Magical Fore

 

 

This is Fore. It is one of the few places I know where a stone building sits as comfortably into natural surroundings as though it were a limestone outcrop. Fore is a place of outstanding beauty; the ruined Benedictine abbey actually succeeds in drawing  attention to the peace and beauty of the valley around it. The immediate impact comes from its lack of commercialization; it comes on the traveler as something magical, something that  rose from the green fields beneath it. There was a time when Clonmacnoise had the same magic, but poor and tasteless development put an end to that.

Consequently,(and not surprisingly), some magical myths have grown up around Fore. Here are the 7 wonders of Fore: the monastery in the bog, the mill without a race, the water that flows uphill, the tree that has three branches/the tree that won’t burn, the water that won’t boil, the anchorite in a stone and the stone/lintel raised by St Fechin’s prayers.

Weather and Landscape are One

In this poem I  have, (not for the first time), exaggerated the amount of rainfall we get in Ireland; I tend to for its evocativeness. It creates a sense of the ethereal, lifting the earth into the clouds,  thereby releasing all the spirits of the air onto the land. And I do believe that that closeness to the clouds has fuelled the famous imagination of  Irish writers and story-tellers over the millennia. (Those wraith-like shapes of clouds drifting slowly across fields, through lonely valleys, tangling in stunted hawthorns, could hardly fail to impress lively, often superstitious imaginations).  I also believe that the meeting of earth and sky, its ever-changing panoramas, contributes hugely to the spectacle and beauty of  Irish scenery.

Here, weather and landscape are one:

the squall-flayed hills,

wind-warped thorns,

lightless grey limestone.  

Even in summer

the fluke-ridden fields,  

drizzle-drowned hillsides,

midge-infested boglands  

groan beneath sagging clouds;

and if there are spells

of sun-burst in the furze,

they are too quickly muzzled with rain.