I’ve just landed home, after an off-road biking journey through Cork & Kerry. Keen to follow some of the ancient trails and pathways, I’ve spent the last few weeks pouring over old maps and aerial shots. They lead me well.
The trip centred around the Paps of Danu, an unmistakable and highly sacred pair of mountains near the county bounds. Danu (or Anu) was the ancient Irish goddess of wisdom and prosperity and is still worshipped to this day, forever immortalised in these peaks.
I carried Dan Cronin’s “In The Shadow of the Paps”, a beautiful account by a man who lived nearby in Caher Crobh Dearg – which is said to be Ireland’s oldest settlement.
Cathair Crobh Dearg sits below the sacred Paps. This area is awash with forts, monuments, peaks and pilgrimages.
For the last 7,000 years, ceremonies and celebrations have occurred here each and every year. This is older than Stonehenge – more ancient than the Pyramids.
If folklore is your thirst, Sliabh Luchra will surely quench it.
Filmed by: Christopher Barrett
Narrated by: Dan Cronin (archival)
Edited by: Gustavo Jander
When you stand in the middle of the car you get a great feeling of satisfaction so I’m standing here on one of the most ancient places on Earth where religious ceremonies of one kind or another have been enacted for the past 6 7,000 years without a break ceremonies celebrated every
La of break for thousands of years tell me another this you’ll find that you’ll find them all right old but they long since broken the sequence have broken but not that Crum car I I can say without fear of contradiction that there is no place in Western Europe more ancient functioning
The same length of time as the mountains at our back here are known as the two mountains G key Danon and the city the penitential station is at the base of the Eastern P the correct name is klock k coov d or Red plaw Mansion It was here at this place that the to den set up their base a way back BC and this station is the most ancient not alone in the south of Ireland or an island but in the ex the entire Western world many places can be met with just as old
But they all have long since ceased to function but the city festival carries on on the first day of May each year and has done so down through the years through paganism through drism through what have you don’t to the time when it was christianized I remember a time when on
May Day there would be hundreds of people at the city all kinds of games weightlifting anything everything B people come there P owns and uh formerly up to the last Great War 1939 there were all kind of sporting activities carried on there but that stopped and it down really to
Pray prayer now the sporting side of it has gone but every may people come and pay owns at this place it’s a circular enclosure with a big stone wall around and in one edge of it one side it there’s an old megic altar with stones on
It and on these Stones there are crosses engraved by the hands of pilgrims don’t through the years and there’s one in the center of one Stoner it’s a circle across within a circle the Celtic cross without beginning or end and and uh people start their own and they give
Three rounds outside the wall praying and three rounds inside the wall and these rounds were started in Pagan times and have continued they were christianized when the country became Christian and Dana the Great Goddess mother of fertility the peps are called after Dana the two pep mountains
I climbed to the top of the PS and 3 ft of snow had Frozen was a beautiful sight it has been claimed I can’t verify this that Dan is buried beneath the Eastern P originally when the dead anims commenced the ER rights and rituals that started on top of the
PS it was the costom I presume at that stage that all these ceremonies be celebrated on elevated SES But as time went on they dropped down and the relics of the old Pagan authors can still will be found as you come down the mountain ruins of the old
Altars where they offered their gifts to the goddess Dan I have been studying collecting history since I was 15 years of age it fascinated me and I spoke with individuals whose names were never heard of never appeared in paper books they were Geniuses in the unwritten world the history of our locality and
Indeed far beyond these people are long gone sadly they’re gone and have their information taken with them to the Grave I mentioned the name Eugen mccy he said to me one time this was pre television D if television comes he said to be disaster because the rambling house the
Storytelling the collection of History all that we go all our old ways of doing things will pass on so I I’ve come to the conclusion the man was right