Fifty-five years ago, the following appeared in The Kerryman: "Killarney, August 17, 1940. Four Kerry Poets Memorial unveiled at Killarney on Lady Day in the presence of a huge concourse of Gaels. Mural plaque at Muckross Abbey."

         Back then Seamus Fenton, retired Deputy Chief Inspector, National Schools, delivered an oration, a short summary of which follows.

         "This splendid commemoration is the culmination of the work we began many years ago, an attempt to keep the poetic children of the Motherland (the Speirbhean) fresh in the memory of the passing generation. We published a booklet, written in his best style by the learned Father Dineen, with a historical and geographical 'setting' by myself. We also emphasised the hope that the great songs, properly taught in the schools, would become a strong force in reviving the disappearing Irish speech.

        Fenton also spoke about the burning issue of his day: the gradual disappearance of the Irish language: '''The Irish speech and the Irish people,' wrote Paul Dubois, 'are fleeing the country, the speech at an even greater speed than the people.' The fleeing continues. I visited parts of Kerry recently where half a century ago I got from oral narration high Gaelic literature. Now not an Irish sentence is spoken in homes. There is no region in Ireland where the revival of Irish made such progress a generation ago as in the area with Killarney as its capital. Its annual Gaelic gatherings were a record. They brought from the darkening twilight oblivion leaders of thought like the great Kerry poets, men who sang and preached and fought at the intellectual frontiers of the Gael for hundreds of years. They preached the gospel of the imperishable world of the spirit."

        Others have described An Speirbhean in other ways. Richard Haywood in his In the Kingdom of Kerry, defined her as a "celestial spirit said to inspire poets and artists." Fenton himself in a later work defined her as a symbol with three aspects, "dignity or pride in the glorious past, mother of warriors, the nurse of culture (1950)." 

        Daniel Corkery wrote in The Hidden Ireland, "It was Aogán Ó Rathaille who first makes the vision, the Spéirbhean. The poet, weak with thinking on the woe that has overtaken the Gael, falls into a deep slumber. In his dreaming a figure of radiant beauty draws near. She is so bright, so stately, the poet imagines her one of the immortals. Is she Deirdre? or Gearnait? or is she Helen? or Venus? He questions her, and learns that she is Erin [Ireland]; and her sorrow, he is told, is for her true mate who is in exile beyond the seas.""

        It is interesting to note that a sky woman is also found in the cosmologies of a number of the original nations of North America. In the relgious tradition of the Hodenosonee (named the Iroquois by the white people), Sky Woman fell through a hole in the sky into the dark waters until the birds caught her. The Turtle consented to allow her to rest on his back. She gave birth to a daughter who later gave birth to the twins, good and evil. Meanwhile the animals piled dirt on the Turtle's back until the Earth was made. Hence, the naming of North America as Turtle Island.

        The present site of the Memorial is not its original. The following appeared in the Cork Examiner in May 1975: "Killarney's 'leading lady' was raised recently from her sandy grave across from the Franciscan Friary, where she has been buried for the past 12 months, when she had been removed from her railed­in enclosure at the bottom of the Fair Hill to make room for a new roadway. She has now been resited, only 12 yards from where she stood, at the entrance to the Great Southern Hotel and Killarney railway station."

        The events in Killarney, past and present, serve to remind us of that imperishable world.

more Sky Woman images

Native American Cosmology

Sky Woman

In the beginning, there were two worlds: The heavenly world called Ga-lun-la-ti, which was placed high in the heavens, and the lower, dark world where the forces of evil lived. Ga-lun-la-ti was populated with beings in animal, human and plant forms. All creatures spoke the Cherokee language and lived together in harmony. The earth was but a ball of water on which gigantic fish and reptiles lived. The universe of the Cherokees depended on harmony and balance. Light was balanced by dark; things of goodness balanced by things that hid from the light of day in the shadows of the darkness. 

In the beginning there was no sun, but a Great Tree of Life grew in the center of Ga-lun-la-ti. It lit the world so all could see and cast its light down on the dark waters below. So it was that the Creator lived by the Tree of Life where he tended the plants and cared for the animals. Sometimes, the waterfowl, the hawks, and eagles flew down in the darkness below; giant turtles and muskrats swam on the water's surface and bathed in the pale light of the heavenly tree. The Creator led a solitary existence. When his work was done, he sat by the Tree, admiring his world around him and below. Sometimes he became lonely and longed for a companion, perhaps a daughter who would sit beside him in the evening, watching his creation live and grow. 

Then, the Creator made a young lady whose beauty and grace touched his soul. He knew that she, too, would long for someone to run and play with so he created a man in his likeness and taught his children the things that he knew. 

The Creator found that his daughter laughed and sang too much; and she talked constantly. She asked too many questions. Why do the leaves of the Tree of Life shine? Who created the Upper World? Who named the plants? Creator still loved her, for this was his daughter, but this constant laughter and questions, what could he do? 

The Creator had told them many times to stay away from the Tree of Life and not to play around its trunk. But like all curious children she had to see why her father said these things. First Man would insist that she not go to the tree but every day First Woman would climb the tree to its highest limbs. One day she found a hole in the bottom of the trunk and started to go in. First Man was again insistent that she stay away from the tree but to no avail. She went in and fell out of the bottom of Ga-lun-la-ti.