Bullaun Stones and Early Medieval Pilgrimage at Glendalough

ORDNANCE SURVEY LETTERS WICKLOW and CARLOW LETTERS RELATING TO THE ANTIQUITIES OF THE COUNTIES OF WICKLOW AND CARLOW CONTAINING INFORMATION COLLECTED DURING THE PROGRESS OF THE ORDNANCE SURVEY 1838 – 1840 EDITOR: MICHAEL HERITY MRIA ASSISTANT EDITOR: DAVID MCGUINNESS PUBLISHED BY FOURMASTERS PRESS DUBLIN 2013 BULLAUN STONES AND EARLY MEDIEVAL PILGRIMAGE AT GLENDALOUGH DAVID MCGUINNESS Some years ago, in the Mullet Peninsula … I found a number of people making “stations” around a holy well called after a saint whose name I had never heard before. But to these people she was very familiar: they knew her father’s name, her feast day, and several incidents of her life. On getting home and looking up the martyrologies, I found that every item they told me was correct: she was a princess, the greatgreat-granddaughter of King Dathi, the last pagan King of Ireland. But these people had their knowledge, not from books or martyrologies, but from an unbroken tradition, having behind it the respectable antiquity of forty-seven generations. Énrí Ó Muirgheasa, The Holy Wells of Donegal, Béaloideas 6 (1936), pp. 143-62 In addition to documenting ancient churches, crosses and other ecclesiastical antiquities, Ordnance Survey field-staff were from 1834 primed to take note of the names, legends and feast-days of saints venerated, and the dates of rounds at the parish well,1 and they occasionally recorded more detailed information on the behaviour of pilgrims. It was in this context that many rock-basins or bullaun stones and their associated legends and customs were documented for the first time, as at Roscam just east of Galway City where Thomas O’Conor recorded stations at a bullaun stone with three basins said to mark the knees and head of St. Patrick.2 Although the vernacular term bullán would not be adapted for specialised use by antiquaries for another twenty years,3 many bullauns being instead identified as primitive fonts, the type was commonly enough encountered to elicit some sound general observations in the first and only published Memoir volume: It may … be worth observing, that stones of this description are found in the vicinity of most of the Irish churches, and usually bear the name of the founder, or patron saint: they are always held sacred, and the rain-water, deposited in their hollows, is believed to possess a miraculous power in curing various diseases.4 O’Donovan, Petrie and others in the Ordnance Survey topographical department were occasionally impressed by the longevity of folklore, where oral tradition compared favourably with 1 2 3 4 T.A. Larcom. Heads of Inquiry, pp 16, 33, 34-5, NLI MS 7550; see letter from Larcom to Petrie, dated 15th February 1834, in same MS. M. Herity (ed.), Ordnance Survey Letters Galway. Dublin 2009, p. 82. William Wilde’s excursion programme, appended to: M. Haverty, The Aran Isles: or, a Report of the Excursion of the Ethnological Section of the British Association from Dublin to the Western Islands of Aran, in September, 1857. Dublin 1859, pp. 39-45 at 41. The related Irish words bullán and ballán refer to cup-like holes in rocks, and are widespread in Connacht where they normally refer to natural solution hollows and potholes. P.W. Joyce, A Social History of Ancient Ireland, Vol. II. London 1903, p. 78; L. Price, ‘Rock-Basins, or 'Bullauns', at Glendalough and Elsewhere’, JRSAI 89 (1959), pp. 161-88 at 169; P.S. Dineen, Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla. Dublin 1996. T. Colby (ed.), Ordnance Survey of the County of Londonderry, Volume the First. Dublin 1837, p. 26. 14 ORDNANCE SURVEY LETTERS COUNTY WICKLOW 15 medieval texts, but they did not accept this kind of information uncritically and appraised it in the light of other types of evidence: O’Donovan dismissed the well-known legend of Kathleen linked to St. Kevin’s Bed as modern fabrication on the grounds that the event did not even occur at Glendalough according to the medieval Life of the saint, let alone in the way described.5 There is much to be said for looking again to this Ordnance Survey approach, which marked the beginnings of Irish archaeology at a time not only of fluid disciplinary boundaries, but also of critical assessment of the degree to which the conclusions reached from alternative sets of evidence—archaeological, historical, folkloric—supported or refuted one another.6 The Ordnance Survey’s recognition of the popular sanctity of bullaun stones, and their curative and hagiological associations, derived from several years of fieldwork in the north of Ireland and has been supported by subsequent observations across the island: the closely related themes of pilgrimage, cures and hagiology form the overwhelming bulk of folklore associated with bullaun stones, and recent traditions and practices suggestive of a practical or purely secular function are rare, inconsistent and arguably late. When we consider that some miraculous associations appear to go back at least as far as the eleventh or twelfth century, as can be inferred from probable