Heaney vents his poetic
outrage
- at sacrilege of Tara
By - Unknown.
Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney has joined international
experts to vehemently condemn plans by the Irish
government to build a motorway through one of Ireland's
most historically important areas.
In his first broadcast interview on the controversy
surrounding the M3 motorway that is already well under
construction through the Tara Skreen valley, the Co.
Londonderry born poet condemned a "ruthless desecration"
.
He told a BBC Radio Ulster documentary, Tar on Tara: "I
think it literally desecrates an area - I mean the word
means to de-sacralise and for centuries the Tara
landscape and the Tara sites have been regarded as part
of the sacred ground".
"I was just thinking actually the Proclamation of the
Irish Republic in 1916 summoned people in the name of the
dead generations and called the nation, called the people
in the name of the dead generations".
"If ever there was a place that deserved to be preserved
in the name of the dead generations from pre-historic
times up to historic times up to completely recently, it
was Tara".
He went on to point out that under British rule in
Ireland, Tara, seat of the ancient High Kings of Ireland,
and a place of sacred worship in both pagan and Christian
times, appeared to have more protection than in today's
Irish Republic.
"I was reading around recently and I discovered that WB
Yeats and George Moore, two writers at the turn of the
century and Arthur Griffith, wrote a letter to the Irish
Times sometime at the beginning of the last century
because a society called the British Israelites had
thought that the Ark of the Covenant was buried in Tara,
and they had started to dig on Tara Hill".
"And they wrote this letter and they talked about the
desecration of a consecrated landscape. So I thought to
myself if a few holes in the ground made by amateur
archaeologists was a desecration, what is happening to
that whole countryside being ripped up is certainly a
much more ruthless piece of work".
And he added that Tara was unique to him as an Irishman:
"Tara means something equivalent to me to what Delphi
means to the Greeks or maybe Stonehenge to an English
person or Nara in Japan, which is one of the most famous
sites in the world".
"It's a word that conjures an aura - it conjures up what
they call in Irish dúchas, a sense of
belonging".
Ireland's biggest ever road project stretches 61km and is
expected to cost around 800m euros. It is aimed at easing
congestion north of Dublin where new housing developments
have sprung up for the thousands of people working in the
city.
The government decided a motorway was needed, with a new
route away from the existing N3 road, instead bringing it
through an area which is described by archaeologists
internationally as the most important in Ireland and of
world significance.
The European Commission is considering legal action
against the Irish government which granted itself the
powers in 2004 to destroy features or areas of
archaeological importance classified as national
monuments if in the national interest.
However, any action will not stop the road, well under
construction, and expected to be completed within two
years.
© The Belfast Telegraph, 3rd. March 2008.
Related Articles:
Heaney vents his poetic outrage at sacrilege of
Tara.
Heaney hits at "desecration" of sacred Tara.
Heaney claims motorway near Tara desecrates sacred
landscape.
Yeats/Moore/Hyde Letter to The Times - 1902.
