The Prehistoric Landscape
Seamus Heaney writes of a “stone circle chill” in On the Spot (2006). The Nobel Laureate Poet was, like most people, fascinated by prehistoric stone circles. He lived a few country kilometres from Beaghmore which lies high in the Sperrins, Northern Ireland’s largest mountain range. This is the darkest nighttime area in the Six Counties, suffering the least light pollution. Beaghmore (Bheitheach Mhór in Irish) means “big place of birth trees”. Dense woodland was cleared by Neolithic farmers and seven circles of stones, 10 rows of stones and 12 cairns were arranged in purposeful ceremonial positioning on the grass and heather clad moorland.
A total of 1,259 stones was uncovered during peat cutting in the late 1930s. Carbon dating places the circles and alignments 2900 to 2600 BC. Some of the stones have chisel marks which may be Ogham, an ancient Celtic secret sacred writing, a system of symbols used for divination in pre St Patrick days. Intrigue and enigma, magic and mystery, nobody knows what Beaghmore Stone Circles and Alignments stand for except for the astrological significance that three of the rows point to sunrise at the solstice and another row is aligned towards a lunar maximum. Millennia later, Bronze Age stones would provide inspiration for Environmental Art practitioners such as the English artist Richard Long. Seamus Heaney writes In A Kite for Aibhin “Back in that field to launch our long-tailed comet” (2010). That would be his last poem.
