style="font-size:15px;"> Estid a churu im Chrúachain
fri dumu cach dag-núachair:
a shlúag ónad sír-blad smacht,
a rígad fer n-Olnécmacht.
A shlúag na nglond fata fír
col-lín drong ndata is dag-ríg,
a dremm is déniu dolud,
diargell Ériu il-torud.
Listen, ye warriors about Cruachu!
with its barrow for every noble couple:
O host whence springs lasting fame of laws!
O loyal line of the men of Connacht!
O host of the true, long remembered exploits,
with number of pleasant companies and of brave kings!
O people, quickest in havoc
to whom Erin has pledged various produce!
[Translated by Edward Gwynn]
Cruachain, overlooking an extensive plain that slopes north-east to the River Shannon, comprises over seventy earthworks, and it preserves the landscape for Ireland’s prehistory like none other, excepting Tara. Here one can find the royal palace of the prehistoric Queen Medb known as Rathcroghan (Rath Chrúachain). According to E.E. Evans in his Prehistoric Ireland: ‘Rathcroghan has at 500 feet the appearance of a natural glacial hillock some 70 yards across the top and about 25 feet high; near the centre is a low mound five yards across which looks like a denuded ring barrow, and there is a small standing stone near the edge of the hillock.’ Rathcroghan remained a royal residence until the seventh century, and the festivities of Samain or Hallowe’en were celebrated here.
FIGURE 8. Dathi’s Stone at Cruachain (Carole Cullen).
The pillar stone at Cruachain is known as Dathi’s Stone, named after Dathi, a King of Connacht who was said to have been killed in Switzerland and was brought home and buried here. Dathi’s pillar is south-east of Relignaree (reilig na rí, ‘the graveyard of the kings’). The following extract is from the poet Torna Eigeas who, addressing the stone, says:
Atá fút-sa fionn Fáil,
Dáthí mac Fiachrach fear gráidh;
A Chruacha ro cheilis sain
Ar Ghallaibh ar Ghaedhealaibh.
A fair king of Fail lies beneath thee,
Dathi son of Fiachraidh, a man of dignity;
O Cruacha, thou hast concealed this
From foreigners and from Gaels.
[Translated by Eugene O’Curry]
Although Relignaree is described as a royal cemetery, particularly as it contained a number of small mounds, excavations have not discovered any signs of burials. To the south of the main entrance is a mound named Cnocán na gCorp (‘the hillock of the bodies’), a place where corpses were laid out to be wept over before burial.
Medb* is a major protagonist in the epic Táin Bó Cúailnge* or ‘The Cattle Raid of Cooley’. And Cruachain also contains the bullring (rath ‘a tairbh) in which the Finnbennach, one of the two competing bulls in the Táin Bó Cúailgne, was kept. It was here that this bull fought the Donn bull of Cooley to the death. The writers of the Táin used a ploy by which the remains of the bulls were figuratively gathered together to form the story of the epic in much the same way as two millennia later James Joyce used the scatterings of a midden heap to form the basis of Finnegans Wake. However, more than the bulls died in the bullring at Rath Tarbh. Bricriu the great satirist of the Ulster Cycle (‘Clearer to me a whisper than anyone else a shout’) was the umpire at this contest and was mauled to death by the competing bulls, so perhaps the scattered skin and flesh of Bricriu forms the basis of the Táin Bó Cúailnge.
An important ring fort at Cruachain is the trivallate ring fort known as Rathmore; trivallate forts have traditionally been connected with royalty, and this one is also known as Rath na Rí, or ‘the rath of the king’. On a clear day from Rathmore it is possible to see Croagh Patrick rising up in the west.
Roscommon also contains the inauguration site for the Kings of Connacht at Carnfree [40] or ‘the cairn of Fraoch’, a prominent hill about 400 feet high in the townland of Carns, about two miles south-south-west of Tulsk [33]. Evans has suggested that as well as being connected to Gaelic royal dynasties: ‘Its sanctity may well go back to the Bronze Age.’
A poem from the fourteenth-century Book of Uí Maine titled ‘Carn Fraoich Soitheach na Saorchlann’ or ‘The Carn of Fraoch, a Vessel for a Noble Clan’, describes the life of Fraoch in 105 quatrains and the following are a few verses:
Carn Fraoich, soitheach na saorchlann,
ríogha Dean ‘na dhonnmhaothbharr,
sluaigh ó nach baothchranna breath
na saorchlanna dán soitheach.
Ó Fhraoch mhac Fhiodhaigh na n-arm
comhartha fuair an fionncharn;
sám don tulaigh mar tarla
don churaidh an comhartha …
Grádhaighis-si Fraoch Fabair,
grádhaighis Fraoch Fionnabhair;
glór aobhdha fa sámh snadhma
grádh laomdha na lánamhna.
… ’nathaobh (thaoibh)
ó do marbhadh ‘na mhacomh;
is mór laoch a-muigh do mharbh
nó gur luigh Fraoch fán bhfionncharn.
Carn Fraoich, goodly house of the noble kindreds, the kings of Dean in its brown soft top; the nobles whose goodly house it is are a host not foolish or decrepit in giving judgements.
From Fraoch son of Fiodhach of the weapons did the fair hill get a name; a pleasant matter it is for the hill that it got the hero’s name …
She [Fionnabhair] loved Fraoch of Fabhar, Fraoch loved Fionnabhair; the flaming love of the pair was [like] a pleasant voice that smoothed out difficulties.
… about him since he died in his youth; many a warrior did Fraoch slay in the field before Fraoch lay beneath the fair cairn.
The inauguration stone previously at Carnfree is not in its original place but has been removed to Clonalis House, Castlerea [32], the home of the family of the O’Conor Don. It lies today to the left of the front door of the house, and the footprint in stone, which Evans says is of ‘doubtful authenticity’, is still visible. The O’Conor Don is the longest continuous lineage in Britain and Ireland, and can
