Lughnasa in the Boyne Valley

August is coming to a close and we have been out on the water pretty much every day this month, testing out our new whitewater rafts and bringing visitors up and down the Boyne. No surprise as the Boyne Valley has just been voted the most popular tourist destination in Ireland! In the meantime we have had the Olympics and the festival of Lughnasa, both of which have links with the Boyne. Before the Olympics there was an even more ancient games in the Boyne Valley. It was called the Aoenach Tailteann to commemorate the goddess Tailtiu. She cleared the land for agriculture so that the first farmers could plant their seeds and build their magnificent monuments.

A modern day Tailtiu?

As we paddle through the valley we can see that the landscape is changing. The crops in the fields are being cut and made ready to be brought in. This was when Tailtiu's foster son, Lugh, the king of the Tuatha de Danann, killed his grandfather, Balor of the evil eye. While this story from the Book of Invasions was probably linked to agriculture with the weakening of the strong summer sun and the crops being harvested, it is also similar to the Mediterranean festival of Neptunalia which was a time to take a break from work and take to the waters. Later on, the Christian faith turned Balor into Crom Dubh and Lugh into St Patrick. These legends then got the hollywood treatment in the Twentieth century when they were turned into Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker.

While the festival of lughnasa is celebrated throughout Ireland, mostly on hilltops, in Meath it is strongly associated with water. To this day in the Boyne Valley we see lots of people who do the rounds of the many holy wells in the area. These were probably linked with a water cult in prehistoric times and there is a long tradition in Ireland of placing objects in water as sacred deposits. In Christian times, the monks used the wells and rivers for baptisms and for keeping fish, so they have always been special places in the landscape. Some of them are associated with omens for the coming year while still others are supposed to have cures for ailments such as warts and backaches. Most of these wells also have fairy trees nearby and their branches are festooned with offerings. Of course, the Boyne itself also featured heavily in the traditions. At Lughnasa, horses were bathed at night at Stackallen, while farmers would drive their cattle into the Boyne at Trim in the nineteeenth century to avoid disease. For those who were more interested in human affairs than livestock, Lughnasa gave the opportunity to try out a new partner in a handfastening which would last a year and a day.
In the meantime we are having a quick break and a cup of tea before the next group of intrepid explorers arrive !

Trim Castle

As part of an effort to update our blog we are going to be posting a bit about some of the things to be seen on our river trips through the Boyne Valley. Right beside our base in Trim is one of the largest Norman castles in Europe. When Hollywood wanted a real castle to film Braveheart in, this is where they set up their cameras.

With its huge curtain walls, limestone base batter and impressive keep, this is exactly what we think of when we imagine life in medieval times. It appears to be the ideal picture of a defensive Norman castle, permanently ready for military activities.You can imagine knights in armour training for battle inside these walls while soldiers pour boiling oil on anyone foolish enough to try and enter. How else would the invading forces keep the peace amongst the unruly Gaels? Certainly there is plenty of evidence for violence within its walls. Decapitated bodies have been found during excavations. The architecture does lend itself to defense and the annals tell us that Rory O' Connor burnt the original wooden castle down before De Lacy built the stone one in the twelfth century. So far, so good. However, in reality, you wouldn't go wasting oil on people in medieval times. This is a myth. Oil was a precious commodity that the Normans traded from the mediteranean over to the Irish Sea and up the Boyne. The majority of people who lived inside the castle were clerks and beaurocrats, not knights. Although every Norman lord was trained in warfare, De Lacy himself was an international diplomat and a businessman, and he preferred money to military glory. He was sent over to stop the other Normans from fighting amongst themselves after Strongbow died. Trim was his administrative centre, which was part of his plan to attract traders and merchants from all over Europe to here. He achieved this aim by creating one of the first experiments in urban planning with merchants renting plots along the new straight streets that the free town council laid out. He had a mint here and he kept all the land records and deeds for the whole of Ireland here rather than in Dublin.

When it came to battle, The Irish preferred running open skirmishes across the fields. Sieges were the only strategy that worked against castles and the Irish were too impatient for that approach. This is if we are talking about the upper classes. When it came to ordinary working Irish people, there is a good possibility that the Irish people did not care whether it was the Gaels or the Normans that was ruling them. While the curtain walls and base batter were originally defenseive features in castles, they are also fashionable features. Castles were built by masons and they had a repertoire of architectural styles which they followed, just like we have features like pvc facia and double glazed windows today. So the defensive features could well have been there to impress. Not everything is about knights fighting.

Take the Barbican gate, which is unique in Ireland. It appears to have acted purely as a defensive entrance and it certainly did, with its double wooden gates, portcullis, murder holes and battlements. It is not unique in Europe though. The Barbican is a replica of the entrance to the De Lacy ancestral castle in Poitou in France. To the French lords and ladies that lived in the castle, this would have made them feel completely at home. The eight sided keep is also unique but it most certainly was not defensive as each side made them extra vulnerable. It may even have been built to reference the eight sided christian cross of its layout.

The keep only had one exit. Any schoolboy playing "castle" will tell you that this is not a good idea if you want to get away from your attackers. So, Trim Castle – military outpost or medieval administrative centre? Come downriver with us for a look yourself and make your own mind up.