The More I Know the Less I Understand

The other day I needed to go to the post office, but An Post Dunfanaghy closed forever in December, so I went to Falcarragh, the village to the west of us. I had been curious about this thing on the cover of a book.

Since you're probably curious, here are four typical jokes from the collection:

Tractor  

A Yank stopped to talk to a farmer and went on to brag about the size of his farm. He said, "It takes me two days to drive around each field." Our farmer said, "I had a tractor like that one time too but I got rid of it." 

Only Mustard  

A Yank visited an old aunt in the country and she invited him to stay for tea. She set the table and was in the kitchen flying[sic] the bacon and eggs. He was sitting at the table and as he liked mustard, he always carried a little box in his waistcoat pocket, and he put a little on the plate she put in front of him. When she returned, she wiped it off with her apron saying, "I can't keep them dammed hens off the table."

You See Nothing  

A man and wife were leaving after Mass and she said to him, "Did you see your woman from across the road and the hat she was wearing? "No," says he. "Did you not see him in his shirt sleeves like a young fellow?" "No," says he. "Surely you saw the daughter that's home from Dublin and a bit of a mini skirt on her?" "No," says he. "Ali! There no good bringing you to Mass, you see nothing." 

Next of Kin 

An elderly priest came across a dead donkey on the roadside and he rang the local Garda station to inform them. A rather abrupt Garda said "It's the priest's duty to look after the dead." "It is also the priest's duty to inform the next of kin," says the priest. 

I see why these jokes are funny, but I'm not sure I understand everything about their context. Or maybe I do? How would I know?

I read the whole book and there's not a word in it about the picture on the cover. Other sources tell me that it's a pillar with a stone on top called Cloich Cheann Fhaola, which is also the name of the parish, sometimes spelled Cloughaneely (Claw'ha neelee). The name means Stone of the Head of Man With a Wolf's Head.

Whose head of what? A Donegal website explains How Cloughhaneely Got Its Name:

Balor, the mythological king of Tory Island, was widely known as Balor of the Evil Eye. He stole a prized cow from Cenn Faelad, (translates as wolf-headed), who was a chieftain living in this area. The chieftain resolved to kill Balor but his druid told him that Balor could only be killed by the hand of Balor's own grandson. Balor, aware that his enemy knew his weakness, kept his only daughter Eithne locked under close guard in a tower on the eastern end of Tory. Cenn Faelad, assisted by his banshee and disguised as a noble lady, succeeded in gaining entry to the tower and when he revealed himself to Eithne she immediately fell in love with him. Nature took its course and when Cenn Faelad returned to the mainland, he left Eithne with child. She gave birth to male triplets but when Balor found out that his security had been breached he ordered that the children be drowned. One of the children survived and was fostered by his uncle, Gavida, the blacksmith brother of Cenn Faelad. (Source.)

Now wait a minute. This is a Tuatha dé Danann story I've heard before: Lugh's mother Eithne's imprisonment, and his father Cian who owned the magic cow. This local version is different. 

Continuing:

Balor, outraged by Cenn Faelad's plan to kill him, went to the mainland and seized Cenn Faelad and laying his head across a large white stone he severed it with one blow of his sword. A red stain, said to be Cenn Faelad's blood, can still be seen on the white stone which is called Cloch Cheann Fhaola (The Stone of the Head of Cenn Faelad) or the Cloughaneely Stone. The stone weighs a ton and a half and in 1774 Wybrants Olphert of Ballyconnell House, with the help of a party of Royal Navy sailors, managed to raise the Cloughaneely stone on to a sixteen foot high pillar. The inscription on the stone read, “Clog-an-Neely. Erected 1774 by Wybrants Olphert and Sarah, his wife.” 

I totally wanted to see that stone, but it's not on any of the maps I usually consult. I knew it was somewhere on the estate of of Wybrant and Sarah Ophert: Ballyconnell House near Falcarragh.

Old entrance gate to Ballyconnell.

