Children's burial ground, Scrallaghbeg, Co. Kerry

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Burial Grounds

Children’s burial ground, Scrallaghbeg, Co. Kerry

On the eastern approach to Gleann na nGealt, a quiet valley on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, a largely destroyed site sits on a fairly steep slope about two hundred metres from the river.

A modern laneway cuts directly through its centre, and little survives above ground. What makes it quietly remarkable is its reputed purpose: it was used as a children's burial ground, one of a particular kind found across Ireland known in Irish as a cillín, a place set apart from consecrated ground where unbaptised infants and others excluded from formal Church burial were interred, often at the margins of parishes, on old boundaries, or near pre-Christian sites.

The site is recorded under the townland name Caherbaun, or An Chathair Bhán in Irish. When it was surveyed as part of the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, published in 1986, possible graves were noted alongside the broader assessment of the site. The valley it overlooks, Gleann na nGealt, carries its own layer of folklore; the name translates roughly as the valley of the mad or the lunatics, a place long associated in local tradition with wandering and sanctuary. Whether that association influenced how this ground came to be used is not recorded, but the proximity is striking. The site itself is described as largely destroyed, its earlier form difficult to read, and the laneway running through it has further disrupted whatever physical evidence remained.

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