references to bullauns in saints’ Lives and other medieval texts,7 we are presented with something that requires explanation, but in terms that are consistent with the evidence of archaeology. BULLAUN STONES AT GLENDALOUGH The early medieval monastic remains at Glendalough, perhaps the richest collection in Ireland, comprise two foci about 1km apart. At the west end of the valley, on the south-east side of the Upper Lake, was the Diseart Chaoimhghin of the saint’s Lives, remembered as the ‘Eeshert’ in 1904.8 The complex of remains here includes the churches of Reefert and Templenaskellig and associated terraces, St. Kevin’s Bed and Cell, the stone-walled enclosure known as the ‘Caher’ and, running north from Reefert, a row of stations marked by cairns and stone crosses on or close to the line of the ‘Pilgrims’ Road’ documented in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Running east along the north side of the valley from the northernmost of these stations was another stretch of pilgrim road named after St. Kevin, which led back to the impressive eastern group of monuments marking the location of the enclosed monastic city, and had a station-cairn with ornamented early medieval cross positioned midway. Among the famous buildings of the monastic city is the Priests’ House, located within the monastic cemetery and bearing comparison with other tomb-shrines marking the grave or relics of the founding saint. Although its Romanesque ornament indicates a twelfth-century date, the rectangular walled-off cemetery is clearly part of a planned complex including the early medieval Cathedral, round tower and at least two high crosses, and the location of the Priests’ House near the west end of the principal church resembles that of other types of early medieval tomb-shrine, indicating that it lies on the site of an earlier structure.9 Glendalough boasts a unique assemblage of forty-four bullaun stones, almost five times as many as on any other site, and striking when compared to the 85% of sites with only a single stone. 5 6 7 8 9 OSL Wicklow, MS pp. 436-8. Petrie’s aim, as advocated in 1834, was ‘to try the veracity of our historical traditions by our existing monumental remains’. G. Petrie, ‘An Essay on Military Architecture in Ireland Previous to the English Invasion’, PRIA 72 (1972), pp. 219-69 at 265. Price, ‘‘Bullauns', at Glendalough and Elsewhere’, p. 168; J.J. O’Meara (ed.), Gerard of Wales, The History and Topography of Ireland. London 1982, p. 80. This distinctly referred to the stretch of land between the two lakes, including Reefert but not Templenaskellig. Lord W. Fitz Gerald, ‘Place-Names at the Seven Churches, Glendalough, County Wicklow’, JRSAI 36 (1906), pp. 198-201 at 198. R. Ó Floinn, ‘The ‘Market Cross’ at Glendalough’, in C. Doherty, L. Doran and M. Kelly (eds), Glendalough, City of God. Dublin 2011, pp. 80-111 at 105-06; Fig. 5.12; M. Herity, ‘The forms of the tomb-shrine of the founder saint in Ireland’, in M. D. Spearman and J. Higgitt (eds), The Age of Migrating Ideas. Edinburgh 1993, pp. 188-95 at 194. 16 ORDNANCE SURVEY LETTERS COUNTY WICKLOW They are found in a wide range of locations on the monastic landscape, making it difficult to envisage a common purpose. And there is a striking imbalance in their distribution: forty-one are located close to the monastic city that forms the eastern focus in the valley, a lone example lies close to the Wicklow Gap road ‘about 400 yards’ to the north-west,10 and the remaining two form part of the western focus near Reefert. It is worth describing their context in more detail. The largest single group comprises some sixteen stones, including the ‘Seven Fonts’, all but one just north of the final leg of St. Kevin’s Road coming from over the Wicklow Gap, just before it enters the now obliterated market area located across the Glendasan River from the gateway to the monastery. At the southern edge of this group a further nine stones lie in and beside the Glendasan River, at least two in situ, between the stepping-stones marking the end of the Wicklow Gap togher and the curative rock-well known as St. Kevin’s Keeve, formerly the site of the saint’s tree and a locus for legends involving him. Several bullaun stones are located within the monastic city. A stone lies flush with the ground beside St. Kevin’s House. Six others were formerly stored inside this building, but their original location is undocumented.11 A stone built edgewise into the basal courses of the inner north-east corner of the Cathedral’s twelfth-century chancel, its basin on display, appears to have been in this location before the extensive repair-work carried out at the monastery from 1875 to 1880.12 Though clearly not in its original context, this stone can be paralleled in a worn-through bullaun stone recovered during excavations from beneath the foundation-plinth of a twelfth or early thirteenthcentury church in the monastic cashel at Moyne in Co. Mayo; and in another partly worn-through example incorporated in the base of the ruined round tower at Seirkieran in Offaly.13 In the twelfthcentury