The map of ancient Ireland

I was brought up in the bright lights of the Tops, Raphoe, beside the car-park for that remarkable site/sight, the Beltony Stone Circle. Naturally I thought this was the most wonderful place on earth. More than half a century later, I'm still assembling the evidence.
In recent times this project has received real encouragement.
First there was the discovery, through the 'Words We Use' column by the late Diarmuid O'Muirhithe in the 'Irish Times', that 'Tops' wasn't an English word for a hilly eminence, as I feared. Instead, it refers to 'tap tineadh', the place where the torches were lit for the procession to the stone circle. (Beltony, of course, refers to the Bealtaine fire feast which has occurred for several thousand years around the eve of May 1st.)
Next, in 2006 (simply can't believe it's been that long) came the book from Brian Lacey, 'Cenél Conaill and the Donegal Kingdoms AD 500 - 800'. It's dangerous to paraphrase here, but as it's close to bedtime I'll say it establishes that the people of the countryside around the Beltony Stone Circle were very important in the early history of Ireland, and provided two or three of the first High Kings. Only surprising, of course, to those not from the area :-)
I saw Brian in Glencolumbkille last week but the rigours of Fiddle Week meant it wasn't the most opportune time to thank him properly.
Now it's the turn of two more books - and an American - to make their contributions.
I met the American woman outside Oideas Gael last Monday. I was waiting for the Donegal fiddle students to arrive and she was waiting to go on her archaeology trip. She mentioned she was doing a Master's which involves what might be called a 'holistic' approach to early Irish history and pre-history. She's looking at the archaeological evidence and also at the mythological tales and the places mentioned in them, and trying to map all the info (if I understood correctly). She said she's already unearthed some interesting connections, and enough to consider developing the project into a PhD.
I mentioned that I was reading a book which was outlining a whole series of relationships between ancient Celtic and druidical sites, mostly looking at France, but also, briefly, at England, Scotland and Ireland. As I couldn't remember the name of the book or the author, this information was of limited usefulness. But here now is the book, 'The Ancient Paths: Discovering the Lost Map of Celtic Europe'. And here's the author, Graham Robb, a biographer and historian, who has pedalled around 15,000 miles assembling the evidence for what look like ground-breaking and pretty astounding findings.
The final book, for now, is 'The Origins of the Irish' by J. P. Mallory, a solid read if a bit dismissive of the mythological stuff. I haven't finished it yet.
It's hard to believe that little systematic work has been done - or so it seems - on possible relationships between important ancient sites in Ireland (I'll probably find out there are a load of books and theses on this very subject, but I haven't seen them).

A while back I took a ruler to a dog-eaten map of Ireland with what I thought were intriguing results. As my interest was primarily in Beltony Stone Circle, I drew a few straight lines. Here's what I found -

• a line from Beltony to the stone circle in Culdaff goes through Grianan of Aileach
• a line from Beltony to Newgrange runs close to another Beltony outside Omagh and also through an important monument between Augher and Clogher, the tomb of Knockainy. It also goes through Kilmacrenan and Cashel in north Donegal, some ruins near Cashel, and ends up at the tip of Horn Head

I drew a few more out of interest with similar results.

Tonight I've spent another two or three hours on the project after looking at a couple of maps of Ireland in Graham Robb's book. Here's what he found - 

• the five ancient capitals of Ireland form a parallelogram based on solstice lines. Uisneach (capital of Mide) is at the centre, the other four capitals are on parallel lines, Cnoc Áine (Munster), Cruachan (Connacht), Emain Macha (Ulster) and Dún Ailinne (Leinster)
• a line from Grianan Aileach through Uisneach hits the southern coast at Ardmore, probably the oldest monastic settlement in Ireland. If projected onwards towards Spain, it hits land at the exact point where a Celtic king of Galicia, Breogán, sent off his sons and a group of warriors to Ireland, according to the 'Book of Invasions'. For good measure, the line continues to the 'sacred promontory' on the south-west tip of Spain

And still the wonder grew. I drew a few more lines, and here's the most startling finding -

• a line drawn from Beltony Stone Circle through Uisneach, fabled to be where first fire was lit on Bealtaine eve, is almost an exact north-south line - it pretty much follows the line of longitude all the way til it hits the coast at Ram Head near Dungarvan in Waterford

More -

• the line from Beltony to Emain Macha appears (at a glance) to head over the monument on Croaghan Hill a few miles away
• the line from Beltony to Newgrange goes over Kilmonster, a group of passage tombs a couple of miles away from the stone circle. A monastery was established in that locality
• a line from area of the tomb complex at Malin Beg in Glencolumbkille through Beltony Stone Circle seems to finish on the east coast at a monument called the Giant's Grave near Cushendall
• a line from this Giant's Grave at Cushendall to Newgrange goes through a landmark beside Newry called Bernish Rock. So does a continuation of the Beltony/Emain Macha line. This is the vicinity of the wonderful megalithic monument at Clontygora - of special interest to me as that's where I used to go on some of my first holidays with our neighbours the Gills. I'll look into this further.  
• a couple of lines seem to finish on Inisbofin Island off west Donegal - Legannay Dolmen/Beaghmore Stone Circles/ Inisbofin and also Emain Macha/Beltony/ Colmcille's Oratory/ Inisbofin

These are all rough lines hand-drawn with a pen and ruler, but there's certainly a lot to go on. It will be interesting to look at these lines in relation to the solstice lines - where the sun rises and sets at significant times of the year. Also lunar movements, of course (maybe you've seen that stunning pic of the moon sitting like an egg in the Grianan of Aileach eggcup). 

This is also pretty hurried tonight but I'll post up some pics of the maps shortly. Graham Robb has suggested there could be another book to be written about the Celtic maps of Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. Looks like Ireland alone could provide that . . .

A Graham Robb 'Lost Map of Ireland'