Ditches and Stitches – the Cape Clear Book!

Diarmuid Ó Drisceoil is a well known historian, writer, TV presenter and story-teller. He is also a fellow graduate of Prof O’Kelly’s at UCC, in archaeology. I’ve known about his work for a long time although I only finally met him for the first time a few years ago. I subsequently followed his journey down the Blackwater River – there he was, in a canoe, guiding us down this storied river, all of it as Gaeilge. The photo above is courtesy of The Irish Examiner

He has just written what for me will become a definitive work on Cape Clear Island – Blúirí Oileánda (pronounced approx blue-ree ill-awn-de), or Island Pieces. And it’s in both languages! This is actually very rare. I am trying to improve my Irish all the time and for anyone trying to do that, a book like this is gold. I read a piece in English and then I go back and read it in Irish. I study the phraseology (so different from English!) and the vocabulary. 

But that’s only one small part of what makes this book such a treasure. Diarmuid’s roots go deep in Cape Clear. He has a house there and spends lots of time in it so he knows it to his bones. (The photo below is in case you are in any doubt that Ó Drisceoil is a common name on Cape Clear.)

But because he is also an historian and archaeologist he notices things. The spade used for digging potatoes. The way the bracken is encroaching on areas once grazed and clear. What the contents of the catch-all drawer (we all have them) tell us about the activities and needs of the household- simple repairs, basic carpentry, plumbing, painting and aimless collecting. That last one – guilty!


He also talks about the history and the archaeology of the island, including a piece about the Cape Clear Stone, and he acknowledges our blog post about this, The Stone that Moved, written way back in 2016 when Robert and I spent a few days on Cape Clear to celebrate my birthday. That’s the O’Kelly drawing of the Cape Clear stone, below.

I am going to highlight only two of his Blúirí and that’s what give my post its heading. The first is about the stone walls that crisscross the landscape on Cape Clear, known locally as as ditches. Some of them are likely to be very old, possibly prehistoric, like the one below. The photographs are my own, taken on Cape Clear – but Diarmuid’s are much better, clearly illustrating his points about the walls.

As Diarmuid puts it the style of the construction reflects the purpose of the ditch, the nature of the available stone, and the skill and artistry of the builders. Some are notional – you can step over them or knock them down, while others are thick and tall and would be difficult to breach for man or beast.

For Diarmuid the ditches represent millions of hours and days of work by nameless people, now forgotten, whose only memorial is those ditches, often unnoticed, and now not always maintained or repaired.

The second piece I want to highlight is about the Geansaí Chléire, the Cape Clear ‘Gansey’, which is the traditional name for a fisherman’s jersey. Most of us are familiar with the Aran sweater, traditionally worn by the fisherman of the Aran Islands, but few have heard of the Cape Clear gansey.

Incredibly, the one Diarmuid illustrates (above) is over 100 years old. It was knitted in Cape Clear around 1920. The man for whom it was knitted Timothy (Tade) O’Drisceoil, emigrated to the USA in 1924. In 1973 he returned it to his elderly mother, still living on the island. He had kept it in America all those years in perfect condition. Diarmuid also preserved it – Tade was his uncle. In the photo below, the knitter, Catherine Cadogan (right) is with her brother, Donnchadh, also wearing a Geansaí Chléire.

Knitters get very excited about this kind of thing and some experts have gone about ‘reverse engineering’ the gansey to figure out how it was knitted (in the round, as one single piece using very thin needles and very fine yarn). Here’s a whole video exploring that process, featuring Diarmuid himself and expert knitters. The technicalities of knitting something like this will leave you gasping.

That’s only two small samples from this delightful book. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in an informed and local eye on Cape Clear. Or indeed anyone who wants the experience of reading in both languages. You can buy it in all good Cork bookshops but also direct from Diarmuid at https://capeclearbook.ie/. 

Whittlin’ Away The Afternoon

Doesn’t that sound like the perfect way to spend a sunny afternoon – with congenial company, lovely bits of wood, and a sharp knife?

I took a workshop today – it was another one of the offerings from Kilcoe Studios. I have written about Sonia Caldwell and her Kilcoe Studios before – if it has heritage craft connections, in or around Ballydehob, you can be sure Sonia was involved.  

