“Of those who remember
To those who don’t
here is a little poem
For those who have forgotten:
Of a race of fearless people,
Noble, strong and bold,
Who lived as one with nature
And never got old. “
As a young man, Yeats sleeps overnight in the central chamber of Newgrange seeking inspiration. That was part of his initiation as a druid in the modern age. Today he pays money to enter, which he goes to the new Interpretation Center there. Well, if they knew or could tell you about druids. And you must accept an official guide: what could they say to a druid from Ireland if he turned up? It’s happening.
My hometown of Kilkenny in the south-east of Ireland wasn’t Christianized until 597 AD. This is late for Europe, but Ireland lasted longer than anywhere else in Europe except the Norse lands before finally being Christianized.
Two hundred years before he finally converted, St. Kieran had preached in Kilkenny, to the amusement of the local king and his druid in the old wooden fort on the site of today’s stately Kilkenny Castle. But to no avail, people were not interested. Saint Patrick’s mission of AD 432 to Ireland either never reached Kilkenny or failed there as well. Kieran had built a small stave church on the present Kyteler’s Inn beer garden, which in turn belonged to the famous fourteenth-century Kilkenny witch, Dame Alice Kyteler. Apparently, the powers that be granted Kieran full freedom to preach his initial mission. So they were a tolerant bunch, the druids. After some years of trying unsuccessfully to convert, he got up and left Kilkenny, and was mugged nine miles out of town at Freshford for his cloak and clothing, and what the saint did to preserve decency we do not know. of the.
The mound where the druids lived is only a few hundred meters from my own house in the center of the city. It was the last stronghold of the druids of Ireland. Their end was not peaceful, since Christianity came to claim them. In 597 AD Christian armies from all over Ireland invaded Kilkenny under St. Canice. The Irish druids fought valiantly to the last on their mound above the little town. But fate and the tide of history were against him. Most of the crowned heads of Europe were Christian, loyal to Rome, and Ireland had to do the same. Almost the same thing happened in our time with the EU. Some things never change.
There is a magnificent cathedral atop the mound from the 13th century, built by the Normans next to an earlier Irish round tower; you can climb the round staircase to the top for one euro, one of the joys of visiting Kilkenny, perch Climb to the top of an old Irish round tower!
Some scholars, such as the renowned historian of the Diocese of Kilkenny, called the Diocese of Ossory (after the ancient Druid name for the realm) Canon Carrigan, argue that the tradition of building round towers in Ireland stems from a much older age bordering on the druid, that such towers were used as astronomical observatories. The main idea is that the monks built them to escape Viking raids, but that doesn’t explain how so many of them were built before the first Vikings were known in Ireland in AD 795.
The cathedral mound is bounded by the River Nore and its tributary, The Breagach (meaning “The False” in Irish) and stands on a plain of seven springs, all but one dry today. Only the old Kenny’s Well (Canice) or Kennyswell flows today and you can drink good pure well water from its flow in your little stone well house. Evidently Canice took the best of the druids defeated in her time.
The former Dean of Ossory (Anglican), the Rev Norman Lynas, confirmed to me that there are ancient Druid burials crouching beneath the old cathedral and under the round tower.
A German dowser visited the cathedral and his wands ran all over the place, as did an English druid living in Ireland, Sandy Leigh. She explained that the mound is the center of very powerful earth energies.
How was it that the last Archdruid of Ireland and his retinue lived there at the end of the sixth century, and not in Tara, Cashel, Newgrange or in their ancient hallowed college of Uisneach in the center of Ireland?
I think it was for the simple reason that such places were well known to the Christian authorities as places where the main druids would be, while in the meantime they kept their heads down on Kilkenny, which would have been little known at the time – Kilkenny grew up. with the Normans from the 12th century onwards, and is known as Ye Faire Citie and The Marble City. Probably the smallest small town in Ireland or Great Britain, it has two royal charters as a city of British monarchs and was at one point from 1642-1649 the capital of Ireland during a period known as The Kilkenny Confederation.
The Kilkenny mound, although there since 2000 BC. C., was not so well known.
You must remember that at that time the druids were outlawed and were fleeing for their lives. Monks led armies across Ireland looking for them to kill them and their entire family on sight.
Finally, the great Fang of Derry, who knew that the Archdruid and the heads of his Order were at Kilkenny Mound, and was sympathetic to their plight, unwisely told his friend Canice this. And though the son of a Filidh-Druid (Poet-Druid) from Donegal itself, Canice was a true Roman priest now and determined to rid Ireland of these pagan relics of the past.
In the year 597, therefore, armies fought their way from all of Ireland to Kilkenny. The slaughter at Guardian’s Mound is said to have been quick and brief. It’s called progress.
