Shamrocks

On tombstones, shamrocks symbolize Irish origin or ancestry.

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A Grave Concern: For a friend

Last night, a friend of mine passed away. She was on the trip to Ireland I took in 2009, and she was a follower of this blog. I didn’t have the opportunity to know her nearly as long or as well as many others, but I treasured the time I did have with her. I am reposting something I wrote last year about a place we both enjoyed visiting very much. Rest in peace, Mary.

While in Ireland last year, I visited Glendalough, the site of a medieval monastic settlement.

Glendalough, or “the valley of the two lakes,” is about an hour south of Dublin in County Wicklow. The monastery there was founded by St. Kevin in the 6th century. Kevin died in about 618 AD, but the monastery flourished until it was destroyed by English troops in 1398. The church continued to operate after the monastic settlement was disbanded. The buildings that remain in ruins date to the 1100s and 1200s.

I was anticipating seeing medieval buildings and maybe a few surviving grave slabs or monuments, which was exciting enough. But when we entered the gate, we found tombstones that date from well after 1398.

Glendalough, being a the final resting place of a saint, continued to be a popular place for burial, even as the buildings fell to ruins. Tombstones were everywhere. They were attached to the remaining stones walls that used to be chapels and churches.

Grave slabs and fallen tombstones lined the floor of the former cathedral.

Tombstones were interspersed with the buildings, right up against them, falling over themselves to squeeze as many as possible into the sacred ground.

Multiple generations of families would have a common marker, with new names added to the bottom until they ran out of family or ran out of space.

Glendalough feels both peaceful and isolated, an island of quiet where one can go to contemplate the spiritual surrounded by generations before who found the same tranquility so compelling that they chose to spend eternity there.

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A Grave Concern: The Emerald Isle

This week, I paid our deposit for Mike and I to travel to Ireland in 2013 with our favorite Irish band, FinTan. So Ireland is on my mind right now, and I decided to go back through some of my photos from the 2009 trip (also with the band).

This photo from Glendalough has been on my work computer desktop for more than a year. If you look carefully through the remains of the gate, you can see a grave marker topped with a Celtic cross in the distance.

These three tombstones have stood at Glendalough for over a century.

This detail photograph of a Celtic cross is probably one of my favorites from the trip.

This moss-covered sarcophagus monument is in the cemetery that sits just below the crest of the Hill of Tara.

Of course, not all of the photos I took of memorials were outdoors. This one was in the catacombs of Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin.

This statue is part of a memorial in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

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A Grave Concern: More hearts

The hearts I found on tombstones in Glendalough were representations of the sacred heart of Christ.

I’ve also found a stone in Lake View with the same imagery.

The hearts that actually started this whole quest are simpler from Adams Street Cemetery in Berea.

Lake View

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Glendalough Ghosts

Not surprisingly, Glendalough has at least one reported ghost. We didn’t see anything there and I found the place to be wonderfully peaceful, but there is supposedly a hooded black figure – one of the monks, possibly St. Kevin himself?

The other ghost is supposedly a woman in red, who St. Kevin beat with nettles and then threw into the lake…oooooooookay. I’ve noticed a lot of ghostly legends revolve around supposedly moral/religious people doing hideous things.

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Just one more

This cross at Glendalough captivated me – it was so perfectly Irish as I imagined it.

Carved shamrocks climb the cross, knotwork creates the nimbus, and the entire cross centers on a heart surrounded by thorns, associated with the immaculate heart of Mary.

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More Celtic crosses at Glendalough

The Wards have a Celtic cross with a corpus in the center:

The Britton, Byrne and Rochford families’ intermarriages are recorded on these two stones with crosses.

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More Celtic Crosses at Glendalough

Not surprisingly, there are a lot of Celtic crosses marking the graves at Glendalough in County Wicklow. When you first approach the gate, the tallest monument inside the complex is a majestic Celtic cross with a bit of moss now growing on it.

As you turn the bend to the right, you come to more Celtic crosses, including a monument to theLaurence Kavanaugh and his children which has a corpus inside the Celtic cross. This was something I had never encountered before I visited Ireland.

Another family of Kavanaghs rests nearby, also memoralized with a Celtic cross.

I took some more detailed shots of the distinctly Irish motifs on this Kavanagh marker.

The final Celtic cross on our walk today is nicknamed St. Kevin’s cross. It is reputed to mark the final resting place of St. Kevin, the founder of the monastic settlement. Although not definitive proof of Kevin’s burial, our guide told us that there is evidence an older, medieval burial there.

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Celtic Crosses at Glendalough

Not surprisingly, there were Celtic crosses everywhere in Glendalough. Inside the Visitor’s Centre, there were old grave slaves on display:

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