lake. From this lake is derived the Irish for these hills, namely Sliabh Dá Én or the ‘mountain of the two birds’. According to Pádraig Meehan, author of Listoghil: A Seasonal Alignment?, ‘the Ballygawley Mountain range, with its distinctive rounded forms, may also have been part of the narrative that informed the positioning and layout of the Carrowmore complex’.
W.B. Yeats is buried ‘up the road’ from Carrowmore at Drumcliff. He refers to the Cailleach Bhéarra in his poem ‘Red Hanrahan’s Song about Ireland’ as Clooth-na-Bare. He also refers to Medb* at Knocknarea:
The wind has bundled up the clouds high over Knocknarea,
And thrown the thunder on the stones for all that Maeve can say …
FIGURE 11. Capstone in chamber at Listoghil (Jack Roberts).
The yellow pool has overflowed high up on Clooth-Na-Bare,
For the wet winds are blowing out of the clinging air;
Listoghil is at the centre of the Carrowmore complex and is a passage grave tomb; it is locally known as the ‘Giant’s Grave’. Passage tombs consist of a round mound or cairn with a passage leading from the edge to a chamber within. They belong to the Neolithic or New Stone Age period (c. 4000–2000 BC). Passage tombs occur predominantly in the northern third of the country.
Michael J. O’Kelly in Early Ireland: An Introduction to Irish Prehistory writes:
There is only one monument in the Carrowmore cemetery which comes within the classic passage tomb definition. This is no. 51, known as ‘Listoghil’. It is centrally placed with regard to the other tombs and is at a somewhat higher elevation. It consists of a large srone cairn, between 35m and 41m [114ft and 135.5ft] in diameter at present, with remains of a kerb. At the centre is a rectangular chamber roofed with a singular limestone capstone, 3m by 2.75m and the cairn must originally have covered it.
This last point by O’Kelly, namely that a ‘cairn must originally have covered it’, was verified for me by Pádraig Meehan. He mentioned that the cairn was about to be stripped for use in building, but when the workers came to the tomb they halted their labour, as they did not wish to interfere with the tomb. Thanks to this respect for the dead by the local workforce, this unique tomb still exists and the seasonal alignment can still be observed.
Megalithic tombs are plentiful in Sligo, and one can even be seen in the town of Sligo [25]. This is now surrounded by a roundabout, the first to be built in Sligo. At one time it was proposed that the tomb be destroyed, and its fate was in the balance until an old woman coming up the river demanded that it be preserved, after which she went away. Some say that she was the Cailleach Bhéara who came up the Garvoge River (An Gharbh Óg, ‘Rough Ogress’), though others say it was a local woman with a passion equal to that of the cailleach. The megalithic tomb standing today is a testament to folklore and the power of women. This first roundabout, which is near the fire station, is known locally as Garbh Óg Villas and archaeologically as Abbey Quarter North. A testament to folklore in the area was a letter to the Sunday Times in late July 2017, in which Martin Ford from Sligo stated:
One night when my sister was four years old, she went looking for my mother who was out visiting. She stopped at a fairy fort to tie her laces, and the ‘little people’ appeared and were playing around her. She asked did they know where her mammy was, and they said, ‘we will take you to her.’ They led her to a neighbour’s house. When my Mum came out, my sister said, ‘Meet my new friends.’ But when she turned around, they had disappeared. That fairy fort is still there, at Garavogue Villas in Sligo town.
The Garvoge flows into Tobernalt Bay and close by is Tobar an Ailt (‘the well by the cliff’) which is both a Christian and a pre-Christian well and an example of the two traditions melding together. One problem with the continuing pre-Christian custom of placing votary offerings on trees, generally hawthorns, is that the old custom of not allowing pieces of cloth to be left for more than three days is not adhered to. I have seen this in Sligo, both at Creevykeel and at Tobar an Ailt, where the rotting offerings show an ignorance of the older custom and are aesthetically unappealing.
Four miles south-east of Ballymote [25] on the R295 is one of the most remarkable hills in Irish legend, namely Keshcorran (Céis Chorainn, ‘the harp of Corann’). The plain from which the hill rises was known as Magh Chorainn, or ‘the plain of Corann’. The Dindshenchas* describes Magh Chorainn and Céis Chorainn as follows:
Magh Corainn whence the name? Not hard to say. Corann, harper to Dian Cécht the Dagda’s son, called with his harp Caelcheis, one of Drebriu’s swine. And Caelcheis ran forward as fast as his legs would carry him; and the hounds of Connacht and their soldiery pursued him as far as Céis Chorainn; hence the names of Céis Chorainn and Magh Corainn.
Céis Chorainn may also mean ‘the young sow of Corann’. Also known as Céis Chorainn na bhfiann, or ‘Keshcorann of the Fianna’, it is a humpbacked limestone hill 1,200 feet in height. There is a cairn on top of the hill and, to keep it company, a triangulation pillar. Halfway up the hill, about 200 feet from the base, is a vertical limestone cliff-face with panoramic views over south Sligo, east Mayo and Roscommon. The caves here comprise sixteen chambers all aligned east–west with the entrances facing the west. They are identified by the letters A to P from north to south. Some were named after archaeologists who investigated them, as, for example, cave J or the Coffey Cave, named after George Coffey who was involved in the first excavations of Kesh in 1903. This cave is about eighteen feet deep and nearly seven feet wide at the entrance, narrowing to just under a foot at the rear. Artefacts unearthed over the years include a medieval armour-piercing projectile head, an Early Medieval bone comb fragment and two bone pin fragments. A human tooth was radiocarbon dated to the Iron Age.
In the nineteenth century, it was thought that caves could be the long-sought repository of ‘Early Man’ in Ireland, but this was unfounded; the human remains were more often Neolithic rather than Mesolithic or Paleolithic. In earliest times, caves were used for burial rites and offerings, and from Early Medieval times for occupation and shelter; archaeological evidence shows that the caves at Keshcorann were used for short-term occupation during the Early Medieval period. Though archaeology states that certain activities occurred at the ‘entrance to the caves’ at Keshcorann, we need to go to mythology to get some idea as to what these activities were.
The earliest story relating to the caves was written about 800 AD and is found in the Book of Leinster under the heading of Turim Tigi Temrach or ‘The Enumeration of the House of Tara’, and as Cath Maige Mucrima or ‘The Battle in the Plain of the Counting of Pigs’. The book also refers to Keshcorran as the cave where Cormac mac Airt, High King of Ireland, spent his early childhood: Conamail … ruc. Cormac mac Airt a hÚaim Céise Coraind (‘houndlike Cormac mac Airt was brought up in the cave of Corann’); it also states: Cormac mac Airt ina ucht altram (‘Cormac mac Airt was suckled by a she-wolf’). Both these statements give body to the legend that Cormac was taken by a she-wolf shortly after his birth and was reared by her in one of the caves at Keshcorran. On a six-inch Ordnance Survey map of 1838, Cave P is named Owey Cormac mac Airt (‘the Cave of Cormac mac Airt’). A local legend recorded in 1836 told how the mother of Cormac mac Airt gave birth to him while collecting water at Tober Cormac to the north-west of the caves; this well is situated in the townland of Cross [25], a mile north of the village of Kesh. It is in the corner of a field on a north-facing slope. The area is overgrown and muddy, and some moss-covered stones mark the site of the well at a T-junction along an old road known as Bóthar an Corann or Bóthar na Slieve. This road was built by Richard de Burgh, the Red Earl of Ulster, and is situated between Keshcorann and the R295.
Similarities can be seen with the suckling of Romulus and Remus by a wolf,
