A Stone Cairn.

 

Up on the hills and on the stone and boggy  ridges of the Sheepshead Peninsula where we live in South west  Ireland.  There are stone cairns.  Historians say they are burial sites for Celtic chieftains cremated ashes.  Some historians say these piles of stones were built by the English Ordnance Survey people in the 1830s to help them map Ireland.  You know build a pile of stones or light a fire and someone shouts: "Hey I can see our house from here."

My dear Grandmother use to tell us small children that when you climb up to see the pile of stones that she called : "The Stone Man" and look down at the two bays: Dunmanus and Bantry.  "You should always place a new stone on the pile.  If you do you put a stone on the top you will always come back."  

We must have heeded her advice because we ended up emigrating over here nearly twenty years a go.  My dad left here in the "Black Fifties".  He was only 17.  

You can literally see for miles and miles up there.   Facing North, there's the full thirty miles of Bantry Bay.  This is one of the deepest natural harbours in the world.  You can a see Dursey island and Beara Peninsula with its famous Hungry Hill and Sugar Loaf mountains.  

You can also see Whiddy Island and Glengariff  and Bantry.  Turning South you can see Durrus, Dunmanus Bay and Mount Gabriel over on Mizen peninsula.  The words of The Who song start playing in my mental jukebox:

"I can see for miles and miles".

I have great memories of walking up there with my dad when I was fifteen and he would have been middle aged, a bit younger than me I suppose..? We walked to Durrus  and visited my grandparents graves and we sat outside a pub and my dad had a pint of Guinness and I had half a pint of Murphy's: brewed in Cork of course.  Well I was only fifteen.