Ancestral Stones

Bug Light Park

Though it was still very cold last weekend, I felt the hope of spring. Maybe it was the angle of the sun, the heat from which was melting snow and ice even when the air temperature was well below freezing. As I ran along the waterfront at Bug Light Park Sunday morning there was no activity in Portland Harbor. Only one ferry to Peaks Island was moving and that had docked by the time I began. There was a quiet I seldom perceive down there. Very few people were stirring, only a couple dog owners out for a walk. It was cold, but the air wasn’t moving and the sun felt warm on my face. That hope of spring is an ancient thing for people in northern climes.

Stone circle in County Cork

I just booked my fourth trip to Ireland, the land of my ancestors, which is amply sprinkled with prehistoric stone formations everywhere going back five millennia. No one knows for sure who built them but archaeologists are slowly piecing bits of evidence together which indicate that many if not most of the curious structures are oriented according to the solar calendar — to confirm that yes, the sun is getting higher each day and spring will indeed return. People around the world are familiar with Stonehenge, which is the largest of numerous other stone circles all over England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Atlantic coast of France.

Newgrange

Human remains, sometimes cremated, have also been found around these stones in Ireland. Some such formations are enormous like Newgrange in the Boyne River Valley which predates Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. We don’t know for sure who built Newgrange, but whoever those people were, they were skilled at working in stone. As with Stonehenge, they moved stone from many kilometers away to build and we don’t understand how they did so. Unlike Stonehenge, Newgrange (and two other huge mounds near it) was also a passage tomb built with corbeled stones and covered with still more stones to make a tumulus covering more than an acre. Like Stonehenge, it was oriented to sunrises on the solstices.

Newgrange

Other stones the size of automobiles are arranged all around Newgrange and inscribed with spirals and concentric circles the meanings of which no one knows. When I visited there I was told by officials on site that they were close to an understanding and a report would be issued within months. I’ve been waiting ten years and there’s been no report.

Isle of Doagh

There are similar concentric circle designs carved into stones on the Isle of Doagh on the Inishowen Peninsula in Donegal which is the northernmost part of Ireland. When I was there on my first trip, I wasn’t aware of those stones, but I’ll be spending several days on Inishowen again because it’s the land of the McLaughlins where my great-grandfather was born. I’ll be sure to look for them this time.

Another in County Cork (photo by John Banagan)

My great-grandfather, James whom I never knew, was born in a little village called Cloontagh but he emigrated to Boston from the nearby Isle of Doagh. My brother Paul and his girlfriend will be with us for a few days. He’s going to Scotland first and we’ll meet up in Donegal after he flies in from Edinburgh. It’s his first trip to Europe.

Enforced by the British in Ireland

After Paul flies back to the USA my wife and I will head south to County Cork where other branches of my family originated — the Sullivans and Mahoneys, also on my father’s side. I’ve discovered where and when some married and where and when some died, so if I have time maybe I can find their homes. Maybe not though, because they were Roman Catholic and, as such, they wouldn’t likely have inherited real property since it was illegal for a Catholic to own property in Ireland until 1792. They were born in the early 1800s.

On the way south from Donegal to Cork, I can pass through Limerick where John Fitzgerald, great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side was born July 4, 1836. That information should be specific enough to perhaps find data on his parents, Patrick and Catherine, about whom I know nothing but their names. The further back I go the more names there are, but records become harder to find, so perhaps I will reach dead ends during this trip. Knowing a few things about ancestors who lived and died there will help me feel connected to the land as I explore it.

The ancestors I’ve learned of so far were all poor. The McLaughlins couldn’t afford stones to mark their graves in Donegal and I may not find any for the Sullivans or Mahoneys in Cork either. However, I will see plenty of the standing stone circles erected five thousand years ago to mark passing seasons — and the graves of more distant ancestors. Those are everywhere.