chancel of St. Mary’s Church, which is removed from the other monuments, a small bullaun stone has rested on a low, leacht-like altar since at least the early 1900s.14 Although it could have been placed here during the extensive nineteenth-century repairs, parallels from Clonmacnoise, Inchagoill and a few other sites suggest that its location is representative of a type.15 A further stone lies on the north bank of the Glenealo River near its confluence with the Glendasan, the curve of the two rivers forming a naturally defined outer vallum or boundary to the monastery on the east side. Four bullaun stones lie along the east-west running trackway known as the Green Road, apparently all on its south side, three including the Deer Stone just across the Glenealo River from the monastic city, and formerly connected to it by stepping-stones,16 the fourth at the west end of the valley near Reefert. Also at the west end, a bullaun stone has been found during the recent excavation of a heavily repaired or rebuilt cross-marked station-cairn, one of several on the line of the ‘Pilgrims’ Road’ recorded in the 1700s running north from Reefert across the valley.17 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Price, ‘‘Bullauns’ at Glendalough’, p. 163. R. Cochrane, Historical and Descriptive Notes with Ground Plans, Elevations, Sections and Details of the Ecclesiastical Remains at Glendalough, Co. Wicklow, vested in the Commissioners of Public Works (Revised edition). Dublin 1925, p. 42. Dr Colles, ‘Report on the present State of the Architectural and Monumental Remains at Glendalough, Co. Wicklow’, JRSAI 11 (1870-1), pp. 194-8 at 195. J. Higgins, Excavations at Moyne Graveyard, an Early Christian Ecclesiastical Site near Shrule, Co Mayo. Galway 1990, pp. 27-9, 66, Figs. 6, 10, 15, Pl. 10; Lalor, The Irish Round Tower. Cork 1999, 213, Pl. p. 212. Cochrane, Glendalough, p. 10. W.R. Wilde, Lough Corrib. Dublin 1867, p. 148; R.A.S. Macalister, The Memorial Slabs of Clonmacnois, King’s County: with an Appendix on the Materials for a History of the Monastery. Dublin 1909, p. 150. Another was 'raised up' on a ‘low stone platform stretching across the whole width of the chancel’ at east end of a ruined church on an early medieval monastic site in Ashtown or Ballinafunshoge near Roundwood. C. Corlett and M. Weaver, The Liam Price Notebooks. Dublin 2002, p. 203. Mr. and Mrs. S.C. Hall, Ireland: Its Scenery, Character, &c. London 1842, p. 218. G. Warren and C. McDermott, Excavations at the Upper Lake, Glendalough, Co. Wicklow. Glendalough Valley Archaeology Project Newsletter 2, UCD School of Archaeology, 2012. ORDNANCE SURVEY LETTERS COUNTY WICKLOW 17 At least three of the Glendalough bullauns have or had spheroidal stones in their basins, exemplifying a rare but widespread association.18 The ‘loaf stones’, similar stones kept in Reefert church around the turn of the nineteenth century but gone by O’Donovan’s time, were regarded as ‘sacred reliques’ and accounted for by a miracle-story concerning St. Kevin, which is also associated with St. Kevin’s Keeve just north of the monastic city.19 So, at Glendalough we have an impressive range of archaeological evidence for the early medieval church, including a large number of bullaun stones spread over a wide range of locations, variously associated with churches, station-cairns, roadways and rivers, some containing globular stones in their basins. There are grounds for suggesting that this set of archaeological evidence can be accounted for most economically in terms of the important pilgrimage known to have taken place at the site. RECONSTRUCTING TURAS CHAOIMHGHIN Suppressed by Cardinal Cullen in 1862 due to excesses, and all but dead by the 1870s, very little is known of the pattern held annually at Glendalough on St. Kevin’s Day (3rd June)—once the most important in Leinster—and what information we have is terse and fragmentary.20 Accounts of the rituals performed at a few stations, such as the saint’s Bed above the Upper Lake, and the rough locations of a few stations and stretches of pilgrim road, are all we have by way of specific information; there is no sense of the full range of stations that must have been dotted throughout the valley, or the order in which they were visited. The available historical sources indicate the important status of the monastery as a destination for pilgrims in early medieval times, but tell us little else. In AD 951 Ceannfaelagh, Abbot of Saighir in Offaly, died on pilgrimage to Glendalough, and others from Clonmacnoise and Clonard suffered the same fate in 1056 and 1122,21 but the nature of their pilgrimage exercises—the sites visited, the rituals performed, etc.