Traveling across Ireland from East to West, the landscape shifts from wide fields and flat bogs to the smaller, rougher fields of Connemara, of Cork and Kerry, of Donegal. Where once the boundaries had been hedgerows, ditches, and dykes, they now become dry stone walls, delicate yet strong, each one unique. “You’d swear the hills were edged with broken granite lace”, says songwriter Dave Goulder
Writer Peter Mooney says “For many visitors to Ireland, their abiding memory of the scenery is not the great sweeping seascapes or the ancient mountains shrouded in mist, but these tiny fields emerging from the stony land, surrounded by tens of thousands of miles of stone walls.”
Incredibly, these walls are built without mortar and without tools; the stone is not cut (though it may be broken), as whatever stones are available are made to fit as well as possible. The dry stone walls indicate an area where the soil is poor and rocky, and clearing the fields for farming meant that the stone was readily available and free.
Stone not only runs through Irish fields, but through Irish history as well. It has been used and worked since the earliest inhabitants used stone to build their houses, and Neolithic farmers used it to create field boundaries. Good examples of these ancient field systems and their stone walls can be seen at the Neolithic Céide (Cage-uh) Fields site in County Mayo. It is thought that these may be the oldest Stone Age field systems in the world, at roughly 6000 years old.
Later, during the Potato Famine, An Gorta Mor – the Great Hunger, endless walls of stone, dividing nothing, were built up and down the wet, harsh mountains by men employed on Public Works schemes, schemes run by church groups or British landlords to create employment for the poor, starving Irish workers and their families. They stand their lonely, sad watch to this day.
So iconic are the stone walls of Ireland that the Carlow Arts Festival commissioned 20 of the best woodworking artists in the world, including the Lehigh Valley’s own Michael Brolly, to come together last summer and create a magical, wooden stone wall, or story wall, that celebrates the history and lore of the walls, even down to the tiny wooden clay pipe lost in it, and a delicate wooden spider web. The long, graceful wall now stands quietly amidst the bustle of Dublin airport, welcoming both visitor and returning wanderer.
For the Celtic Cultural Alliance, I’m Kate Scuffle. Slainte.