Castlehaven and Myross History Society

Rock Art 3D

There’s a concentration of prehistoric rock art around Castletownshend and I am currently writing a paper about that for the next issue of the Journal of the Skibbereen and District Historical Society. There are seven individual pieces of rock art: as part of the research I recently visited the one stone I hadn’t seen yet. Fortunately, we had the company and assistance of Conor Buckley of Gormú Adventures (been on one of his marvellous walks yet? If not, try this one, or this one or this one.) who, as a native of the area, knows everyone and introduced us to the landowner, the genial Bill O’Driscoll.

The townland is Farrandeligeen – isn’t that a wonderful name? A dealg is a spine or thorn or prickle, and therefore a deilgín is a small one of those. So it can be translated as the Land of the Thorns, which can be blackberries or blackthorns – and this being West Cork, probably both. An old saying is Is beag an dealga dhéanfadh braon – the tiniest thorn can cause big problems. Thorn in a hiking boot, anyone?

The land lived up to its name. Bill took us to where he knew the rock art was, and that’s when we encountered the deligeen bit. Fortunately he had a stout fork with him, and took to hacking and bashing his way through the thorns, while we stood back and offered encouragement. The first place proved unfruitful and he moved a few metres away and soon struck gold. Among the brambles, earth, gorse and general undergrowth there was a hint of something white. This turned out to be a bag filled with stones – the very bag he had put there to remind him that this is where the rock art was – but so many years ago that it had slipped his mind until now.

And so the stone gradually came into view until I could finally get down to clearing it off with my gloves. (I was sorry I hadn’t brought the red socks.) This stone is already in the National Monuments Records as a ‘Cupmarked Stone’ (CO151-013) and is described as having ‘at least ten cupmarks’. Bill told us that his father had said he remembered the stone standing upright – it had fallen to its present position flat on the ground since his father’s time.

For more on what a cupmarked stone is, and how it fits in to the general category of ‘Rock Art’, see my post The Complex Cupmark. For now, quoting from that post:

The cupmark is the most basic and numerous element or motif of rock art in Ireland and elsewhere. In the examples labelled rock art in County Cork, they occur with other motifs, principally concentric rings, sometimes with radial grooves, and a variety of curved or straight lines. They can be incorporated within a motif (as in cup-and-ring marks, rosettes, or where enclosed by lines) or they may be scattered, seemingly randomly, over the surface of the rock, between and among the other motifs. 

. . . patterns of straight lines, or of rough circles or semi-circles, can be made out in several of the stones we have recorded to date.

Rock art is widespread across the Atlantic coast of Europe and is believed to date from the Neolithic, about 5,000 years ago. The cupmark as a motif, however, continued well into the Bronze Age, since we find it on wedge tombs and boulder burials. We do not know what the significance of the cupmark is, but it must have held a special meaning to the carvers since it persisted over time and space.

We got the rock cleared enough to identify the cupmarks and I put a button in each one to make sure it showed up – sorry, those are not gold coins. Some of the cupmarks are tiny. You can look at the cupmarks as a random scatter, or as in the quote above, you can see two groups, in which a cupmark is surrounded by a semicircle of four others. 

It was hard to get the rock clean enough to see detail so I decided to carry out a photogrammetric survey, the object of which is to end up with a 3D image from 2D photographs. That involves taking LOTS of photos (in this case, 100) of the stone, working my way systematically across the surface of the stone at three different levels, keeping the camera settings consistent.

Conor had his drone with him – a new experience for us! He took photos and videos of the stone in its general location, capturing me doing the photogrammetry and also a good indication of the amount of undergrowth that had to be cleared out of the way before the rock came into view. (Thank you, Bill!)

I sent the photographs off to UCC, to the Department of Archaeology, where Nick Hogan generously processed them for me, using the Department’s specialised software. The results are fascinating!

First of all, it looks like there are more than just cupmarks on this rock. A long line stretches from the far left (in this image) cupmark to the right hand grouping. There is a hint of a circle around the bottom left cupmark. The three large cupmarks in the right grouping appear to be conjoined, and there is a line from from the far right cupmark to the end of the stone.