—is completely unknown. Herity’s research in the north-west of Ireland suggests that as early as the sixth or seventh century, some monastic sites already exhibited key elements of the recently practiced turas, which in some instances was perhaps instituted at the death of the founder-saint.22 Artistically homogeneous cross-slabs fixed in proportionately harmonious leacht monuments, and often to all appearances in situ, are distributed across a well-defined landscape, often the perimeter of an island or valley, where they form stations in a pilgrimage that also includes a monastic site or sites and a holy well or other natural features. Given the wide variety of locations for these slabs, the simplest explanation is that their original function was closely similar to their modern one. The decorated crosses carved on them can be dated by art historical means to the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, indicating an early medieval origin for the turas. This simple but effective model suggests a way of interpreting bullaun stones, which also have an important place in recent pilgrimage tradition. In reconstructing a pilgrimage primarily from archaeological evidence there are some things we can safely assume on general folkloric grounds; in particular the notion of deiseal, righthandwise movement following the course of the sun, is fundamental in Irish and Scottish tradition and, though 18 19 20 21 22 Two of these were formerly in St. Kevin’s House; the third stone is that marked ‘j’ in Price’s 1959 paper. Cochrane, Glendalough, p. 42; Price, ‘‘Bullauns', at Glendalough and Elsewhere’, pp. 162-3. E. Ledwich, Antiquities of Ireland (2nd edition). Dublin 1804, pp. 175-6; OSL Wicklow, MS p. 511. Fitz Gerald, ‘Place-Names at the Seven Churches’, p. 199; W.H. Crawford, ‘The Patron, or Festival of St. Kevin at the Seven Churches, Glendalough, County Wicklow 1813’, Ulster Folklife 32 (1986), pp. 37-47 at 39. H.G. Leask, Glendalough, Co. Wicklow. Official Historical and Descriptive Guide. Dublin 1951, p. 6. M. Herity, ‘The Antiquity of an Turas (the Pilgrimage Round) in Ireland’, in Lehner, A. and Berschin, W. (eds.) Lateinische Kultur im VIII Jahrhundert, Traube-Gedenschrift. St Ottilien 1989, pp. 95-143; ‘Early Christian Decorated Slabs in Donegal: An Turas and the Tomb of the Founder Saint’, in Nolan, W., Ronayne, L. and Dunlevy, M. (eds.) Donegal, History and Society. Dublin 1995, pp. 25-50. 18 ORDNANCE SURVEY LETTERS COUNTY WICKLOW of fading importance in Europe, is firmly rooted at the opposite end of the Indo-European world.23 This principle is manifested at all levels of resolution in the rigidly choreographed movements and actions of pilgrims on the monastic landscape, whether turning prayer stones or passing them around the body, performing rounds at stations, or moving from station to station where, as is common in Ireland and beyond, the pilgrim completes a circuit. It gives us information on direction and allows the identification of a relative sequence of stations where the surviving station-monuments form a ring on the landscape. The Glendalough turas took place in well-defined glacial valley with the Lower Lake lying midway between the two principal monastic foci at east and west, and roads or tracks linking them to north and south of the lake; as such, there are natural grounds for supposing a circuit, backed up by a wide range of comparanda including Inishmurray, Inishcealtra and Glencolumbkille. The ‘Pilgrims’ Road’ running north from Reefert close to the east shore of the Upper Lake was marked by a line of heavily altered station-cairns with simple stone crosses. This would form the western arm of a narrow rectangular circuit over 3km in length, comparable in scale to the pilgrim circuits at Glencolumbkille and Inishmurray, with a south-western offshoot taking in St. Kevin’s Cell with its similar station-cross,24 his Bed and Chair above the Upper Lake, and the other important crossmarked stations of Diseart Chaoimhghin;25 and a south-eastern one taking in St. Kevin’s Well a few hundred metres east of the Deer Stone. The northern end of the ‘Pilgrims’ Road’ was marked by a high cross.26 Running east from this along the north side of the valley, back to the monastic city, was a pilgrim road known as St. Kevin’s Road, with an ornamented cross and leacht exactly midway along, the only station on this 1km stretch of road. The northern and western arms of this circuit, with their stations indicated, were mapped out for Burton Conyngham in the later eighteenth century and this map was copied for the Wicklow Letters (Fig. 65). The eastern arm of the circuit proposed here was formed by the monastic city and its stations, most notably the Romanesque Priests’ House and the earlier tomb-shrine/s it replaced. The earthfast bullaun beside St. Kevin’s House can be interpreted in the context of rounds. Its position just 2.5m from the north-west corner of the church is matched by earthfast bullauns close to the west end of early medieval churches at Inishmurray, Kilgobnet on Inisheer, and other sites; the Inishmurray church, Teampull na Bhfear, was circumambulated by pilgrims.27 A bullaun stone formerly lay beside the west door of St. Caimin’s Church on Inishcealtra, which was both circumambulated and entered by pilgrims in the turas documented in some detail by Thomas O’Conor in 1838.28 The stone deliberately built into the Cathedral in the twelfth century, closely paralleled at Moyne and Seirkieran