Falcarragh is in an gaeltacht (Irish speaking area), and the old estate is now owned by the Údarás na Gaeltachta, the development agency for the gaeltacht. The house is boarded up. Local people raised money to use the forest as a ParkRun. They have a race every Saturday, but during the week it's deserted. 

I wandered around the ParkRun paths for two hours looking for the Cloich Cheann Fhaola. 

The drawing shows Muckish behind it, so it must be near the spot where I took this photo. But I couldn't find it. 

I found loads of other cool stuff though.

Ballyconnell House

This is the grave of the last landlord, who died in 1917, and didn't see his house occupied by the Irish army and then turned into a Catholic School. There are probably local stories about that transition period, and I hope I hear them someday.


I think this is a well, but it's not on the ordnance map.

There's a pond nearby, similarly overgrown. Maybe someday there will be people and money to restore them. 

The well has steps going down to it, and a white quartz stone set in the wall opposite the bottom step. If it was a holy well at one time, it would have been inside the wall of the estate, and I doubt the landlords would have allowed anyone to use it for Catholic rites. Maybe it is just the well for the house.

The bluebells are in full bloom right now. 

Photos can never capture them.

The forest is full of those exotic specimen trees Victorians loved collecting. There was a eucalyptus near the walled garden that smelled like California.

Lots of native trees too, which had little plaques giving their names in Irish and English.

I think that's a cork oak beyond Pippin. It didn't have a plaque.

There are two huge Monterey Cypress near the house.

The plaque didn't have the Irish for Monterey Cypress. 

And one of those weird trees Victorians also planted in Santa Cruz.

At the side of the house is another pond that curved through a sycamore wood very prettily, with trees and white stones set on an island in the middle of it. Now it's overgrown and wrecked. 

And there's a tombstone:

The stone reads:

Kenny 

21 

Falcarragh 

1 7/8

huh. 

The oddest thing I saw is what's inside this arch. On the other side of the wall is the golf course, which were fields or pastures back in the day. This arch was the gate between the house and the fields. Now it's blocked up, and it sort of feels like a churchy alcove. I could see that someone had painted something on the concrete blocks across the old opening. 

It is hard to understand what happened here. Someone painted a female creature with wings offering a bowl(?) to a male human. But they are literally defaced. Someone didn't scratch them off, or paint over them. The faces of those creatures have been literally beaten off, like with a mallet. Those dark patches where their faces used to be are deep holes in the concrete blocks.  

Whoa. 

It was getting late, and I still had to go to the post office. I gave up trying to find Cloich Cheann Fhaola. 

I handed over my parcel: the stack of paperwork requesting another year's visa. Postage was €9. I didn't have any cash on me, but when I tried to use my Bank of Ireland debit card, the clerk said that it wouldn't work in the machine. I didn't even try to ask for that to be explained. I offered to go get cash, if they would hang on to my precious paperwork. She said if I didn't mind. I said I didn't mind, but if I did go get cash, would she do me a favor? "I think I could," she said. I pulled out my phone and asked, "Can you show me where this is?"

She knew exactly where it was, and we began the familiar transaction of her offering a landmark, and me trying to integrate her vague descriptions it into something I recognized. I was doing pretty well, soon understood why I hadn't found it—I had turned down the wrong road. Typical.

Now I was sorted. Then the other clerk told me how to find it in a completely other way, parking at the cemetary next to the National School. 

Both ways will work just as well. Typical Irish answer. I love this place so much. 

I found the stone, underwelming as these phallic monuments always are. The journey is the destination, as they say.

Ballyconnell is gorgeous, full of trees and birds, flowers, and friendly people. It's a perfect village park. But as I said, I've never seen it on any tourist information, and tourists would love it. I'm not a tourist, but I'll never be a local. The post office clerks didn't hesitate to tell me how to get there, twice. But I have the sense that the park is for the locals. But I don't know for sure, and I'm sure I'll never understand.