A Legend Is Stirring
Read Excerpt
The Queen Maeve Trail
The well-made wooden steps up through the conifers to the path to the summit are an adventure in themselves. When I emerge from the trees, Strandhill is directly below me. I locate my parents’ house and check the waves breaking on the world-class surfing beach. At the end of the beach, the ancient ruins of Killaspugbrón Church lie beside Sligo Airport on the northern extremity of the peninsula.
Now it is a short walk to the summit. All around me is a panorama of the counties of Sligo, Donegal, Derry, Fermanagh, Leitrim, Longford and Mayo.
But in my mind’s eye, I see more.
I can see frightening twenty-foot waves roll into Sligo Bay on the biggest winter storms. I can see Viking longboats raiding the isolated settlement of Saint Molaise’s out on Inishmurray Island. I see Saint Patrick walking from Killaspugbrón to Coney Island across Cummeen Strand to convert its pagan inhabitants. I see smugglers sailing into Rosses Point at night with their cargo of illegal poitín from Inishmurray, guided by a light from Michael Bruen’s mud cottage beside the Pilot’s House.
I see the armies of Saint Colmcille and Saint Finian clashing during the Battle of the Books, fought on the smooth slopes of Benbulben. I can see the bold warriors of Connacht criss-crossing the sandy estuaries at Pollcurry, Maguins and Coney Island – off on another daring cattle raid in Ulster. I can see the O’Donnell clan marching down from Tyrconnell to burn Sligo Castle once again.
I see three storm-battered ships from the Spanish Armada sailing across Sligo Bay looking for safe harbour.
I see druids gathering the people together at Samhain to worship the sun, the moon and the stars at the megaliths of Carrowmore. Further south, I see the gathering for the great fair at Cruachan Aí, the ancient capital of Connacht.
I see a prehistoric deity named the Cailleach leaving her home in the hills and flying on her broomstick over Coolera to survey her dominion. I see her unexpectedly diving into a bottomless lake to drown her fairy life, of which she had become tired after 12,000 years.
I can hear the shouts and screams from the primordial, cataclysmic Battle of Moytura.
You too will see all this and more. I will fill you in on the origin of the prehistoric monuments, the story of the landscape they dwell in and the great works of ancient days.
Stories of Queen Maeve have lingered across Connacht and the Atlantic coast since her death two thousand years ago in the Iron Age.
A Sligo surfer has heard whispers on the tide that this ancient Irish warrior is waking from an ancient slumber.
From the mysterious passage tombs of Knocknarea and Carrowmore to the enormous swells that break at Mullaghmore, Waking Maeve carries readers on a rolling wave from the Stone Age to the era of rock ’n’ roll, tracing the myths, landscapes and people that shaped Ireland’s northwest.
Along the way, you’ll meet kings and queens, saints and Vikings, poets and rebels, shipwrecks, surfers and dreamers who left their mark on one of Ireland’s most extraordinary landscapes.
Guided by the enduring spirit of the Neolithic people of the northwest, Queen Maeve and the poet WB Yeats, Seamus Mc Goldrick reveals the deep connections between past and present, inviting readers to discover why Sligo continues to captivate, inspire and surprise
An evocative journey through myth, memory and marine identity, Waking Maeve reconnects us with the ancient relationship between people, place and sea. Seamus Mc Goldrick brings Ireland’s northwest vividly to life through story, landscape and the enduring power of the feminine. Here, Queen Maeve emerges as both wave-rider and warrior of the sea, stirring as if from an ancient slumber beneath the Atlantic tide.