and matched in the widespread reuse of cross-slabs and ogham stones by church builders, suggests sanctity by this stage, something that is supported by apparent references 23 24 25 26 27 28 The Hindu and Buddhist notion of pradaksina and its opposite prasavya, identical to the deiseal/tuathal polarity, governs the movement of pilgrims and exerts an influence on temple and shrine architecture. Encyclopædia Britannica (15th edition, 1977), Micropædia Vol. VIII, p. 173. Colles, ‘Report on … Glendalough’, p. 198. L. Harney, ‘Medieval burial and pilgrimage within the landscape of Glendalough: the evidence of the crosses and cross-slabs’, in Doherty, Doran and Kelly, Glendalough, City of God, p. 134. This cross appears to have been moved during improvements to the car-park near the Upper Lake; when Price saw it in its previous location, it seems to have been directly across the Glenealo from the northernmost station-cairn on the ‘Pilgrims’ Road’, and he saw abutments for a bridge formerly linking them. Corlett and Weaver, Liam Price Notebooks, pp. 459-60. J. O’Sullivan and T. Ó Carragáin, Inishmurray, Monks and Pilgrims in an Atlantic Landscape, Volume 1: Archaeological Survey and Excavations 1997-2000. Cork 2008, p. 87; J. Waddell, ‘The Archaeology of the Aran Islands’, in J. Waddell, J.W. O’Connell and A. Korff (eds) The Book of Aran. Kinvara 1994, pp. 75-135 at 130; Herity, ‘Antiquity of an Turas’, p. 116. R.A.S. Macalister, ‘The History and Antiquities of Inis Cealtra’, PRIA 33 (1916-17), pp. 93-174 at 143; Herity, Ordnance Survey Letters Galway, p. 301. ORDNANCE SURVEY LETTERS COUNTY WICKLOW 19 to miraculous bullaun stones in the contemporary saints’ Lives and other texts.29 This stone is therefore consistent with the pilgrimage model proposed here. The stone resting on a leacht-like altar in the twelfth-century chancel of St. Mary’s Church, while its context is evidently late, perhaps post-dating the destruction of the church, is nonetheless matched by others on or beside drybuilt altars in churches of similar date at Inchagoill, Ashtown or Ballinafunshoge and elsewhere, suggesting that the altars marked stations in the late medieval or afterwards; and a bullaun stone formerly lay in the twelfth-century Nuns Church at Clonmacnoise, at the foot of an altar known to have marked a station in St. Ciaran’s turas as recently performed.30 The ‘Green Road’ is not named after St. Kevin or remembered as a pilgrimage road, but runs along the south side of the valley between the eastern and western foci, connecting St. Kevin’s Well and the Deer Stone with the monuments at Diseart Chaoimhghin over 1km to west. With three additional bullaun stones along it at both ends, this road can be taken as the southern arm of the circuit proposed here. Finally, the presence of bullaun stones in and beside the Glendasan and Glenealo Rivers need not be as perplexing as it first appears. Sir William Wilde, who regularly attended the Glendalough pattern as a child, remembered the morning ritual on St. Kevin’s Day: As soon as daylight dawned, the tumbling torrent over the rocks and stones of the Glendasan river to the north of “The Churches” became crowded with penitents wading, walking, and kneeling up [to] St. Kevin’s Keeve, many of them holding little children in their arms.31 That such penitential activities are not recent developments in Irish popular religion is evident from Friar Clyn’s 1348 account of the pilgrimage to St. Mullins in Carlow, in which he records that pilgrims fearful of the Black Death waded in a stream, a practice that continued up to the nineteenth century and was explicitly undertaken in imitation of this important monastery’s founder-saint.32 No bullaun has been documented upstream of St. Kevin’s Keeve, all falling between here and the stepping-stones marking the terminus of St. Kevin’s Road a few hundred metres to the south east. That one of these bullaun stones, apparently in situ, actually forms the bed of this turbulent stream, shows the severity of the penitential exercises undertaken by dedicated pilgrims—a striking contrast to the intemperance and faction-fighting emphasised by unsympathetic observers. At the west end of the valley the nocturnal station marked by St. Kevin’s Bed, in sheer cliffs above the Upper Lake, was not merely arduous but potentially fatal, bearing comparison in this regard with the treacherous South Peak station on Skellig Michael.33 The spheroidal stones in a few of the Glendalough basins, paralleled in other Irish and Scottish bullauns, are also consistent with a pilgrimage model. These are analogous to the prayer- and cursingstones typified by the Clocha Breaca on Inishmurray,34 of which many are carved with crosses of 29 30 31 32 33 34 Price, ‘‘Bullauns’ at Glendalough’, p. 168; J.J. O’Meara (ed.), Gerard of Wales, The History and Topography of Ireland. London 1982, p. 80. Macalister, Memorial Slabs of Clonmacnois, p. 150; P. Logan, The Holy Wells of Ireland. Gerrards Cross 1980, pp. 23-4. W.R. Wilde, ‘Memoir of Gabriel Beranger, and his Labours in the Cause of Irish Art, Literature, and