Burial ground, Mawmore, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Burial Grounds
In the townland of Mawmore in West Cork, there is a field that local people have long called "Páirc na Marbh", the field of the dead.
The ground gives nothing away. No mound, no marker, no visible disturbance in the soil betrays whatever lies beneath, yet the name has persisted, passed down through generations as a quiet acknowledgement that this particular piece of land holds the dead.
The Irish placename tradition of recording burial grounds in this way is an old and widespread one, and "Páirc na Marbh" belongs to a category of site where folk memory has outlasted any physical evidence. In many parts of Ireland, fields with similar names preserve the location of early medieval cemeteries, unconsecrated burial grounds, or sites where victims of famine or disease were interred without formal rite or monument. At Mawmore, no excavation or survey has revealed what period the burials might belong to, or how many individuals may be involved. The name alone survives as the record.