You can view the render in what is called Matcap, which creates it in a metallic view (above and below). On a grey day with no shadows, and still lots of mud on the stone, none of this was obvious to the naked eye. There is a possibility that these new elements, rather than being carved, are natural contours in the rock itself. We haven’t had time yet to go back and check this out more carefully, but we will have to do so – and update this post! If indeed the lines turn out to be carved, that fact will elevate the rock from a Cupmarked Stone to Rock Art. Watch this space.

If you’d like to see the 3D render for yourself and have fun turning it this way and that, you can click here. Let me know if you spot anything else! It was good to be out in the field again after a long winter of cold wet weather. It was great to have Conor and his drone along and to meet Bill, who is committed to keeping safe this precious part of our heritage.

Castlehaven and Myross Placenames Project

The preservation of placenames has become urgent in Ireland, as the keepers of the memory are getting older, and taking all their knowledge with them to the grave.

One group in Castlehaven and Myross has embarked on a fascinating project to try to rescue their local placenames before it’s too late, and are succeeding magnificently. In their undertaking, they are providing a model to any other community that wants to follow their lead. We met with Conor Buckley and Annette Glanton (above) as well as Vincent O’Neill recently to learn what this project is all about.

Annette showed us her work, which centres on Carrigillihy, near Union Hall. Her main informant was her father, who has an intimate knowledge of every inch of the area. Working with him, she has labelled fields, inlets, islands, cliffs and streams. The result is a detailed map of names – some in English, such as Badger’s Hole, but most in Irish, such as Faill na Cág (pronounced file na cawg – I will give approximate pronunciations in brackets after Irish words from here on), the Cliff of the Jackdaws. I am showing just a small portion of her maps, above. 

Conor then took us on a walk across the heath, to a vantage point where he could point out many of the surrounding features and name them. We crossed two streams on the way, and he told us each one was a townland boundary. We started in Castlehaven townland, crossed a stream into Glasheenaulin, and from there walked to Ballycahane, crossing the Glasheenaulin stream as we did so. Since a ‘glas’ is a rivulet, a glasheen is a small rivulet or stream, and aulin is an anglicised version of álainn, which means beautiful – so, we crossed the beautiful little stream, and indeed it was.

The historic map of the area, above, shows the townland boundaries in red. The middle boundary is marked by the Glasheenaulin, below, being crossed by Vincent and Annette.

From our vantage point Conor pointed down to where the sea came boiling in over the rocks – perhaps because of this effect, this small inlet was called Poll a’ Choire (powl (rhymes with the bird, owl) a Quirrah), or the hole of the cauldron. However, he showed us that within all the roiling water and rocks was another, smaller hole, which filled and emptied with water, and told us that there was a possibility that the name might be Poll na Caora (powl na kay-ra) or Sheep’s Hole, since it may have functioned as a sheep-washing station! Welcome to the intricacies of figuring out Irish placenames!

From the same spot we had a good view of the coast west and east. To the west is the unmistakeable mass of Toe Head – a promontory that has a distinctive rise (see the first and last photos in this post). On the near side is a hill which locals traditionally call Beann tSidháin (which they pronounce Been te Sheedawn), or peak of the fairy mound. A place with a name that included references to the Sí was a place to be treated with respect and caution – the Other Crowd was not always benevolent.

When I asked if it was possible that this might have been séideán (shay-dawn), meaning place of gusty winds, Conor gave me an insight into the depth of research that he and his advisory group undertake. He responded with several references to dictionaries, placename tomes – and a manuscript from the 1660s! I can just imagine the meetings of this group as they ponder of the possible variations and come to a conclusion – as Conor said to me, ‘it’s as much an art as a science.’

A lot of Toe Head itself has had names assigned, and I was intrigued by the name given to the piece of rock that has in the distant past, sliced off from the mainland (above). Locals call it the Sciollán (skull-awn), which means a seed potato – or maybe the piece of a potato that you can plant as long as it has an eye in it. Once you know that, you can’t unsee the nobbly bit of potato.