Antiquities from 1760 to 1780, with Illustrations’, JRSAI 12 (1872-3), 445-85 at p. 449; G. Lynch, ‘The Holy Wells of County Wicklow: Traditions and Legends’, in K. Hannigan and W. Nolan (eds), Wicklow, History and Society. Dublin 1994, pp. 625-48 at 638; Around the turn of the nineteenth century Ledwich noted that sick children were dipped in the Keeve ‘every Sunday and Thursday before sun-rise, and on St. Kevin’s Day’. Ledwich, Antiquities, p. 173. B. Williams (ed.), The Annals of Ireland by Friar John Clyn. Dublin 2007, p. 246; Logan, Holy Wells of Ireland, pp. 27-8, 35, 52, 69. Hall and Hall, Ireland, p. 227. According to Ledwich, ‘Nothing … can be more frightful than a pilgrimage to the bed, and Teampall na Skellig church’. Antiquities, p. 178. For the South Peak station, see C. Smith 1756, pp. 114-116. M. Herity, ‘The Chi-rho and other early cross-forms in Ireland’, in Picard, J-M. (ed.) Aquitaine and Ireland in the Middle Ages. Dublin 1995, pp. 233-60 at 236-8. 20 ORDNANCE SURVEY LETTERS COUNTY WICKLOW indisputably early medieval date. It can be inferred from the smooth profiles and broad size-range of bullauns, ranging from shallow scoops to deep bowls, that they were ground out gradually using rounded grinders. Some stones were even turned over and a second basin started, eventually bursting through to give an hourglass-profile; in others the steep side of the basin close to the person grinding was breached, giving a characteristic V-notch on the face of the stone. A small few bullaun stones in Ireland and western Scotland had prayer- and cursing-stones turned in their basins by recent pilgrims as part of their rounds,35 implying that a proportion of bullauns continued to be used after the early medieval centuries. On the basis of the above a schematic reconstruction of Turas Chaoimhghin can be offered here: pilgrims arriving from over the Wicklow Gap encountered numerous bullauns on the final stretch of St. Kevin’s Road, before they entered the marketplace and then crossed the Glendasan River to the monastic city. An important dawn ritual involved pilgrims moving a few hundred metres upstream from the crossing to St. Kevin’s Keeve and Tree, encountering bullauns in and beside the river. Presumably they would return and enter the monastic city; an earthfast bullaun lying less than 100m south of the Keeve, and another built into a nearby wall, may have had a place in this preliminary micro-turas. The enshrined founder-saint’s relics were the most important object for pilgrims at monastic pilgrimage sites, and on sites in the north-west of Ireland repeatedly formed the first and last station of the turas.36 As such we can suggest that on entering the monastic gateway, pilgrims proceeded immediately to Kevin’s tomb-shrine, probably the Priests’ House and its early medieval precursors, where the saint’s relics would have been seen or touched, and some ritual imitative of the saint’s actions, such as lying in his ‘bed’, would have taken place. Among the other stations visited in the monastic city was St. Kevin’s House, with a bullaun beside it, and St. Mary’s Church, with a bullaun on a leacht in the chancel. The pilgrim then crossed the Glenealo River via stepping-stones and immediately encountered the Deer Stone, where rounds were performed. St. Kevin’s Well along the Green Road to the east then provided an important detour, after which they returned west along the Green Road, passing the Deer Stone and two other bullaun stones on their lucky righthand side as they progressed deiseal along the south side of the valley as far as Diseart Chaoimhghin, where another bullaun stone appears to have been encountered on the righthand side near the modern nature exhibition centre.37 The cross-marked stations around Reefert and as far west as Templenaskellig would then have been visited, forming a linear detour from the circuit proposed here, before the pilgrim headed north across the valley on the ‘Pilgrims’ Road’ with its own line of cross-marked station-cairns, one with a small bullaun stone, and, after crossing the Glenealo River and turning east onto St. Kevin’s Road, travelled back as far as the monastic city and the saint’s tomb-shrine, encountering a single station-cairn with carved cross midway along this long stretch of pilgrim road. It is a striking feature of the Glendalough bullauns that all but three stones are found close to the east end of the valley, in the vicinity of the monastic city, although the recent discovery of one of the two stones in the western focus during excavation of a station-cairn may indicate that others lie hidden in similar contexts. Comparative evidence may help account for this pattern: on the basis of art historical dating, Herity observes that the small slabs associated with the tight cluster of stations around the site of a hermitage at the west end of Glencolumbkille in Donegal, including the saint’s 35 36 37 Among these are St. Brigid’s Stone at Termon in Cavan, St. Feaghna’s Stone at Garranes in Kerry, several bullauns around St. Patrick’s Well at Rushin in Fermanagh, and a few sites