History in the Land. The Todd’s Den…

Even after sixty-years, it was not difficult to find. The house at the bottom of the lane had been replaced by a modern bungalow but this was certainly the lane; overgrown and now, one hundred meters in from the road, blocked by a farm-gate. We parked in front of the gate and crossing it, we started walking.

My son, having aligned a recent interest in Irish mythology and a story I told him of a great aunt who owned a Giant’s Grave, persuaded me to take a day away from the dispensing bench and bring him to Mary Gallagher’s home, a place I visited frequently as a child. My father lived with his aunt and her family during the summers following his mother’s death when he was four. This was the only mother he really knew and although unspoken, I understood that.

A walker had helpfully cut a narrow path up the middle of the lane. We progressed along this in single file with deep wet grass, nettles and brambles encroaching from the stone-walled sides. As I remembered, it is a long straight lane rising up from the road and at its end, it arcs left and hooks around into the yard in front of the farmhouse. The arc, unused for years, was thickly overgrown and impenetrable so we opened a slap and entered what I remembered as the back-field; today home to ten grazing cows. Confused, I sought a landmark to anchor my memory and realized the collapsed roofless stone building I was looking at was the outhouses; the farmhouse itself was completely gone.

It was then the cows stampeded; more in hunger than aggression, yet to be safe we scramble to the wall on the lane and crossing it we were in what was the yard, yet now, the homestead gone, it is part of the back-field.

And there ahead of us, as I had remembered it, the stone encrusted mound that Mary Gallagher called the Todd’s Den; the Giant’s Grave. She once told me in a hushed tone that she had never went onto it, avoiding all contact as her mother-in-law had instructed when Mary first came to the farm as a young bride. A man from the Ministry, she confided, had once arrived to investigate and in doing so broke a number of branches on one of the hawthorn trees. The next morning when he awoke his hair was lying on the pillow.

We approached the mound gingerly not wishing another bovine stampede. By this point the cows had lost interest.

The Todd’s Den is a classic neolithic wedge tomb with portal stones facing west and narrowing over its fifteen feet and it seems few know of its existence. Not very impressive looking on this grey and wet Monday afternoon, if excavated this 3,500-year-old structure would be spectacular. Unlike my great-aunt Mary’s house of which there is no trace, it has rightly been protected; by being ignored, avoided, neglected and very likely feared. Two hawthorn trees still grow atop and we were careful not to touch any part and left as we came.

Visiting the Giant’s Grave, we were off course guilty of trespass, probably from the moment we crossed the farm-gate at the bottom of the lane, certainly from the point we opened the slap and entered the back-field. I had rehearsed a defense should we be challenged. I was showing my son the home of his great-great-aunt and I hoped that connection, names from the recent past, would seal a common bond and exonerate us of any crime. Heaney’s Tollund Man, and his contemporaries from Irish bogs, were a clear and chilling warning not to commit trespass.

The North-West seems covered in archeological treasures not just from the ancient past but also from more recent times. I am no historian but have recently realized the joy of these historical artifacts literally at and under our feet.

Our first stop of that day was at the Grianan of Aileach in Co Donegal. From this 8^th Century fort, reconstructed in the 1870s by an Anglican clergyman, the fort gives outstanding views; to the West up Lough Swilly and across Inch Island, to the North up the Innishowen Peninsula to the North-West over Lough Foyle and to the South up along the Foyle towards Lifford and Strabane. This panoramic view is why this structure is here. It was home to the Cenel nEoghan (the Ui Neills) and was sacked by the Vikings.

From here we travelled South along minor side roads towards Lifford and snaked over and back between the two jurisdictions without even knowing. At Lifford we visited St Lugadius’s Church (Church of Ireland) just off the diamond. This church was built in 1625 in the early years of the Plantation of Ulster and is still hosting weekly services. St Lugadius was a 6^th Century Irish saint and missionary and contemporary of St Columba. He mostly worked in Scotland and is buried there but came from Ireland. Another version of his name is St Moluag or Mulagh. St Patrick’s Catholic Church just outside Lifford is situated in Murlog.

From Lifford we could have crossed the border again into Strabane at the head of River Foyle where the River Mourne and River Finn join in its formation but we travelled on along the right bank of the River Finn to Castlefin on route to Castlederg. What I had not appreciated having visited both towns many times, is their similarity. The physical shape of the towns especially the diamonds are almost identical as is the roads leading onto the bridges one over the Finn the other over the Derg a tributary of the Mourne. This architecture and town design clearly comes from the early years of the Plantation but these were always important river crossing points and for that reason the castles, in both towns, predate the Plantation.

Our history is in the fabric and the names of the places where we live. Habitation leaves its mark and informs. Sadly, so much of historical fabric is removed, much of it necessarily, but what we can we should maintain. Get out there and find it, cherish it and treat it with care and consideration. But be careful with trespass and best stay away from the Todd’s Den or you might get stampeded by cows or worse your hair might fall out.