An ancient place I discovered after reading the late Jon Marshall ‘s book, “Forgotten places of the north Coast”. In the somewhat dry world of academia this is the Magheraboy Passage Grave
Built 6000 years ago by the post glacial hunter gatherers that lived in WhitePark Bay at the base of the hill this monument is found. I can be hard to find as it is behind yellow gorse.
I have been up there many times, Locals call it “The Druid Table” and I have often wondered about the story behind it. When excavated the bones of 3 females were found, a adult and then a twenty-year-old and sixteen-year-old. To me it is a little sad that their story is lost to the 6 millennia that followed their burial. So I have written a little piece to honour their burials high on the hill above one the best views in the north coast, this is pure fiction … but I think it needs done,
They said the stones were set in place before the people had words to name them, when giants and spirits walked the hills. Yet it was the hands of mortals that dragged them across the fields, bleeding and breaking to make a house for the dead, a place where the world above and the world below might meet.
On the morning of the burial, in the false dawn, the air was heavy with sea-mist, and even the gorse bent as though in mourning. Three women lay on woven mats of reeds: the mother first, her hair-streaked silver though her face was not yet old, her fingers callused from grinding grain and tending fire. Beside her, the elder daughter, with eyes that had once followed a hawk through the sky as if she too might take wing. And the youngest, scarcely more than a child, her laughter still echoing in the minds of those who watched her carried to the grave.
The people grieved. They grieved with wails and with silence, with hands clutching at the wet earth, with the pressing of foreheads to stone. For to lose one was a wound; to lose three was a rift in the fabric of the tribe, a hollow no hearth could fill.
Yet the singers raised their voices, for grief must travel with blessing. They sang of the great river beneath the ground, where all spirits came to drink. They sang of the star-women who weave the night, who wait with outstretched hands for their lost sisters. They sang of rebirth, when the bones of the earth and the bones of the dead become one, and grass rises from their mingling.
Ochre spirals were painted on the faces of the dead, each curve a road the spirit might follow, each line a path back to the mother. Into their hands went gifts: a shard of antler for the youngest, to guard her in wild places; a knob of flint for the elder, to mark her beauty and her promise; and for the mother, a river-polished pebble that caught the torchlight like a captive star. These were not mere tokens, but vows, reminders that their journey would not be alone.
When the capstone fell into shadow and the mound was sealed, the keening ceased. A silence spread, vast and aching. Then, just as the first streaks of dawn touched the horizon, three black ravens rose from the tomb. They circled once above the mourners, wings dark against the paling sky, before flying seaward into the mist.
The people watched them go, their grief tempered with awe. For they knew then what story would be told: that mother and daughters had not gone into darkness, but into legend, their voices joined forever in the wind that scoured the cliffs of Whitepark Bay.
And even now, when the rain comes hard against the stones, some say you can hear their song, thin as breath, carried in the spaces between earth and sky.