Our teacher was Tadhg Breathnach-Peelo, a man of many talents , including professional musician and accomplished whittler. There’s a real difference between whittling and wood carving, although they overlap, of course. Mainly, once the piece of wood you are going to work on is roughed out, you whittle with a knife – no chisels, planes or gouges.

Tadhg had brought in some hunks of a sycamore tree that someone had cut recently. Although sycamore isn’t a native Irish species, it has naturalised here now for several centuries and is perfect for whittling because it’s easily available, has a lovely colour, is tight-grained and food-safe. I am not kidding when I say that we started with a hunk of wood. Tadhg showed us how he saws it into manageable pieces (with a hand saw!) and from there he splits the log into manageable chunks – often complete with unmanageable knots.

The next step was to cut that down again to produce a “billet,” the term for a piece of wood split (rather than sawn) from a log along the grain. Splitting along the grain rather than sawing across it keeps the fibres intact and continuous along the length of the piece, which makes for a stronger and easier-to-carve blank than a sawn one.

In no time he had worked that billet down into a “blank” – the very rough shape of what we would produce – in this case, a butter spreader. He had used his wood-working axe to this point.

Switching to a knife, he showed us how to hold it safely and what whittling techniques to use for thinning and shaping the blanks.

We got to work and every now and then Tadhg would stop us and describe how best to do the next step in the process. Very little blood was shed. Concentration was so complete that there were periods of complete silence in the room – I think that’s called a flow state. At any rate, even at this beginner level, I began to understand the total absorption that led Tadhg to become, as he told us, addicted to the skill and art of whittling. When I stopped for a break after an hour or so, I was surprised to find that I couldn’t uncurl my fingers without an effort.

Using the tip of the knife to peel off those tiny shavings of wood around the point of the spreader, and the larger curls that come from more vigorous slicing action, led to appreciation of how to work with and against the grain, how and when to press harder and to ease off. 

Above, left to right, Tadgh’s, mine, a blank and one he made before. Of course, none of us produced a masterpiece, but all of us got a butter spreader that we were proud of. I will be nonchalantly including mine in every dinner party I give – oh, that old thing, I made it myself…

Whittling is something I associated with Burl Ives types, sitting in the swing chair on the front porch. Now I know it as a craft and a skill that is probably as old as time, that is the work of artisans, that produces pieces that are honest rather than refined, full of character and made by the hand, the eye and the heart.

Look out for Tadhg at the Skibbereen market on Saturdays.

Templebryan – complex and compelling

One of the most fascinating archaeological sites in West Cork is Templebryan, close to Shannonvale, a complex that includes a multiple stone circle and an early ecclesiastical site with a large pillar stone that may be contemporary with either of those sites. The location was likely a focus of activity from the Bronze Age to the present day.

Before we explore the site itself, and because I haven’t written this kind of post for a while, you might like to (re)familiarise yourself with both stone circles and ecclesiastical sites.  For the stone circles, go to Stone Circles of West Cork: an Introduction. At the bottom of the post under ‘Related” you will find links to the other three posts (Multiple Stone Circles, Five-Stone Circles and the Discussion). There are very few of the Templebryan type of ecclesiastical sites in West Cork but one I have written about is at Croagh Cove – it will give you an excellent idea of this type of site. I am inserting here one of the illustrations from that post. 

Since it’s the older, let’s start with the stone circle. This is a multiple stone circle. Although only 5 stones remain (one fallen), there were originally 9 stones in the circle. What’s unusual about this circle is the presence of a near-centrally placed quartz boulder. There are several other stone circles with such internal monoliths and all seem to be deliberately off-centre.

The other feature that’s noticeable here is that most of the stones still standing have flat tops – that seems to be a deliberate choice and can be observed in some other stone circles too.

The probable alignment is, like Drombeg, to the winter solstice. However, Mike Wilson in his Mega-What site, also traces lunar alignments. 

