Re-discovering the ‘lost’ records of the Newgrange roof-box.
Ken Williams
The elaborate structure above and behind the entrance to Newgrange, which the excavator, Professor M.J. O’Kelly, termed the ‘roof-box’, is one of the most celebrated features of the passage tomb at Newgrange. Along with the spiral decorated entrance stone, the glistening quartz-clad façade and the magnificently engineered corbelled chamber, it forms one of the defining aspects which make Newgrange unique and fascinating for both visitors and researchers today. O’Kelly’s first observation of the rising sun on the Winter Solstice of 1967 was a pivotal moment in modern archaeo-astronomy. The resulting publicity raised the profile of Newgrange to a global audience.
Because of its universal significance in terms of architecture, art and astronomy, Newgrange and the wider landscape of Brú na Boinne, encompassing the other great passage tombs…
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The Fading, Untranslatable Words of the Gaelic Mindscape
Borders
I am sometimes asked where all the ideas come from that inspire a new poem. Well, I range around. Today’s poem’s train of thought was provoked by a tweet. I am not a frequenter tweeter, but I do follow a few who are only on Twitter. And my current favourite is The Irish Border (@BorderIrish) who is wittily discoursing on the Brexit crisis about what to do with the problem of it. A lot hangs upon the Good Friday Treaty (aka the Belfast Treaty of 1998), which spelled out the end of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. We live in border country. For instance, today we went to the launderette in Fermanagh, which is eight miles away. If we opted for ones in Leitrim, we would have had to travel around sixteen miles to do the dirty washing. We fill our prescriptions in Fermanagh…
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You, a Lousy Speller
An Amazing Woman of the Amazon
Gone but not forgotten: remembering the life of Peter Falk
Scientific Study of Personality
Gaelic Music by Mary Kennedy
Seinn, Horo, Seinn: ‘Who will light me a beacon/The spark that will keep songs alive?/One voice will sing the song/But voices united will guard the treasure/We will sing the old songs/Of poetic heroes, love and glory/But there will also be new songs/Our own hearts’ music, as it should be’.
The Shannon Pot (Lug na Sionnaine)
The source of the Shannon river lies in the hills of West Cavan and is called Lug na Sionnaine (The Shannon Pot). If you examine the shape of this bubbling pool of water, you will see that it takes on the shape of the human eye; it is slightly elongated and not purely round. At one end, the emerging waters begin the long journey towards the sea with the resulting shape looking much like that of the Egyptian glyph the Eye of Osiris.
If you throw a small coin into the water, the formations on the surface waters in the pool form the shape known as the Vesicas Pisces. Ordinarily, the Vesica Piscis is a symbol which is made from two circles of the same radius that intersect in such a way so that the center of each circle lies on the circumference of the other. The Vesica Piscis is a type of lens, a mathematical shape formed by this intersection of two disks with the same radius, with the center of each disk lying on the perimeter of the other.The name literally means the ‘bladder‘ of the fish (Latin). In the Christian tradition, it is a reference to Christ, as in ichthys. I was amazed to discover this feature, as I have paid many visits to the well over recent years, but this aspect had (quietly) eluded me.
The Shannon Pot is the beginning point of the seed, the fruit, and the flower of life.
Bríd Boland (Writer) 