![]() Oughterard Cemetery, just a few miles outside of Naas, sits atop a hill overlooking spectacular Kildare countryside. "There was talk there of putting a sign up at one stage, but that hasn't happened." "The trouble is that you might get the wrong elements knowing about it," he said. Sean said he knew that the Guinness angle was not drawn on by Irish tourist bosses.īut he would be wary of visitors trampling on the ancient ground. There are supposed to have been nuns buried in it at one stage." "Nowadays you get school tours going up to see it because it's historic. "I had to beat a track into it when I wanted to get up there. "This was when it was just a wilderness about 15 years ago. "A group of us lads decided to form a committee and do some work on it. "My parents are buried up there," he said. Graveyard caretaker Sean Meaney said the cemetery had been disused altogether in the past but that he and some friends decided to clean it up. The beautiful resting place, which dates from the sixth century, is like the recipe for the famous big pint, one of the best kept secrets in Ireland.Įven the Guinness brewery in St James's Gate, Dublin, were stuck for an answer and had to call on its archivist to help us track the location down. People still get buried up there, but it's only local people with the plots up there who you find doing that." "I was told that the last time the Guinness family were over from England, they didn't know where it was," says Johnny Dunne, who lives just yards from the graveyard. In terms of tourism, it could be one of the most shameful oversights in Irish history. There are no signposts, no maps to his grave and even in the nearby town of Naas, few know where he lies. Stout king Arthur Guinness was buried almost 200 years ago after leaving behind the famous recipe for the pint that would carry his name - and the name of Ireland - across the world.īut today only a handful of local folk in Co Kildare know where to find him.Īnd as for the modern day multi-national brewers, they don't seem to care. in a grave hardly anyone knows about and even less visit. All her surviving children except Mícheál emigrated to the USA to live with their descendants in Springfield, Massachusetts.HERE lies the best known Irishman in history. She is buried in the Dún Chaoin Burial Ground, Corca Dhuibhne, Ireland. She was moved to a hospital in Dingle, County Kerry where she died in 1958. She continued to live on the island until 1942, when she returned to her native place, Dunquin. Over several years from 1938 Peig dictated 350 ancient legends, ghost stories, folk stories, and religious stories to Seosamh Ó Dálaigh of the Irish Folklore Commission. ![]() He then sent the manuscript pages to Máire Ní Chinnéide in Dublin, who edited them for publication. Peig was illiterate in the Irish language, having received her early schooling through the medium of English. In the 1930s a Dublin teacher, Máire Ní Chinnéide, who was a regular visitor to the Blaskets, urged Peig to tell her life story to her son Mícheál. He recorded them and brought them to the attention of the academic world. Flower was keenly appreciative of Peig Sayers' stories. The Norwegian scholar Carl Marstrander, who visited the island in 1907, urged Robin Flower of the British Museum to visit the Blaskets. She and Pádraig had eleven children, of whom six survived. Peig moved to the Great Blasket Island after marrying Pádraig Ó Guithín, a fisherman and native of the island, on 13 February 1892. She had expected to join her best friend Cáit Boland in America, but Cáit wrote that she had had an accident and could not forward the cost of the fare. She spent the next few years as a domestic servant working for members of the growing middle class produced by the Land War. She spent two years there before returning home due to illness. At the age of 12, she was taken out of school and went to work as a servant for the Curran family in the nearby town of Dingle, where she said she was well treated. Her father Tomás Sayers was a renowned storyteller who passed on many of his tales to Peig. She was called Peig after her mother, Margaret "Peig" Brosnan, from Castleisland. She was born Máiréad Sayers in the townland of Vicarstown, Dunquin, County Kerry, the youngest child of the family. Seán Ó Súilleabháin, the former archivist for the Irish Folklore Commission, described her as "one of the greatest woman storytellers of recent times". Peig Sayers (1873–1958) was an Irish author and seanchaí born in Dunquin (Dún Chaoin), County Kerry, Ireland.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |