Nor do I intend this to be a place where I’ll mull over the great goddess, or any of her demigod children.

I simply thought the term to be an apt, if a little irrelevant, heading for a scrapbook of my flights of fancy. Apt because it alludes to many such fanciful flights, irrelevant because it may be that after this initial post I’ll never refer to anything pertaining to it directly again. Who knows?

Anyway, here is as concise an explanatory note as to its meaning that I can provide:

The Children of Danu were the legendary Tuatha De Danann, a people strongly linked to my local area, my family name, and the imagination I inherited from my childhood.

They were a heroic, mystical race who inhabited Ireland in pre-Celtic times, yet they remain a pervasive force on the psyche of the Irish, whether they realise it or not, and stand for all that I love about the culture and mythology of my homeland.

The Tuatha De Danann Arriving in Ireland by Roy Burns

Evidently enough, they worshipped Danu who was mother of all gods and goddess of all things. The Tuatha De Danann were themselves godlike, though mortal. They possessed ancient knowledge and commanded great magic, as can be seen in tales of their coming to this land, which they won following a battle with a race called the Fir Bolgs.

According to legend, upon their approach to Ireland the Tuatha De Danann “spread druidically-formed showers and fog-sustaining shower-clouds over the country, and caused the air to pour down fire and blood upon the Fir Bolgs,”  but their enemy had druids of their own who cast counter spells and enchantments.(Squire, 1905)

The story goes that due to a magical coastal mist summoned by the Fir Bolgs the Tuatha De Danann were forced to circle Ireland nine times before making landfall on the shores of present day Leitrim from whence they marched northwards, stopping to make first contact with the natives at a place dear to my heart.

      An Grianan

That place was An Grianan of Aileach, an iron-age stone ring fort perched on a hill not far from my hometown. From within the fort it is possible to access tunnels that apparently run underground for miles. It is said that deep within the labyrinth lies a room where a band of Tuatha De Danann horsemen still slumber. Just as in the tales of England’s Arthur, they will come again when Ireland needs them most, marking their return by lapping the island nine times.

But that’s just a local yarn, sourced from a story about a drunkard who fell in a ditch one night and found a hidden, external opening to one of the passageways. He claimed to have spoken with one of the horsemen who, astride his mount, woke momentarily to tell the bewildered gentleman of their apocalyptic-esque plans.

It is likely that the stories of the end of the Tuatha De Danann’s reign inspired the tale. You see, with the arrival of the Celts and the subsequent advent of Christianity, like the people of Avalon, the Tuatha De Dannan did not simply die away. Instead they retreated from the world of men into the mounds of the earth, supposedly revealing themselves on occasion to this very day. They are the Aes Sidhe (usually simply called ‘Sidhe’), more commonly known as the fairy folk.

According to a wee woman down the road, and probably American tourist guides to Ireland, they can still be found living in trees and caves, by ancient stones and sacred lakes, around ruined forts and craggy hills.

Indeed, the Children of Danu were not the first peoples to inhabit this isle, nor were they to be the last, but tales of their magical mastery and later demise have left their mark on our mythology and folklore.

When I was little I was often warned to stay away from the bells of purple foxglove lest I anger the fairies who made their homes there. The fantasy was somewhat spoiled when I discovered that the flowers are actually poisonous and it was more likely a clever conspiracy by my mother to keep me for picking them. But I believed it, if only for a time. *sigh*

Picture by Charlotte Bird

Still, though, even in the commercial, money idolising society of Ireland today, where tradition and story-telling are fading away as fast as Aga cookers and local bakeries, you’d be hard pressed to find a child who’ll step in a ring of toadstools but on a dare, or a man who’ll cut down a fairy tree without a care to his own well being.

More than that, many of the practices and characters that litter the sagas of the Tuatha De Danann can be yet found in Irish society in the guise of saints, shrines and sacraments. From Danu herself (St Anne) to the patron St Brigit (Brigid, goddess of love and war), and in the now holy days of Beltane and Samhain. The list goes on and on… They weren’t the most inventive, the early Celtic Christians, but they certainly were adaptive.