Burial Grd, Úraid, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Burial Grounds
On the summit of a hill called Tulach na Reilige, which translates roughly as the hill of the burial ground, a small rectangle of raised earth looks out over Loch Úraid in County Galway.
It measures only thirteen metres long and nine metres wide, yet it was still receiving the dead as recently as around 1900. What makes it quietly arresting is not its size but its form: the rectangular burial area sits within an oval setting of stones, a combination that suggests considerable age, and irregular grave-markers remain visible inside, uncut and uneven, the kind that accumulate over generations of informal use rather than planned interment.
The site is recorded on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, which dates from the mid-nineteenth century, confirming it was a recognised feature of the landscape at least that long ago. It functioned as a cillín, sometimes called a children's burial ground, a category of informal burial place found across Ireland where unbaptised infants and others excluded from consecrated ground were interred, often in ancient or liminal locations. The use of such sites, frequently at the margins of parishes or on elevated ground with older associations, continued well into the twentieth century in parts of the west of Ireland. According to local knowledge recorded by the cartographer and writer Tim Robinson, this particular site remained in use until approximately 1900.