‘A shelter dropped by the gods 1,000 years ago’
A magnificent memorial was unveiled on the summit of Beinn Ghlas at the weekend to remember two love stories between Scotland and Ireland.
The Sheiling was commissioned by Sam MacDonald of Barguillean Estate near Taynuilt in memory of his Belfast-born wife Evelyn, who died from cancer last year.
‘We came up here with friends and relatives and Evelyn always chose this place for picnics,’ said Sam. ‘This is our dream being fulfilled. She would have loved it.’
Its sculptor David Wilson described it as: ‘A sheiling looking like it had been dropped down on the mountains by the gods 1,000 years ago.’
Dozens made the 1,500ft journey up the 2km gravel track, by foot or by bus, to the mountain shelter, among the 14-turbine Beinn Ghlas wind farm Sam and Evelyn commissioned in 1999 – the first in the West Highlands.
One visitor in the glorious sunshine, Sam’s lifelong friend John Joe Costin, a past president of the National Museum of Ireland, said: ‘This place silences you. You get lost for words.’
One of the opening event’s organisers Marlyn Turbitt, added: ‘It is so much better than I dared to hope.’
There was a private unveiling on Saturday, with speeches from the Consul General of Ireland Mark Hanniffy and Argyll and Bute MSP Michael Russell, and a message from President of Ireland Michael D Higgins, who told The Sheiling’s second, older love story of Deirdre and Naoise.
President Higgins explained: ‘The tragic tale of the two doomed lovers is one of the great tales of an Rúraíocht, the Ulster Cycle, a mythic arc that is the shared inheritance of the peoples of Scotland and Ireland. There is perhaps no place on our islands more representative of that shared inheritance than Argyll, once the home of the ancient Gaelic Kingdom of Dál Riada. It was there that Cú Chulainn, the warrior-hero of the Ulaid, was said to have learned the arts of war, and it was there that Deidre sought sanctuary with Naoise and his brothers Arden and Ainle.
‘I am so pleased that a magnificent memorial will now rest forever on Beinn Glas, not far from Gleann Éite, the place Deirdre and Naoise were said to have found a moment of peace.’
Mr Russell reflected: ‘Deirdre’s story is told, in its earliest form, in the Glen Massan Manuscript. The poems in the document, fictional as they may appear to us, are all rooted in actual places. And that is particularly true of Deirdrie’s farewell to Scotland, the poem which is most valued in this collection. That poem which speaks so movingly of the love of an Irishwoman for the country in which she lived so happily –Scotland – is a poem with real, physical, roots.
‘Places do remember events. And the events of Deirdre and Naoise, and of Sam and Evelyn, are remembered in this place today – and forever.’