in western Scotland including Iona. An early medieval cross-carved example has recently been found associated with a bullaun stone on the Irish-style island monastery of Canna. E. Cowing, ‘Rare Canna stone’s a blessing and a curse’, Scotland on Sunday, 20th May 2012. Herity, ‘Antiquity of an Turas’, p. 120. C. B. Rooke, Bullán Stone at Glendalough, Co. Wicklow, JRSAI 68 (1938), 151-2. ORDNANCE SURVEY LETTERS COUNTY WICKLOW 21 bed and well, are of a simpler character to the artistically homogeneous group of tall slabs more loosely distributed around the remainder of the valley farther to the east, which take in a second monastic site that includes the first and final station. These slabs, which Herity places at around AD 700, were in his view erected to expand the original compact turas established soon after the death of the saint into a circuit of the valley over 3km in length. An analogous sequence can be established on Inishmurray, where the expanded turas took in the shore of the island. The circuit of the Glendalough valley proposed here is of a similar length to those in the north-west and incorporates Diseart Chaoimhghin at the west end of the valley and the later monastic city to the east. Several pieces of evidence indicate a somewhat later date for an extension to the Glendalough turas. Under AD 790 the Annals of Ulster record a comotatio of the relics of St. Kevin, which Smyth suggests might be either a translation of the relics from the founder’s tomb to a new shrine, paralleled at this time at Clonard and Kildare, or the taking of this shrine on a tour of other monasteries in the Glendalough paruchia.38 That this date might be associated with an expansion of the turas to incorporate both the west and east ends of the valley is suggested by the high cross forming the north-west corner of the loop, where the pilgrims’ road running north from the Green Road crosses the Glenealo and then runs east back to the monastic gateway. This cross is one of a group sharing skeuomorphic features indicative of timber prototypes, and probably dates to the late 8th or early 9th century—a date consistent with some recent suggestions for the date of the Latin Life,39 and one that Françoise Henry, drawing on Price’s work, also suggested for the foundation of the monastic city, all of which would provide a context for the expansion of the turas.40 BEYOND GLENDALOUGH With up to 160 examples known, Wicklow is substantially richer in bullaun stones than any other county, and a significant number of these appear to lie on sites or land formerly owned by St. Kevin’s monastery.41 There are grounds for connecting at least some of these to the famous Glendalough pilgrimage, which must have drawn people from a wide area if the annalistic references are anything to go by. The valley was fed by a network of pilgrim roads coming from the west, north, and east, each named after St. Kevin, the most fully investigated of which is the well-known medieval paved togher coming over the Wicklow Gap, with a large group of bullauns on the final stretch.42 Bullauns are found close to the less well-known west end of this road, at the early church site of Dunboyke and close to St. Kevin’s Well in Hollywood. Liam Price’s meticulous investigations of local traditions, placenames and archaeological remains documented two other roads coming from the north and east. A short stretch of the northern one, running roughly north-south, lay in Drummin townland about 5.5km north-east of Glendalough,43 where no fewer than ten otherwise isolated bullaun stones are found, most along an east-west running stream crossing the path of the pilgrim road but at least one stone on or close to its line. A lone bullaun stone on the side of Paddock Hill, recorded by Price as the site of ‘Killalane’, might as he suggests mark the continuation of this road to the south of 38 39 40 41 42 43 A.P. Smyth, ‘Kings, Saints and Sagas’, in K. Hannigan and W. Nolan (eds), Wicklow, History and Society. Dublin 1994, pp. 41-111 at p. 54. A. MacShamhráin, Uí Máil and Glendalough, in Doherty, Doran and Kelly, Glendalough, City of God, pp. 183-210 at 188. D. Kelly, ‘The Heart of the Matter: Models for Irish High Crosses’, JRSAI 121 (1991), pp. 105-45 at 109-11, 142-3; F. Henry, Irish Art during the Viking Invasions (800-1020 A.D.). London 1967, p. 45; L. Price, ‘Glendalough: St. Kevin’s Road’, in J. Ryan (ed.) Essays and Studies presented to Professor Eoin MacNeill (Feilsgribhin Eoin Mhic Neill). Dublin, 1940, pp. 244-71 at 266-71. Price, ‘‘Bullauns’ at Glendalough’, pp. 163-4, 184. L. Price, ‘Glendalough: St. Kevin’s Road’; P. Harbison, Pilgrimage in Ireland. London 1991, pp. 141-4. Corlett and Weaver, Liam Price Notebooks, p. 426. 