County Meath, Saturday, 30th July 2022…
***
The Whispering Spring
***
“What did they say,
oh, what did they say?”
***
***
They said, “knowing these people,
it would not be beyond the bounds of possibility
that the ‘Bend in the Boyne’ was manufactured.”
*
‘Manufactured’ is the correct word
even though it now has a modern,
rather hollow ring to it.
***
***
What is so appealing about the Irish myths
is that they put things very simply.
*
‘Aini had the form of a great white cow
but she also had the form of a fair and beautiful woman.’
*
And isn’t that
just the finest thing
you have ever heard?
*
The Dagda certainly thought so
and he wanted to sleep with this beautiful woman
who was also a white cow even though
she was living with someone else, called Elcmair…
***
***
It is tempting to regard such statements
as symbolic, perhaps…
***
Plan of the New Grange passage-cairn.
***
As most people are aware,
on a clear day, the first rays of the rising sun,
on the shortest day of the year, enter the New Grange
passage cairn and now illuminate the famous triple spiral carving.
*
The passage way is lit by a beam of sunlight
for seventeen seconds
before being plunged back into darkness.
***
***
Rumours of such a ‘light-science’
in the rural Irish landscape
had been rife for many decades
before being publicly demonstrated,
beyond reasonable doubt,
in the nineteen-eighties, by a trio of local artists.
*
‘Rank amateurs’ as some would doubtless have it.
*
Such rumours having been summarily dismissed,
which is not to say overtly ridiculed,
without investigation, by succeeding
generations of archaeological expertise.
*
Why would this be so
we have to wonder?
***
***
And why are countless astrological alignments
at so many other sites still viewed with a similar skepticism,
if not contempt, by the current crop of so called experts?
*
It may also be worth mentioning
that the properties of the various mounds
in the Boyne Valley Complex were cryptically
encoded into the mythological record!
***
***
Clever, huh?
*
France & Vincent 
1 thought on “Bend it like the Boyne…”