Outliers – standing stones close to or at some distance from the circle, are an accepted feature of some stone circles, and some antiquarians have posited that the pillar stone in the ecclesiastical enclosure may have been one of them, later adapted and christianised for use by the monks. Since it has not been excavated we cannot know if this is so. The late great Jack Roberts thought it was possible – here is one of his marvellous illustrations of the various things to be found at Templebryan.

Templebryan was of great interest to antiquarians and Marian O’Leary, in a wonderful essay in the Clonakilty Journal, has looked at their often fantastical renderings of the stone circle. This is one of her illustrations, dating from 1742!

The ecclesiastical site is located a field over to the northwest. We don’t have  a secure date, but it fits the pattern of such foundations from the early medieval period with a likely date between the 600s to the 900s. 

The aerial photos and the maps confirm that the central church was a rectangular building and it sat within a circular enclosure which now forms the field boundary.

These early sites often had an outer circular boundary as well, and traces of this can be found still – I had a close look at the aerial photo and my arrows (above) point to where the line of the outer circle might be. But that’s mostly speculation, or perhaps wishful thinking on my part – what do you think?

The Nendrum site shown in the Croagh Cove post is a good example of this outer and inner enclosure pattern for early Irish monastic foundations. Above is an illustration of what that might have looked like, taken from the information board at Nendrum, which we visited in 2022.

The ogham stone and a bullaun stone lie inside the enclosure. Bullaun stones are commonly found at ecclesiastical sites – abbeys, monasteries, old churches. Although they may be far older and have been used in some kind of food processing (such as grinding acorns) it seems that their obvious affinity to fonts has caused them to be brought to religious sites over the centuries. Read Robert’s post The Enigmatic Bullaun for the variety of beliefs (from blessings to cursings) that have accrued to bullaun stones.

The ogham stone is a tall pointed pillar and it has both an inscribed cross and ogham writing on it. However, it is impossible to make them out. The only mark I saw that looked like a cross was this one. Not very convincing. 

And the ogham is just as hard to see. According to the National Monuments listing it was read by Macalister in 1945 as ANM TENAS MACI V. While Macalister was a giant in the field of ogham research, he has been criticised for erroneous readings. If he was correct this would read (pray for?) The soul of Tenas, son of V. 

There are two souterrains in the enclosure, neither of which are accessible now. One of them was investigated in 1974 and consisted of three earth-cut chambers joined by creepways. 

Finally, we have a holy well. And of course I have visited it in the company of Ms Holy Wells herself, Amanda Clarke.

See her account of the well and our visit here. In it she refers to frisky horses and she wasn’t kidding. 

The same horse later showed us how useful he found the ogham stone for those much-needed scratches. Heaven!

Templebryan is a great site if you get a chance to visit. Just please be aware that the ecclesiastical part it is on private land and it is always proper to knock in the farmhouse door and ask for permission. The stone circle is accessible from the road.

All the Saints

We have over 40 posts about Irish Saints (despite being very unsaintly ourselves). That’s because Irish saints are so much part of the Irish culture. Two of our national holidays are for Irish saints (Patrick on March 17 and Brigid on Feb 1 or closest Monday), many of our place names come from Saints (anything starting in Kill or Cill, for example), and many of us are named for Irish saints (you know who you are). Above is a window labelled the Vision of St Ita, and our header image is Dympna.

So I have put together a new Page. Our Pages (find them by clicking on the little three-bar icon in the header) act as sub-menus so that you can more easily navigate content, since we have almost 1200 posts.

Take a look at the new page, and while you’re at it, have a browse. You might want to read, if you haven’t already, my two favourites: The Patron Saint of Atheists? and St Brandanus: A 14th-Century Graphic Novel (it’s a three-parter). Or perhaps you share a name with one of our saints and want to see what they’ve been up to.

The Irish saints we write about (except for one) predate the Vatican’s formal canonisation process — they became saints by local acclamation and long tradition rather than papal decree. Of the four Irish saints officially canonised by Rome – Malachy, Lawrence O’Toole, Oliver Plunkett (above), and Charles of Mount Argus* (no, I had never heard of him either) – only Oliver Plunkett features among our posts. The 19th-century revival of interest in early Irish texts brought many of these saints back into wider knowledge. See The White Hound of Brigown (that’s him below) for example, for the wonderful translations and language of Whitley Stokes, one of the great scholars of early Irish literature.

