7 Chapter Seven: Gougane Barra
Gougane Barra
The sun is a suggestion. It slips in
where it can – some light-
charmed stream. A waterfall,
water lacing down through rocks.
We’ve hiked along a maze
of beech and aspen, up to where
beards of bog moss grow thick
on boulders – darked to browns
in shade. Here ferns hold firm,
their tongueroots mining cracks into
the greening stones. Just off the path,
blue-line veining, orange crowns –
the mapwork inch-round mushrooms
know. Wonders more ahead- the moor –
til we find us
turned, gone all ways.
We are urged on,
along old confusions
never settled. Like those spare hills
shadowed below,
of distance this is:
the mist that pauses
now, shapeless,
then sures
to the thinness of air.
– Gougane Barra Forest Park, Ireland
Steve Wilson
The Midwest Quarterly; Spring 2009; 50, 3; ProQuest
pg. 259
Entry #1: “In spite of twenty centuries of Christianity, the old pagan practices at healing wells have survived–a striking instance of human conservatism. St. Patrick found the pagans of his day worshipping a well called Slán, ‘health-giving,’ and offering sacrifices to it, and the Irish peasant to-day has no doubt that there is something divine about his holy wells. The Celts brought the belief in the divinity of springs and wells with them, but would naturally adopt local cults wherever they found them. Afterwards the Church placed the old pagan wells under the protection of saints, but part of the ritual often remained unchanged. . . . The patient perambulated the well three times deiseil or sun-wise, taking care not to utter a word. Then he knelt at the well and prayed to the divinity for his healing. Then he drank of the waters, bathed in them, or laved his limbs or sores, probably attended by the priestess of the well. Having paid his dues, he made an offering to the divinity of the well, and affixed the bandage or part of his clothing to the well or a tree near by” (MacCulloch 193-4).
Entry #2: Gougane
Barra (Finbarr’s Cleft) Signed south of Macroom on the R584, 4.5 miles past Ballingeary. The site has been a forest park since 1966.
The Lee Valley is strongly associated with the early life of St. Finbarr. His father’s land was outside Macroom and it was here at Macloneigh that he founded his first church. He is the Patrick of Munster bringing Christianity to the southwest and, like Patrick, he is depicted with crozier and mitre, a patriarchal and political figure in church history. He is officially remembered as the founder of Cork city and its first bishop, but he is probably most popularly associated with his hermitage and oratory here at Gougane Barra, the source of the River Lee.
His pattern replaces the old midsummer gathering here at this very powerful nature site at the source of the river. In times past, cattle were driven through the water here to ensure their health and well-being for the coming year. The island, which is joined by a causeway, had a wooden pole erected at the centre where votive rags and spane