Stones of Aran

by Tim Robinson

  So this well, at first known only in the islands and in neighbouring mainland areas, and then perhaps as far afield as Sligo if there is any truth in the story Synge was told, is now famous throughout the world, through his play, and through his book on Aran. It is necessary, for reasons that will become painfully clear, to describe with care what the literary pilgrim will find here.

  The setting is precious in itself. This lap of land, with the sheltering hillside curving up from it, seems to attract the spring early; people come here to search for the tiny leaves of shamrock in mid-March, before St. Patrick’s Day. The green slope above is one of the best places to see the limestone bugle, a great rarity, hardly known in Ireland except from the Aran Islands and two points on the mainland opposite the ends of the island chain, in Connemara and the Burren. It is not well known even here, for it blossoms before the botanical tourists come, at the end of April, when it is a neat square pyramid two or three inches high, of copper-stained or even purplish leaves that hide the intensely blue flowers, as saints hood their heavenly radiance; later it goes slack and is lost among the seedy flush of summer grass.

  The church is almost as neighbourly to the houses of Corrúch as they are to each other. A boreen dodges between the cottages on the south of the main road, and as soon as it clears their back-gardens and begins to climb towards Na Craga, one can see the gables of the ruin sticking up among the walls of little fields on the right, just a hundred yards away. A stile in the boreen wall admits one to the first field, which is partly of bare crag from which big blocks have been levered out at some period, and partly of bright green, closely grazed turf. Before crossing the next stile, one should diverge a few paces to the left, and look at a small slab of limestone built into the bottom of the field-wall; it has an oval hollow in its upper surface, half covered by the stones above, and usually there is a little water lodged in it. This is the first of the three holy wells that people “doing the rounds” here used to visit, but whether this bullán is a natural formation or the work of hands I cannot tell. From the stile here the path lies along the top of a low, thick wall, the remaining fragment of a cashel that encircled the monks’ little settlement long before all these other walls existed. Twenty steps further along the way is a small upright blackthorn bush, and at its foot among ferns is a round of sky sunk deep into the ground—another holy well, very obscure but not forgotten by at least some of those who perform the turas to the church on Lá Mhuire, the Feast of the Assumption, and other holy days. This is not the well of the four beauties, which is behind the church, but nevertheless it is of this well that I hear the story, very much as Synge heard it a century ago, of the mother who brought her blind child here in hope of a cure; they both searched for this secretive well, and it was the child who found it first.

  From the blackthorn another length of mossy wall, like a low walkway skimming the oddly-shaped, interlocking plots of meadow, leads southwards to a stile into an enclosure which, were it not distinguished by the ruined church within it, would be just another meadow full of wild-flowers. The roof of the church is gone, but the walls, built of large, rough blocks of grey limestone, stand raggedly to waist-height in places and over head-height in others, enclosing a space about nine paces long and four across. One stoops to enter, through the simplest possible Gothic doorway in the north wall, only two foot four inches wide, each side of the head of which is a single stone shaped to the curve. The window-opening in the east gable is a narrow lancet with an ogee’d head, in fifteenth-century style. Below it is a plain stone altar, and on its left a small projecting shelf or bracket carved from a single stone; window, altar and shelf relate as economically and consequentially as successive gestures in a familiar ceremony. In the north wall, near the altar, is a small, lintelled window. The west gable is badly gapped. Looking through it one sees a tall standing-stone about a hundred yards away, and almost (but not exactly) in line with it another even taller pillar three hundred yards farther off; the horizon profile of Dún Aonghusa on the heights far beyond is again almost but not quite on the same significant-looking bearing.

  Behind the church the land rises in two close-set steps of two or three feet each, so that the next meadow to the south is at head-height, and a considerable spring fills a rectangular basin at the foot of the little scarp. This is Tobar an Cheathrair Álainn, the Well of the Four Beauties, the official and renowned one, into which visitors throw coins; only the people of the nearest villages know of the other little wells. The rite of the turas here involve walking around this well and the church alternately, saying the rosary. The leaba or “bed” of the four beauties adjoins the chapel; it is a low-walled compartment built against the east gable, floored with what look like five gravestones. The islanders regard this as the burial-place of the four saints, and up to a few decades ago men used to sleep in it to obtain a blessing before going on a journey or in thanks for recovery from illness; the blacksmith of Fearann an Choirce tells me that he and his brothers Patrick and Colman (“Tiger”) King used to sleep here now and again, not for any particular reason but, as it were, as a general spiritual prophylactic. But when O’Donovan visited in 1839 he was told that four flat stones side by side in a field just east of the nearer pillar-stone mark the saints’ graves. These stones are still there, and they look like early Christian graves, but nowadays they are not associated with the four beauties. Micilín Sarah, alchemist and antiquary, did a bit of “rooting” there once, and found, according to one account, nothing, and according to another, the bones of a seven-foot-tall German teacher from the monastery of the four beauties! The pillar stone itself is a single “flag” of limestone, about nine feet high and two across. The farther one, which because of the number of intervening field walls is more easily visited from a róidín in Fearann an Choirce than from the church, is even more impressive, being over eleven feet high. They are called Na Spéicí, the spikes, and there is a tradition that the mighty men of old who set them up used to play hurley between them; however, their near-alignment with the church makes it likely that they had some Christian significance. O’Donovan, whose sense of humour was itself rather megalithic, wanted his assistant William Wakeman to inscribe one of them with a lengthy rigmarole in Old Irish and Latin exhorting one to pray for Seaghán Mac Emoind óig mic sen Emoind, Mic Uilliam, Mic Chonchobhair, Mic Emoind Uí Donnabháin—that is, O’Donovan himself. Wakeman excused himself from the task because of the continuous rain during his visit, but in his sketch of the eastern pillar-stone accompanying the Ordnance Survey Letters, part of this phantom inscription can be seen.