Finally, if you have a more than passing interest in Irish saints I highly recommend the blog Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae AKA All the Saints of Ireland, or its sister site https://triasthaumaturga.blogspot.com/ AKA The Three Wonderworking Patrons of Ireland. They are both by my friend Marcella. What she doesn’t know about Irish saints isn’t worth knowing.

Kudos to anyone who can name the two saints in the image above and tell us what the younger one is holding.

*A correspondent has informed me that St Charles of Mount Argus is the patron saint of the Gardaí – the Irish police force.

Thomas Denny in Ireland

I have spent most of this week at a symposium in Trinity College on Stained Glass, and there we received the good news that soon there will be another Thomas Denny window in Ireland. Way back in 2018 I wrote about Ireland’s Newest Stained Glass Window. I have updated and edited that post, and it follows this introduction. It’s a story that reaches into the heart of Irish History and the turbulent chronicles of the town of Tralee in Kerry.

Tralee’s Reconciliation window is no longer Ireland’s newest, although it remains for now the only Irish window by Thomas Denny, the most celebrated stained glass artist working in Britain today. Besides this blog post, I also wrote about this window for the Irish Arts Review, and for the 2023 edition of Glory, Azure and Gold: The Stained-Glass Windows of Thomas Denny.

The rest of this post is a lightly edited version of my 2018 piece.

It isn’t often that new stained glass windows are installed in Irish churches. In fact, depressingly, many churches fall into disrepair from lack of use and the windows break (or are broken). Nowadays we are more likely to be losing stained glass than gaining it. So it’s a huge cause for celebration when a community commissions a new piece. Hats off to Tralee!

The Garden of Eden or an image of reconciliation: one of the window details

This window is out of the ordinary in many ways. Let’s start with who commissioned it, which leads us on to the theme. Although it’s installed in the Catholic church, it was a joint initiative of the Catholic and Church of Ireland congregations. There may be other windows that can claim that distinction, but I don’t know of them. Here is the complete window.

The theme is Reconciliation, and the central figure is the return of the prodigal son. The right panel is of Jesus reading from the Book of Isaiah and the left is of John the Baptist, patron saint of the church.

The father embraces his prodigal son

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is a natural choice to illustrate reconciliation, with the father embracing the son who has squandered his inheritance but returns home, contrite, to his family. Instead of punishing him (as his brother resentfully feels the father should do) his father embraces him, orders that the fatted calf be slain for a feast, and says, It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.

Jesus Reading from Isaiah is perhaps at one remove from a direct reference to reconciliation. It happened in Nazareth, his old home town, and he read at the behest of the elders. The passage is a beautiful one and points to ideas of love and healing, and perhaps to the real purpose of Christianity, no matter the denomination: he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.

St John is the patron saint of the church 

Possibly my favourite image is that of John. Usually, he is shown in the act of baptising Jesus, but here he is, the ascetic in his coat of camel hair, very much as he described himself, as a voice crying in the wilderness.

A myriad of tiny images fills the panels – figures holding hands (reconciliation), swallows (hope of spring, renewal), Tralee Bay, figures from Tralee history. . . there are even tiny names engraved where it is impossible to see them. Take a look at this video, where Thomas Denny shows us some of those names.

Thomas Denny? Yes – he’s the artist but the significance of that goes beyond the fact that he is one of Britain’s most eminent and respected stained glass artists, responsible for numerous windows in British churches. A browse of his website reveals the breadth and depth of his skill and the uniqueness of his style. The Tralee windows are typical – blazing with colour, filled with large and small figures and scenes that reveal themselves upon close inspection, rich and intricate, thoughtfully composed to draw the viewer into the subject of the panels.

Tralee Bay

You see, the Dennys came to Tralee as part of a British military expedition in the 1500s and the name is inextricably linked with the North Kerry area. Sir Edward Denny (1547 to 1599) was one of the architects and enforcers of the Plantation of Munster, and was rewarded with lands taken from the Earl of Desmond including Tralee Castle, a knighthood and the title of Governor of Kerry. Thomas is a direct descendent. 

