Friday, March 17, 2006
Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone. Above is a picture of the Céide Fields museum in Mayo.
The discovery of what is now known as Céide Fields really began back in the 1930s when a local schoolteacher, Patrick Caulfield from Belderrig, often noticed piles of stones in the bottom of the bog when cutting his turf. To everybody else these were meaningless but he realised two very important points - firstly, the way the stones were piled up couldn't be natural so somebody had to put them there, and secondly, because they were down underneath the peat they had to be put there prior to the growth of the bog and so must be very ancient...
In 1989 a project was launched by Dr. Seamus Caulfield and Prof. Martin Downes along with a local committee to build a Centre at Céide which would use the results of the research as an economic resource by attracting tourists to the area. The following year the OPW became involved and designed the award-winning Centre which was opened to the public in May 1993.
Anyhow, a meeting with Patrick Caulfield was apparently the inspiration for Nobel prize winning poet Seamus Heaney's "Belderg." The poem was pinned to the door of his house by Heaney as a thank you note after a visit in 1974.
Anyone know more about this? If so, post a comment. ¶ 3/17/2006 03:57:00 PM
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WOW. I lived in the U.K. and never made it to Ireland. Do I get booted out of the Caulfield family now? Heck, Ireland looks just like England, Wales, and Scotland, so whatever. Just kidding, but that does look similar to spots of Scotland.
Linda is in Dublin right now, so I'll tell her to go take a look, heck it is only 200 miles away. Does sound interesting.
Don't feel bad Nicola, I lived in England for 5 years and never got to Ireland, and only got to Scotland (Edenburough, sp?) on a one day trip. Any time I got time off I wanted to go someplace warm and sunny. It may be cold here (in VT) but it is a dry cold. The cold there penetrates to your bones, and summers can be cold too (although sometimes it was nice).
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Don't feel bad Nicola, I lived in England for 5 years and never got to Ireland, and only got to Scotland (Edenburough, sp?) on a one day trip. Any time I got time off I wanted to go someplace warm and sunny. It may be cold here (in VT) but it is a dry cold. The cold there penetrates to your bones, and summers can be cold too (although sometimes it was nice).
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