22 ORDNANCE SURVEY LETTERS COUNTY WICKLOW Fig. a: Conjectural routeway of turas at Glendalough (the route of the turas is shown as a broken line in grey). Drummin, before the descent to Laragh and Glendalough.44 North of Drummin Price established that the road crossed the Avonmore near Oldbridge and continued into Baltynanima, where there are other isolated bullaun stones, one of them less than 500m north of the road.45 Price found possible traces of an old road running past one of these stones towards Derrylossary (c. 800m to south-east), an early medieval monastic site in the same parish as Glendalough, on or close to which were as many as nine bullaun stones.46 Further bullauns at Carrigeenshinnagh and Cloghoge and a tradition linking St. Kevin to the Luggala valley47 may indicate that a branch of the road through Drummin continued as far north as Lough Tay. The eastern road, of which a stretch between Laragh to Castlekevin is marked ‘Road to the 7 Churches’ on an estate map of 1817, was remembered as St. Kevin’s Road farther east. This road is best documented near its west end, where it ran close to an isolated bullaun stone at Trooperstown and, about 3.5km east of Glendalough, crossed the Avonmore river via stepping-stones. Two bullaun stones lie close to the crossing-point, the sole relics of St. Aifin’s church of Killafeen, documented in the Irish Lives as a place frequented by St. Kevin and the location for a legend in which a group of harpers have their instruments turned to stepping-stones (clochrán) by the saint, which O’Donovan 44 45 46 47 48 Price, ‘‘Bullauns’ at Glendalough’, pp. 184-5. Corlett and Weaver, Liam Price Notebooks, p. 414-15, 426, 428, 437. L. Price and E. M. Stephens, ‘“Bullaun” Stones near Derrylossary Church, Co. Wicklow,’ JRSAI 78 (1948), 179-81. Price, ‘‘Bullauns’ at Glendalough’, p. 185. OSL Wicklow, MS pp. 483-4; L. Price, The Place-Names of Co. Wicklow, I—The Barony of Ballinacor North. Dublin, 1945, p. 36; ‘‘Bullauns’ at Glendalough’, pp. 163, 184; P. Ó Riain, A Dictionary of Irish Saints. Dublin 2011, p. 57. ORDNANCE SURVEY LETTERS COUNTY WICKLOW 23 mistakenly associates with Our Lady’s Church.48 A shallow bullaun appears to be carved in one of these stepping-stones. More arduous routes from the west are indicated by an upright early medieval cross-slab at Tonelagee, on a bare mountaintop (780m OD) north of the Wicklow Gap togher; and by an eighteenth-century tradition that the Passage-tomb cairn on Church Mountain (544m OD), an important Lughnasa assembly place, was ransacked in the twelfth century to build the church that was erected on its ruins, and to form a roadway over the mountain from Old Kilcullen to Glendalough, only the paved togher east of the Wicklow Gap being completed; the few remaining architectural fragments from the church support the date specified by this tradition.49 Oral tradition collected by the writer documents a road along which St. Kevin is reputed to have travelled, running past an otherwise isolated cluster of six bullaun stones beside a stream forming the border of Knickeen and Brittas townlands in the Glen of Imaal, one of which was known as ‘the holy stone’.50 This road headed roughly east towards Glendalough, a distance of 13km across difficult mountain terrain, suggesting a heroic turas like the upland section of the 24km Turas Conaill between Inishkeel and Glencolumbkille in south-west Donegal, along which pilgrims explicitly followed the footsteps of St. Conall. One or other of these severe upland routes to Glendalough may relate to the story from the vernacular Metrical Life in which Kevin ‘crossed the summits guided by an angel’, unconvincingly taken by Price to refer to the route of the Wicklow Gap togher.51 An additional group of three bullaun stones farther west at the mouth of the Glen of Imaal, in Kelshamore, could represent stations on the same road. These bullaun stones were first recognised as a type by the Ordnance Survey, whose field-staff regularly recorded their presence on early medieval church sites and their association with saints, cures and pilgrimage. Their interpretation in the light of a pilgrimage model derived from sites in the west of Ireland, which draws on archaeology, folk tradition and historical sources, would seem to be a fruitful approach. With up to 1330 examples known from across Ireland they are potentially an important means of understanding this important facet of early Irish Christianity.52 49 50 51 52 C. Manning, ‘A cross-inscribed pillar stone on Tonelagee Mountain, Co. Wicklow’, Wicklow Archaeology and History 1 (1998), 26-8; ‘Church Mountain, Co. Wicklow’, Wicklow Archaeology and History 2 (2002), 61-8. Price, ‘‘Bullauns’ at Glendalough’, p. 165. L. Barrow, Glendalough and Saint Kevin. Dundalk 1984, p. 10. This paper is based on aspects of the author’s 2006 doctoral thesis in the School of Archaeology, UCD: Irish Rock-Basins or ‘Bullaun Stones’: Contributions Towards Understanding an Enigmatic Field Monument of the Early Christian Period (3 vols). I wish to thank my supervisors Dr Dorothy Kelly and Prof. Muiris O’Sullivan. This study owes much to the work of Professor Michael Herity, who identified a set of principles governing the static layout of early Irish monasteries and hermitages, and their dynamic function as settings for the annual pilgrim turas. 24 ORDNANCE SURVEY LETTERS COUNTY WICKLOW Fig. b: Site plan of Glendalough, showing numbered bullaun stones and rivers.