Sir Edward Denny. Image used with the permission of the Victoria and Albert Museum

The Dennys stayed in Ireland for hundreds of years, branching out and enlarging their holdings. Eventually, along with many members of the Anglo-Irish landlord class, they lost their lands. In the case of Thomas’s grandfather, although he was a baronet he was also a clergyman, living the life of an impoverished cleric dedicated to his church. The move to England was related to his church service. In Ireland, such a history as this is a complicated legacy, and Thomas was eager to be part of the whole idea of a reconciliation window, donating his services to the project. Over twenty members of the Denny family came for the unveiling. This adds a rich and poignant dimension to the purpose of the window – reconciling the past with the present, and looking to the future. 

The father runs out to meet his returning son

Oh – and Thomas Denny’s soon-to-be newest window in Ireland? It’s going into St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, hopefully next spring.

Searching for Shapes: Shane O’Driscoll

I bought a Shane O’Driscoll rug!

Shane O’Driscoll is an Irish artist/designer. Ceadogán Rugs is based in Wexford and makes wonderful carpets and rugs using Irish designers. Take a look at their site – search by designer and you will see Shane and his rugs. Mine is the Swisha – I know now that it’s probably named for a piece of music. Above is a test piece for Swisha that ended up in Shane’s house. Look at that view!

Shane also happens to be my neighbour – well, close enough, just the other side of Mount Gabriel. He exhibits from time to time in the Blue House Gallery in Schull and I had met him there a couple of times: a man with a laid-back surfer-dude vibe. I love his prints and became curious about his art and his process. I also wanted to know more about my rug.

I visited him in his studio the other day. What I found was someone who is incredibly articulate about his vision, and generous in sharing that with me.

I was right about the surfing connection – surfing and skateboard culture, with its vibrant and modern designs and cool counter-culture energy was a huge influencer. He studied graphic design and worked as an art director for years in Dublin. A month-long career break was all it took to show him that he needed to go out on his own. He hasn’t looked back since.

The essence of Shane’s approach is to search for the elemental – the basic shapes that are hidden at the heart of everything we look at. He showed me a zine he produced while on a Paris residency – things that you and I wouldn’t even notice are grist to the mill for him.

Another collection of photographs is from wandering around the land on which he lives – the fields farmed by his wife’s family.

He said he approached designing rugs as partly a sculptural exercise, since it is three dimensional. Pile depth can vary and Ceadogán encouraged him to think outside the normal rug shape – although as it happens my own rug is square and has only one pile depth.

Shane’s work is all about balance. His motifs are often exact, geometrical, statically arranged on a flat background. But they bounce against each other and against elements that are more casual, less structured. Shane told me that the loose black brush stroke in Swisha – it’s called a gestural mark – grounds the design and creates a tension he likes against the sharp and disciplined edges of the blue and maroon elements. Perhaps the name Swisha, he said, also reflects the swoosh of the paint across the page (or the screen). It humanises the hard geometry, and in a way is a rebellion against all those years in design when precision was everything. He realised once it was finished that it wasn’t in fact finished and that’s when the orange went in – it’s like a piece of orange paper with torn edges. 

‘Like a Hurricane’ Image above courtesy of So Fine Art Editions

Shane works always with music playing and his titles are a calendar of what he’s been listening to. The music blocks out the tendency to analyse and over-intellectualise what he’s working on – he refers to a state of free flow – he finds it helps him focus and ‘centres his brain.’

Although prints are his main work, he has designed packaging, beer cans, water bottles (for the Irish Olympic team!), Easter egg boxes, coffee cups – all instantly recognisable with their signature shapes and vibrant colours.

Caroline Street mural, Courtesy of Backwater Artists

He’s done lots of street art and painting on buildings – next time you fly out of Cork Airport you will see this.


“The Wonder of Travel” is Cork’s newest street art mural, curated and created by Shane O’Driscoll and Peter Martin of ARDÚ Street Art. Picture: Darragh Kane. Courtesy Irish Examiner

It was a privilege and a pleasure to spend time with you, Shane. And thank you for my gorgeous rug. Now all I have to do is repaint the house to go with it.