  In O’Donnell’s Life of St. Colm Cille an instance of miraculous knowledge is recounted:

  On a time Colm Cille went to visit Ara of the Saints where dwelt Enda of Ara and many other holy men. And it happed that he and the other saints aforementioned were saying their hours and their prayers as they made the round of the churchyards of Ara. And they saw a very ancient tomb, and a passing great and unmoveable stone thereon. And the saints marvelled greatly at the age of the tomb and the size of the stone. And Saint Baithin that was with Colm Cille asked the saints of the place who it was that was buried in that tomb.

  “That know we not,” say they, “nor have we heard who is buried therein.”

  But he to whom naught was concealed that had befallen or should befall, to wit, Colm Cille, did make an answer to them and say:

  “I know who is buried here,” saith he. “On a time there came an abbot of Jerusalem to sojourn with the saints of Erin, by reason of renown of their faith and their good works, and by reason of the rigor of their rule and of their lives. And he came by adventure to this island and he died here. And he it is that is buried under that flagstone.”

  And to prove that Colm Cille spake truth, there came an angel of God to bear witness for him before Enda and the other saints. And then Colm Cille uttered this quatrain:

  Let us tarry now, O Baithin,

  Beside Talgaeth, versed in psalms.

  Le
t us tarry there till morn,

  With the abbot of Jerusalem.

  The location of this tomb is not stated, but an island tradition puts it a few paces west of the church of the four beauties, where there are some stones that look like the foundations of a small building. Seán Gillan, the last of the story-tellers of Aran, gave me a very circumstantial account of its discovery, which perhaps owes something to the reports of Micilín Sarah’s archaeology. If I understood his Fearann an Choirce Irish correctly, it seems that so many monks came to St. Enda’s monastery that they were starving, for whenever one of them celebrated Mass they all had to fast for twenty-four hours. So, to give them “fair play,” Enda set out with them to find a new site for a monastery, and they came to this spot at Corrúch. Enda’s only reservation about the place was this grave close by, for he didn’t know whether a pagan or a Catholic was buried in it. But Colm Cille told him that it was indeed a Catholic, in fact a priest, and that he was seven feet tall and had been there for 350 years, and that he was so-and-so the Abbot of Jerusalem. “How would you know that?” asked Enda, “I’m older than you and I don’t know that!” “Well if you don’t believe me,” said Colm, “write to the Pope and ask him the name of the Abbot of Jerusalem 350 years ago, and you’ll see that I’m right.” So they wrote, and a year later they got a reply, and Colm Cille was proved right.

  No angelic witness here, just common-sense second sight, and the sort of postal service you’d expect in an out-of-the way corner of Christendom. In fact the legendary associations of this place, which in the Middle Ages were evidently widespread, have long folded in their wings and nestled down in comfort. Fursu’s feverish vision, in which the world appears below him as a dark valley between two fires, and Brendan’s wanderings on fantastic oceans, both have come to earth in this mild hollow, landlocked away from too much sea or sky. Pilgrims no longer walk from Sligo for the water of the Well of the Four Beauties, nor is it carried by itinerant holy men through the glens of Wicklow as in Synge’s play. Similarly the various sorts of beauty associated with this site have settled over the centuries into something native and villagey; instead of the beauty of the lustful female that the medieval misogynists feared as the snares of Hell, or the beauty of the saint that both reveals his purity to the world and provokes danger to his soul, we have old blind Martin, Synge’s guide and creation, thinking more than he should about the young girls. Nowadays, the monks long gone, the world is as much at home in the church as is the church in the world; the sun and rain bring out the wild-flowers within the shelter of its walls perhaps even earlier than those outside. The wrens creeping like mice in the crevices of the field-walls around it point out the domestic scale of the church and its surroundings; all that I have described, apart from the far-off pillar-stones, can be walked round in a few minutes. Beauty has gathered like moss, quietly subsuming the ruins of exorbitant spirituality and extravagant legend.