We will head east now, to the series of tiny inlets that indent the eastern side of Sandy Cove. Each one has a name, beginning with cuas – a cuas (koo-us) is a small inlet or cove although it seems to be used particularly in Cork and Kerry. To name each one makes total sense of course – if you were telling a neighbour which cuas you left pots in, or where you were going to dig sand, you all had a shared knowledge of the store of names.

Going from left to right along the bank you have:

Cuas a Chúir – this might be Inlet of the sea foam (cúr) or inlet of the tower (thúir). There is no tower here now, but Sandycove was once called Torbay, so maybe…

Cuas na Leac – a leac (lack) is a flat stone or flagstone. This cuas has an alternative English name – Nun’s Cove. Apparently it was the one used by nuns from the Skibbereen convent to swim in.

Cuas na gCloch – cloch (cluck) is a rock – hence, rocky inlet.

Sandy Cove – this is a preferred swimming spot for locals and visitors

Cuas na nGabhar. Lots of scope here! A gabhar (gower) is a goat, but apparently it’s also the name for a certain type of pollock, known as a scad. [Just to complicate things, it can also be a little white horse, and therefore white-crested waves. Gabhra Lír, for example, means the little white horses of Lír, who was the king of the world under the sea in Irish mythology. Whew! – But that’s just my own musings]

Cuas an Tairbh – tairbh (tarriv) is the irish word for bull, and the rock just off this point is the Bull Rock. It probably has the shape of a bull from some angles.

Cuas Móire – móire (moy-ra) is an adjective usually applied to a place that experiences great gusts of wind or rolling seas. Apt! But this could also simply be Cuas Mór (more), meaning Big Cuas, since it is the biggest one.

Just before the Cuas Móire theres a significant cliff labeled The Pulley (about where the cattle is in the photo below) and here’s the story about that name. On top of the cliff was a pole with a bar attached – the bar, with a pulley at the end of it, could swing out over the cliff. A long rope threaded through the pulley was controlled by a patient horse which was lead away from and toward the cliff, thus raising and lowering the rope. At the end of the rope was a large basket. A man climbed into the basket and was lowered to the bottom of the cliff at low tide. There he set about harvesting kelp with a tool that cut it off above the roots. As he gathered armfuls, he filled up the basket which was raised up to the field and piled onto a cart. He continued to do this until the tide came up to his neck, whereupon he jumped into the basket and was the last load to be pulled up.

Almost unbelievable, isn’t it? The hardship and courage of that – it was done all year round! Yet, as Vincent and Conor explained to us, sand and seaweed were the only fertilisers available to people and gathering both was an important part of the yearly round of labour needed to grow food. Both were also taxed by local landlords, so they were a commodity over which landowners exercised control. The National Museum has a good piece on seaweed harvesting, with photographs showing how it was done – no cliffs, alas. Another piece on RTE from 1962 shows hand harvesting in Clare.

You will have noted that all of these placenames are now on maps, which I have used in my illustrations. The site is https://www.openstreetmap.org/ and Conor, Vincent and their team are using it to record these names for posterity. Anyone can do this, but, as they pointed out to us, it’s best done in an informed way, since labelling a place with a modern name (e.g. Danny’s fishing cove) can perpetuate new, personal or inaccurate names. The team has annotated many of the placenames with additional information – such as about the possible names for Cuas a’ Chúir, above, and Cuas na Leac, below.

I have only given you a tiny look at what the Castlehaven and Myross Placenames team is doing – their work is extensive and ongoing. And it’s important – these are among the oldest ‘transparent’ placenames in Europe. As Conor explained to me placenames start out as transparent – people name what they see in front of them. But over time, the names become opaque, mostly due to a change in the dominant culture – a new language wreaks havoc with pronunciation of ‘foreign-sounding’ words. However, the names around West Cork, as long as there is someone who still remembers them, are as ancient as it gets. Hydronyms (place names associated with water) survive better than toponyms (land-based) possibly because they were a shared resource.

The team are happy to share their expertise and would love to encourage other groups to undertake similar projects in their own locality. You can get in touch with them by emailing castlehavenhistory@gmail.com or through their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/castlehavenhistory/