"The sleeping seascapes and landscapes of Sligo"

Otherworldlymirage                                                                                                                                      

Many places in Ireland can lay claim to the title of an idyllic backwater, at which a joust can be played out between otherworldly mirages and realities but one such place or townland very close to the sea, and lying at the cusp of Yeats Country: the townland of Maugherow, is perhaps one of the leading heirs to this title. About five miles west of the village of Drumcliffe (the famous resting place of WB Yeats), and within touching distance of the Sligo Atlantic, it thus falls within the category of hidden Ireland and off the beaten track.

The Sligo coastline as seen from the townland of Maugherow

Idyllic tranquility

The trinity of stones: footsteps to the brisky Atlantic with Inismurray Island in the distance

The beach and coastline are encased in a sweet vessel of peace and tranquility, and the seascape and landscape adjoining it are a pristine and pleasant throw back to the time when Ireland was the jewel of the western world. 'Though not chronicled or earmarked as one of the specific places associated with the great poet WB Yeats or part of a Yeats trail or trek, one wonders did he ever frequent this spot unbeknownst to posterity? It certainly is tinged with his presence and indeed I was moved and impelled to compose a poem at this site, using as a model, the muse of the water, just like in his mythological poem The Stolen Child.

Where lies the three stones
like rocky hirelings in the shallows
the sea painted polytones
as a tide plays its bellows
'pon the sandbars, pyramid cones,
where wisdom chills and mellows,
there the sound of feet traipsing
the feet tap of a loud bodhran,
and bird, Heron and Lapwing,
chanted for me a new amhran!

Faery, spirit, sprite, mystic,
like sunbeams on the ether
in the white moths incarnate
fan out for the earth mother!

For this beach and the seascape here are perfect candidates for the hidden landscapes of Ireland and the untouched vistas, which water the inner third eye, and make insights, a machine with a crisp and powerful motion, as manifold as the seafood, glistening here for the culinary health and soul food doyen. Just before the beach, is a natural wetland, full of marsh and lichen; and also distinctly reminding me of the natural habitat, estuaries, sandbars and wetlands of Bull Island Nature reserve in Dollymount in Dublin.

Untouched and pristine wetlands

The landscape 300 or 400 metres from here, seems to be locked to the sea, as if bosom buddies or blood brothers of the earth; and that lovely cottage in which I stayed, with its stone wall, and flanked, engulfed and surrounded by stone walls like the way a piece of crystal radiates its light through a prism, is so similiar to the stone walls of Connemara or the Aran Islands! Inside the cottage at night, the moth seemed to be omnipresent and deigned to make an appearance on several occasions, as if providence had decreed it or as if had been bidden to come by some external or ethereal presence. I was instantly reminded of another one of WB Yeats' poems The Song of Wandering Aengus and the lines: "When white moths were on the wing/ and moth-like stars were flickering out". Perhaps there is something about Sligo and particularly the hinterland and vicinity of Yeats' Country and moths? Or in such an otherworldly mirage and reverie, me thinks, could it be the spirit of Yeats or the Faeries deigning to make their presence felt and wishing me a Cead Mile Failte!?

The stone walls that proliferate Connacht and the west of Ireland are a potent cocktail!

This landscape/seascape of county Sligo is perhaps little known in comparison to Rosses Point, Knocknarea, Mullaghmore, the main stops of Yeats country and so on. However, as it's not as trampled upon, as the other places and attractions in the county, it may just have a little more authenticity and pristine otherworldliness. For in this otherworldly mirage, in which I found myself, anything is possible and the happiness and contentment bar rises a gargantuan notch, that's for sure. And so dear reader that stumble upon these thoughts and sentiments, be cognisant of this axiom: it's not always the commercial or much heralded part that's the best part!

PS A few miles from here is the townland of the Grange - near which is the start of the socalled De Cuellar Trail - the trail of the legendary Spanish Armada survivor who trekked across country, eventually returning to the Iberian Peninsula.

"Quaint cemeteries of the Emerald Isle"

Saint John's Cemetery

Located in the quaint village of Edgeworthstown in Ireland's midlands - county Longford - is the quaint and untouched graveyard of Saint John's. Like a chasm of virtue residing in a lake of quiet splendour, untouched and forgotten by the wider public and largely ignored by the local people, it contains the grave of Isola Wilde - the sister of Oscar Wilde - and the Edgeworth's family vault including the tomb of Maria Edgeworth - the author of the famous novel Castle Rackrent and her brother Richard Lowell Edgeworth - a surveyor and engineer of the time.

Saint John's with the Edgeworth family vault to the left; it was around there I had the strongest feeling of Oscar Wilde's sister, Isola, resting!

The Spire was a legacy of Richard Lowell Edgeworth and the method of its erection was most curious; constructed on the ground on a kind of iron sheet and then covered by slate, it was then raised by a pulley to its place of abode, and hence an example of unusual workmanship. (A curious fact about the Edgeworth family is that Abbe Edgeworth was the Abbe who attended Louis the Sixteenth of France and presided at his execution  - then later escaping!)

In the rear, the many raised vertical headstones and slabs of this quaint cemetery, with an ornate example in the front.

As above

The Edgeworth Family Vault in which are the tombs of Maria Edgeworth - contemporary of Oliver Goldsmith - and Richard Lowell Edgeworth.

Sadly, the headstone of Isola Wilde is demolished and her grave is nigh impossible to find. Her death at just the tender age of ten is most moving and the way it affected a 13 year old Oscar is a symphonic overture in itself. It's said he wrote a poem called Requiescat and that he was so moved by her death, that he took a lock of her hair, which he kept most zealously all of his life, having it with him when death visited him in Paris at the dawn of the twentieth century! Strangely, there was a very uplifting feeling as I walked around the cemetery but particularly at the Edgeworth family vault. The following poem conjured itself up from the ether:

In Saint John's cemetery
in quaintest abode of Edgeworth
I tiptoed in a suit summery  
the quaint green rolled forth
as strong wings in an aviary;

Longford county untouched
in the town the midlands border
sweet honeycomb perfumed air 
nature smoky in balanced order
choirs rustic blow breath's fanfare

With ceremonial hat I bowed
before - a courtier in his precinct
at sentiments' loving arms I cowed
as an avatar of gut instinct
to stray on paths time disallowed

Oscar's sister unremembered
took my feather's tickling fancy:
Isola but ten years numbered;
to count hidden gems is a game chancy
so I blog another place discovered!

This secluded and shut off graveyard in the pleasant demesne of Ireland's midlands seems but to be destined to be undiscovered, rendered a hidden sight in a wee village, that people merely pass through going from east to west. I had to clamber over a seven foot wall from the bonnet of the car, to gain entrance, but to honour it with one's presence is a soulful thing and also an uplifting boon in the hectic rush of travelling. Saint John's is one of those wee places off the beaten track in Ireland that seem to resound with a heartbeat of their own; they are what hidden Ireland is all about. Stop in the genial Edgeworthstown and pay your respects to, as quaint a graveyard as one could ever hope to encounter in the Emerald Isle. 

In the lap of bonnie Edgeworthstown