  And yet the quietude of this beauty gives it an edge of poignancy; one holds one’s breath for its life. I wrote that there are wild-flowers within the walls; that is no longer so, and the interior is floored in crunchy gravel. The Office of Public Works has taken the site into its well-meaning but clumsy hands, and placed a cattle-grid before the door, so that one can no longer enter without a clatter. Previously, I suppose, the cattle were kept out by a few twigs of thorn, or if they did get in they kept the grass from growing too rank, and nobody minded the mess. But that will not do, now that hundreds of visitors come to see what they have read of in Synge, in my own maps, in countless touristic handouts. Whenever I think of revisiting the church, I fear to find a tarmacadamed path driven through the little fields, and the stiles replaced by iron gates, for the rough little old ways I have described will not bear the traffic of today. We are too many; what is to be done? This quarter-acre of stones is as vulnerable as a porcelain cup left out on the road. Beauty flirts recklessly with destruction; even a book like this can only risk an attempt at beauty because it can be wrapped away like a cup in the ruggy stuff of fact and learned reference. But the book is perhaps the only sanctuary. All I can do is to point out what is there, and in so doing preserve an image of it.

  THE BED OF DIARMAID AND GRÁINNE

  Gráinne, the daughter of King Cormac Mac Art, was to marry Fionn Mac Cumhaill, chief of the king’s warrior-band, the Fianna. But during the feast celebrating her arrival at Tara she set her eyes on one of Fionn’s followers. “Who is that sweet-voiced, freckled man with the berry-black curls and the glowing cheeks sitting next to Oisín?” she said to her neighbour at the table. “That is Diarmaid ua Duibhne, the greatest lover of women in the whole world,” she was told. So Gráinne filled a drinking-cup and had her handmaiden pass it to Fionn and others of the heroes, and a deep sleep fell on them. Then she went and sat between Oisín and Diarmaid, and said, “I wonder that Fionn, old enough to be my father, should ask a woman like me to be his wife; it would be fitter for me to get a man of my own sort.” “Don’t say that, Gráinne,” said Oisín; “If Fionn heard you he wouldn’t have you, nor would he let anyone else have you.” “Would you be my protector, Oisín?” asked Gráinne. Oisín answered, “I would not. A woman who would lie with Fionn, I wouldn’t bother with.” “Would you be my protector, Diarmaid?” asked Grainne. “I would not,” answered Diarmaid; “I would have nothing to do with a woman who would lie with Fionn and Oisín.” “Well,” said she, “I put a geis (a magical obligation) on you, that unless you take me with you out of this house tonight before Fionn wakes, you will not be a true hero.” Then Gráinne went away, and Diarmaid said to Oisín, “What shall I do about this geis that’s put on me?” “You are not responsible for the geis,” said Oscar, “and I say you should follow Gráinne. But beware of Fionn’s anger.”

  So Diarmaid parted with his comrades, and many tears were shed. To Gráinne he said, “Ours is a bad journey. It would be better for you to be with Fionn than with me, and I do not know where in Ireland I will take you.” “I will not part from you until death parts me from you,” said she. “Well, walk on then,” he answered.

  They stole Gráinne’s father’s chariot and two horses, and fled to Athlone on the Shannon; there they left the chariot in the ford and a horse on either bank, and they walked a mile westwards in the current, and stepped ashore on the Connacht side. That night Diarmaid felled the heart of an oak-wood and built a rampart with seven doors out of the timber, and made a bed of reeds for Gráinne in the middle, and watched over her as she slept. But Fionn’s trackers soon found them, and his warriors surrounded their fort. Diarmaid came out in sight of them and kissed Gráinne three times to make Fionn jealous. Then Diarmaid’s foster-father, the god Aonghas, came with the speed of the wind from Newgrange, and carried Gráinne to safety in his cloak, but Diarmaid remained to face his destiny. He went from door to door of the fort, asking who was outside. At each door one of his old comrades named himself and promised that Diarmaid would not be harmed if he came out that way, but because Diarmaid did not wish to draw Fionn’s anger on any of them he did not come out until he found the door at which Fionn was waiting to kill him. That door he opened, and pole-vaulted on his spear over the heads of Fionn and his men, and put his shield on his back and ran to where Gráinne was hidden. And Gráinne’s heart nearly leapt out of her mouth with joy when she saw him.

  The next morning Aonghas advised Diarmaid how to avoid capture. “Do not climb into any tree with a single trunk or go into any cave with a single entrance or land on any island with a single harbour. Wherever you cook, do not eat there. Wherever you eat, do not sleep there. And wherever you lie down at night, do not be there in the morning.” In that manner the lovers travelled all over Ireland, pursued by Fionn, and eventually they came to Aran. There, as at all their resting-places, they made a bed out of huge slabs of stone; Diarmaid carrried the two side-stones under his oxters, and Gráinne brought up the cap-stone in her apron. And Gráinne watched over Diarmaid as he slept:

  Cotail becán becán bec,<
br />
  úair ní hecail duit a bec,

  a gille día tardus seirc,

  a meic uí Duibne, a Díarmait…

  Sleep a little little bit,

  A little sleep will do no harm,

  O youth to whom I give my love,

  Diarmaid son of Duibhne.

  Sleep a moment sweetly here,

  By the water of this well,

  While I guard my Diarmaid,

  Foam of the wind-blown lake.

  O playboy of the western world,

  I will watch for you tonight.

  For us to part would hurt as much