The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Mass at ancient site honours children buried in unmarked graves
UNBAPTISED children who were buried in unmarked graves in a cillín at Ballintaggart were remembered and blessed in a quiet and dignified ceremony held at the ancient site on last Thursday evening.
About 60 people braved wind and rain to attend the ceremony on the exposed hilltop of Knockeen, just east of Ballintaggart racecourse, where Fr Jim Sheehy celebrated Mass of the Holy Angels. Among those in attendance were people from at least two families who had members buried among the ogham stones at the site which dates back to early pre-Christian times.
Fr Sheehy said that, to his knowledge, this was the first Mass celebrated at Knockeen in living memory and probably for many centuries.
In a sermon written for the occasion – but not delivered to save people from being drenched by the driving rain – Fr Sheehy outlined the fascinating history of the Knockeen site, which was used by local families as a burial ground for unbaptised infants up until the 1940s.
He said Knockeen appears to have been a sacred place of worship and a burial site from early pagan times. It seems to have been adopted subsequently by the early Christian Church and may have became an ecclesiastical centre, possibly even hosting Eadfrid, Abbot and Bishop of the great Irish Monastery of Lindisfarne and scribe of the Lindisfarne Gospels.
It is also suggested that the site may have been the burial ground for the casualties of a battle in which dhá chéad Seán is dhá chéad Domnall fell. That battle may have been fought against foreign invaders, but another suggestion is that it was a great faction fight between the Clan Domnall and the Clan Seán. Separate research by Catríona Devane, published in Pritia, the Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland, in 2001 points to the possibility of a battle between the local Corcu Dhuibhne clan and a raiding party from the Uí Ferba clan from ‘Below the Hill’.
While the history of Knockeen is anything but clear, Fr Sheehy said that “what all surveys agree on, however, is that over recent centuries and later surveys suggest up to the 1940s that the circular enclosure had served as a Ceallúnach, used by local families for the burial of unbaptised infants… And it was especially to remember and honour those infants… that we, in thanksgiving, celebrated the Mass of the Holy Angels.”
Paudie Ahern from Ballyristeen organised the ceremony at Knockeen with the cooperation of landowner Seán Moran and his son Dónal who were very happy to provide access to the site. Paudie said he was very grateful also to OPW workers Mike Baker and Jimmy O’Connor who cut the grass and had the cillín spick and span for the Mass.
Paudie said the burial of unbaptised children in cillíns was commonplace up to the 1940s and even into the 1950s because the Church forbade their burial in consecrated ground. “People who had a miscarriage or a stillborn child were told their child would be in limbo forever, to forget about it and get on with life. It’s bad enough to lose a child without being told that,” he added.
Paudie’s own mother lost three children through miscarriages and many years later the realisation of that loss inspired him to write a poem to “the memory of all who die in the womb or at birth, without baptism or name”. The words came into his head in a rush as he was working on the farm and he wrote them down on the back of an animal feed bag.
“The words came as fast as I could write… I had no control over it,” he said of the poem which included the lines:
‘So have no fear about our little ones
Or the place they go.
They are with a loving Father
Whose love we long to know.’