The Northwest.

This weekend, I find myself in County Sligo, where sacred sites populate the horizon, and the mountain sides cascade towards the Atlantic, mountains like Ben Bulben, a massive ships hull with a striking westward orientation. On the flat top of Knocknarea lies the tomb of Queen Maeve, a woman who, more than most, bears significant responsibility for causing a great deal of trouble on our island. Alas, we did get the great classic of the Irish mythological cycle, the Tain Bo Chuailge, thanks to her carry-on.

This is the Ireland of the imagination. Mythology infuses itself into the land, where landscape and story unite. Ireland is not a big country, but there is a palpable sense of passing a threshold when you journey north. It’s in the land. In the southern region, in Cork, the season brings with it an abundance of tractors and farm machinery. Every day, as you drive along the country roads, you either weave through them or simply wait for them to turn. And the land reflects it, fertile and immensely cultivated, yielding to the demands of industry like a goose force fed and craving a rest. There is wildness, of course, but not in the way it still manifests here in Sligo and onwards in Leitrim and Donegal. There is something of the old Ireland here, an aliveness, one that fed the poetic imagination as such greats as Yeats.

I find it intriguing and regrettable that Ireland lacks an origin myth. So many older cultures do. We possess one of the most extensive mythologies in the Western world, yet a significant gap remains in the absence of a birth story. I can't help but ponder whether there was once a birth story, but it vanished for some reason. Or did those dedicated early Irish Christian monks, the great scribes, decide not to record it as they began the work of weaving the story of Christ into the land? Maybe, but I tend to think not, for they recorded everything else that they could, and we owe a great deal to them for doing so.

Instead, we possess numerous accounts of invasions. Written records of Ireland's history did not exist until the Middle Ages. This result has shrouded much of Ireland's early history in mystery. An unknown author in the 11th century AD penned the Book of Invasions, a mytho-historical text that attempts to unravel this mystery. It recounts a series of invasions in which multiple waves of people invaded Ireland over several thousand years. On a Saturday, our group walked up a hill and looked over a landscape that unfolded like a mythological saga—the great battle between good and evil, between beneficial and dangerous powers, the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomorians.

Central to the story is the handsome and brilliant young stranger named Lugh. He arrives at the king's court as war approaches between the Fomorians and the Tuatha Dé. Lugh, a master of all disciplines, is a smith, a champion, a harpist, a warrior, a poet, a historian, a magician, and a physician. Lugh leads the forces into battle and engages in combat with his grandfather, Balor, a one-eyed and terrifying giant of the Fomorians. Eventually, Lugh is appointed as the ruler of all of Ireland.

This hill, which overlooks the landscape of County Sligo, is Lugh's domain.
Sligo is home to approximately one hundred intensely interconnected megalithic passage tomb sites and undisturbed cairns. Is it any wonder that Yeats, in his own great efforts to rebirth a Celtic revival, found his inspiration here?

That day, we stumbled upon a man holding two brass diving rods. Douglas greeted us at the meeting of two fields—a little cleft of a valley where the Tomb of the Druids rests—an immense 20-tonne cap stone resting on six uprights. Douglas follows the underground water-energy lines that support all these monuments. He gave us a demonstration, holding the two rods in front of him and letting them swing and cross over as he walked about the monument. Each monument is placed directly above the meeting point of two perpendicular lines.

Mystery imbues this landscape and these rich stories enliven it still. Jung once said that life is a short pause between two great mysteries. So, the question will be and always has been, how shall we spend that pause?

I do find myself wondering what great treasures might still be buried under the soil of Ireland. What archeological finds will one day be discovered. Is there hidden away, yet still preserved, in a dark cave, under the altar of a church, in an old monastery, a text that recounts the origin story of Ireland?