Children's burial ground, Com Dhíneol Theas, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Burial Grounds
On the lower western slopes of Beennacouma, overlooking the broad sweep of Coumeenoole strand on the Dingle Peninsula, there is a low mound of stone and earth that most walkers would pass without a second thought.
It is, in fact, a calluragh, the Irish term for an unbaptised children's burial ground, a category of site once common across Ireland but now mostly forgotten or unrecognised. These were places set apart from consecrated ground, where infants who died before baptism were quietly interred, outside the full rites of the Church yet not entirely without care or reverence.
The mound at Com Dhíneol Theas is an irregular shape, running roughly 13 metres north to south and between 8 and 10 metres east to west. On the uphill side it barely rises above the surrounding ground, but on the western edge it reaches about 2 metres in height, giving it a lopsided, organic quality that distinguishes it from any purely agricultural feature. A semi-circular curve in the field wall running along its western side may preserve the outline of a clochaun, a small dry-stone cell or hut of the kind associated with early Christian activity in this part of Kerry. Two small cairns, one on the western side and one on the southern, each support a cross-slab inscribed with a plain cross on its west-facing surface. These simple incised crosses are the site's clearest signal that the ground was considered, in some sense, sacred. The site was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, a systematic study of the Corca Dhuibhne region.
The cross-slabs are worth looking at closely if you find yourself here. They are not elaborate; the crosses are unadorned and cut directly into the stone face. That plainness is itself telling, marking a practice that sat at the edge of official religious life, local and informal rather than ecclesiastical.