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Bolg na mbend

      atbath I n-inis Érend.

      A year had Slanga, this is true,

      till he died in his fine mound;

      the first man of the Fir Bolg of the peaks

      who died in the island of Ireland.

      [Translated by R.A.S. Macalister]

      The Laginian invasion (from which Leinster, or Laighean in Irish, derives its name) was the last invasion before that of the Gaels, and their story is contained in the tale Orgain Denda Ríg or (‘The Plunder of Dind Ríg’), the hero of which is Labraid Loingsech. Known as the first story of the Leinstermen, it was probably written in the ninth century. According to the Lebor Gabála, ‘The Plunder of Dind Ríg’ is dated to 307 BC. This date is not seriously contended by scholars, as the third century before Christ is generally agreed to be the time of the Laginian invasion. Although the invasion of the Lagin is not disputed, the idea of Labraid being exiled, a word implied in the epithet Loingsech or ‘exile’, is not given much credence. However, it allows for a good story while preserving the invasion and the plunder intact. In the original version, rather than being exiled Labraid is the leader of an Armorican (Fir Morca) invasion from north-west France. The later story also allows Labraid to lay waste to Dind Ríg as an act of legitimate revenge rather than a work of invasive destruction. Labraid was said to have come up from Munster and failed in his first attempt to capture the royal fortress and its king, Cobthach, who was within. Thus, the tale provides a solution, namely that the harper Craiphtine was to lull the enemy to sleep by playing sleep music (suantraighe) on his harp while the besiegers put their faces to the ground and their fingers in their ears. The result was that the defenders of Dind Ríg fell asleep and were slaughtered and Dind Ríg was destroyed. According to the original version, Cobthach was spared and lived in peace with Labraid who then became King of Leinster.

      A later version tells how Labraid invited Cobthach to a feast in Dind Ríg, where he and his followers were roasted in an iron house that Labraid had spent a year building in total secrecy (thus giving rise to the proverb: ‘every Leinsterman has his secret’). The Book of Leinster has the following verses:

      Ro hort in rigrad moa ríg,

      (ba gním olc, ba domna hír);

      loisc Labraid méit gaile

      Cobthach Cóel mac Ugaine.

      Ba Túaim Tenbath cosin olc

      in ríg-dind rán, in rochnocc,

      coro n-oirg Labraid, lán ngaile,

      diar chuir ár a maccraide.

      The princes were slain round their king

      (it was an ill deed, it was matter for wrath):

      the Dumb Exile of martial might burnt

      Cobthach Cael, son of Ugaine.

      Till that crime, Tuaim Tenbath was the name

      of the noble kingly hold, the noted hill,

      till Labraid full of valour sacked it,

      when he made a slaughter of its young men.

      [Translated by Edward Gwynn]

      Tuaim Tenbath was the old name for Dind Ríg. Tuaim has been translated as a moat mound or burial mound, and Tenbath has been glossed as a ‘red flaming wall of fire’.

      In 1934, The Irish Times reported that a ‘most compact and regular cist’ containing cremated bones had been found in the townland of Ballyknockan. The precise location of this site is unknown, but that a Bronze Age burial should be found close to this Late Bronze Age site is significant.

      At Killinane, a mile south-south-east from Dind Ríg and on the same side of the River Barrow is an Early Bronze Age burial site, or cist. During the Early Bronze Age, from about 1800 to 1300 BC, funeral rites involving both cremation and inhumation were popular, many of the bodies being buried in a crouched position. Burials were sometimes accompanied by a range of distinctive pottery and grave goods (a sign of Christian burial being an absence of grave goods). The cist at Killinane contained the cremated remains of two individuals as well as rock crystal and quartz fragments and a food bowl. If Dind Ríg were plundered in 307 BC, as stated by the Lebor Gabála, then the cist at Killinane as well as that at Ballyknockan would presumably have been known to the inhabitants of Dind Ríg, and may well have been the graves of Slanga and of earlier kings from this famous royal site.

      Perhaps the largest Bronze Age site in Carlow, and possibly in the country, was found at Ballon Hill [61], about six miles south-west of Tullow. Much of Ballon Hill was a Bronze Age cemetery and included pit and cist burials; cist burials were often under mounds and contained in a box-like structure of stone slabs. Ballon Hill contained two ring barrows, which are generally small mounds with an encircling ditch and bank. They are burial mounds, and excavations have shown cremations of a Bronze Age or Iron Age date. A good example of a ring barrow is Rath Gráinne on the Hill of Tara, Co. Meath [42]. Julius Caesar and other writers note that burning the dead was customary among the Celts. Generally, this was reserved for the upper stratum of society, but with such a large graveyard as that on Ballon Hill, the custom of cremation may have been more inclusive.

      Another custom associated with burial was the burying of white stones or lumps of quartz crystal with the dead. Beneath one of the graves at Ballon Hill a funeral urn was found upside down and beneath it, placed in a triangular position, were three small pebbles, one white, one green and one black. This custom can be seen all over the country as well as in Scotland and within what is known as the Sacred Circle on the Isle of Man. A stone’s throw from where I write in Co. Cork is a cromlech with a large quartz stone beside it, a material that seemingly had a religious meaning for our ancestors, though in what precise way we do not know. We do know that stones were regarded in many primal societies as the abode of supernatural beings. At Plouër, in the French part of the Cȏtes-du-Nord, since earliest times, girls have been sliding down a large block, and if a girl manages to do this without scraping her flesh, she is assured of soon finding a husband. The custom can also be seen in other parts of France and is no doubt connected to an earlier form of stone worship.

      We do not have any poets or bards from the Bronze Age to weave a picture of the world they lived in, but we can possibly get a glimpse into their beliefs and world view from the way they buried their dead. An excavation at Ballon Hill in 1853 unearthed three skeletons ‘huddled together in a small space not above two feet in length’. They were buried beneath an immense boulder, and urns were found close by. Beneath the boulder were granite slabs and beneath these a bed of charcoal was found. Some of the urns found here are the finest examples discovered in Ireland, and they along with the food vessels show that these peoples believed in an afterlife. Their ‘sitting-up’ positions also showed that they were ready to attend some ceremonial gathering in the afterlife, but the presence of a dagger blade of bronze seems to suggest that one needed to be on one’s guard even in the Otherworld.

      About five miles north-east of Leighlinbridge is Kelliston (cell osnaid, ‘the graveyard of the groans’) situated on Magh Fea or the Plain of Fea [61], the site of a noted battle in the fifth century AD. The King of Leinster at that time was Fraoch son of Fionnchaidh. This battle probably took place in the late fifth century AD. Aonghus who was King of Munster at that time and his wife Eithne Uathach both fell by Muiredach and by Oilill. This battle is remembered in the following verse from Keating’s history:

      Atbath craobhdhos bhile mhóir

      Aonghus Molbhthach mac Natfraoich

      Fágbhaidh lá hOilill a rath

      I gcath Cell Osnadha claoin.

      There died by the spreading branch of a great tree,

      Aonghus Molbhthach, son of Natfraoch;

      He lost his success by Oilill

      In the battle of Cell Osnaid the vile.

      [Translated by P.S. Dinneen]

      A possible site for this battle is at Kelliston

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