Monument, Cuilleendaeagh, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ritual/Ceremonial
In a burial ground in Cuilleendaeagh, County Galway, a man spent years building his own tomb.
That is unusual enough. What makes it stranger still is that he did it openly, during his own lifetime, assembling the structure from salvaged medieval stonework and carving into it an inscription that addressed future visitors directly: "As you are now, so once was I. Pray for me as you pass by." The monument sits in the south-western corner of the burial ground, built into the south face of a small hillock, and it was the work of a local man named Edmund Mullen, who lived in a ruined house nearby and who tended the holy well that stands just to the west of his structure.
When the monument was recorded in August 1985, it measured roughly 3.3 metres wide and 2.15 metres tall. Its construction was a careful piece of bricolage: roughly worked mortared limestone blocks formed the body, but worked into it were dressed cut-stones of medieval date, including window mullions, a segmental arch, and a carved stone head set above the arch's keystone. A slab beneath the arch bore a resurrection scene and the inscription "The resurrection of our Saviour." A second inscribed slab, lying semi-recumbent on a pile of stones a few metres away, was dedicated to Edmund himself; it records that he died in 1806, and its upper section carries a crucifixion scene above the text of his self-composed memorial. The medieval fragments he incorporated suggest he had access to, or was systematically collecting from, the remains of an older ecclesiastical site in the area, reusing them not as mere building material but as deliberately chosen sacred imagery.
By the time the site was revisited in March 2010, considerable changes had been made. The segmental arch Edmund had centred the structure around had been removed and replaced with two flat slabs forming a simple gabled roof. The carved stone head, which had crowned the whole composition, had been taken away, and its current whereabouts are unknown. The burial ground itself was found to be heavily disturbed and much deteriorated. What survives is a modified version of the original structure, stripped of some of its most distinctive elements, standing beside a holy well that Edmund Mullen spent his life tending, in a corner of a field that he apparently never intended to leave.