Tim Robinson(nine) |The Gods of The Neale

For reasons not worth rehearsing, when I set out to begin my map of Connemara, in 1979, it was from the humdrum little town of Claremorris in the flatlands of south Mayo. Slightly nervously I wheeled my overladen bike out into the busy street and wobbled off in the direction of the mountains that formed a long rim to the western horizon. The day was perfect April, compounded of sun and breeze; the roads were almost empty of traffic, the countryside very quiet. As I approached the village called The Neale I noticed a small pyramid or ziggurat of nine stages in a field by the road, and went to look at it. A largely illegible inscription seemed to identify it as ‘Templum Fortunae’ and date it to 1750 or 1760. Back on the road, I overtook a lady walking between two sticks, who told me that she was paralysed on one side after a brain haemorrhage. I asked her about the monument, and she was very informative. Lord Kilmaine, she said, had been one of the good landlords, and had employed the farmers (‘such as they were’) on building this folly as well as a small round Greek temple visible in the distance. I should go and see ‘The Gods of The Neale’, since I was interested in things like that. She could not explain what these Gods were, but I would find them, she said, by taking a turning to the left just ahead.

The turning sent me down a little road with a tall demesne wall along its left-hand side, overtopped by old trees. Unable to identify anything that might be a God or Gods, I spoke to some children playing football in a little schoolyard on the right, who directed me onwards to a hole in the wall, which I was able to jump through. I spent some time wandering around the low remains of the mansion, tumbledown outhouses and overgrown gardens, and finally came across a monument, perhaps ten or twelve feet tall, set against a thicketed bank. Three medieval-looking rectangular bas-reliefs were inserted in its frontage; the lowest of them, horizontal, represented a slender four-footed creature, a lion to judge by its curly mane and fierce claws, with a long whip-like tail ending in what looked like a hand of three fingers and a thumb. Above that the other slabs stood vertically and side by side: on the right, an angel in a long dress, facing forwards and holding a small shield or perhaps a book against its breast; on the left a horse, perhaps a unicorn, which appeared to be sitting on its tail and looked to me as if it should have been set horizontally. Below these carvings was a broad limestone plaque with a long inscription of an eighteenth-century appearance, which in this shadowy retreat was hard to make sense of. Some phrases stood out that were given resonance by the obscurities in which they were embedded and the empty-echoing mansion nearby:

The Irish characters on the above stone import that in this cave we have by us the Gods of Cons … Lett us follow their stepps sick of love with FVLL confidence in Loo Lave Adda … the Shepherd of Ireland of his era … These images were found in a cave behind the place they now stand& were the ancient Gods of the Neale which took its name from them. They were called Déithe Fhéile or the Gods of Felicity from which the place in Irish is called Ne Heale in English The Neale LL reigned AM 2577 PD 927 AHTE C1496 and was then 60: CEDNA reigned AM2994& 64 of Edna was wel 50 CON MOIL was ye son of Heber who divided this kingdom with his brother and had the western parts of this island for his lott all which was originally called from Con Conovcht or Cons portion and his son LOO LAVEADDA who found the Druids was thought to have drawn all his knowledge from the SVN Thus the Irish history. N.B. the smaller letters on the upper part o