Sites of memory in the Irish landscape? Approaching ogham stones through memory studies

Lieux de mémoire and identity formation

Les lieux de mémoire (1984–1992) ranks among the most influential scholarly works of the past century. Although Nora’s (1996) own understanding of the concept fluctuates over time, he characterises a lieu de mémoire as ‘any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community (in this case, the French community)’ (p. 17). The vague nature of this definition has been openly criticised (e.g. Hahn et al., 2008), as it neglects to address how a ‘significant entity’ becomes a symbolic element, and what role these symbols play in a community’s ‘memorial heritage’. ⁷

In light of the substantial criticism the lieux de mémoire has received (Hahn et al., 2008; Ho Tai, 2001; Kreis, 2010; Marchal, 2003 among others), it is not invalid to ask what the concept can still contribute to memory studies. Yet, what makes the lieux de mémoire particularly interesting from a medievalist’s perspective is that it consists of diverse, heterogenic case studies examining individual symbols that were meaningful for a particular group in society (see Ho Tai, 2001). For Nora (1996) such case studies expose ‘the places in which the collective heritage of France was crystallized, the principal lieux, in all senses of the word, in which collective memory was rooted, in order to create a vast topology of French symbolism (p. 15)’. By engaging with one such ‘place’ (i.e. site of memory) in texts composed by professional literati, it is of course not possible to draw conclusions about the topology of Irish symbolism in general, but this may permit us to examine a particular mediation of complex mnemonic strategies.

Nora’s open definition of the lieux is particularly attractive in relation to medieval Irish culture and its competing (secular and ecclesiastical) power structures. Assmann’s (2011) assertions that Nora demonstrates that ‘what steers the memory of the group is neither a “collective soul” nor an “objective mind”, but a society with its signs and symbols’, and that through ‘these shared symbols, the individual participates in a common memory and a common identity’ appears particularly apt for the complex and fluid Irish tradition (p. 122). Her observation further draws much-needed attention to the participation of groups and individuals in identity formation, for which these texts were central points of reference. However, as Guy Marchal (2003) remarks, both Nora’s work and adaptations thereof generally focus on Rezeptionsgeschichte (‘history of reception’), i.e. the effects of historical images, concepts and ideas of the past (Nachwirkungen von Geschichtsbildern, Begriffen und Vergangenheitsvorstellungen) (p. 13). ⁸ In seeking to discuss the mental images that form and sustain the role of ogham stones as sites of memory, this article aims to redress this imbalance, and places a clear focus on the media of remembering: texts and stones.

Material differences in the lieux are inherent already to the original approach. The case studies by Nora and his contributors examine geographical places or loci, historical figures, monuments and buildings, literary and artistic objects, emblems and commemorations, ‘all of which are the result of an imaginary process that codifies and represents the historical consciousness of “quintessential France”’ (Kritzman, 1996: 10). In outlining their essence, Nora (1989: 19) states that

lieux de mémoire are simple and ambiguous, natural and artificial, at once immediately available in concrete sensual experience and susceptible to the most abstract elaboration. Indeed, they are lieux in three senses of the word – material, symbolic and functional. (p. 19)

Nora’s assertion that the lieux are at once available in sensual experience and symbolically elaborated is a valuable starting point from which to discuss how, in the case of the ogham stones, material and cognitive aspects of remembering coalesce.

In Celtic studies, a critical engagement with concepts from memory studies has recently been encouraged by Maria Tymoczko (in relation to Jan Assmann’s cultural memory). Tymoczko (2014) argues that the Irish material ‘is superb for illustrating the workings of cultural memory and thus for interrogating theories of cultural memory’, but simultaneously draws attention to the need for a critical and close comparison of, rather than a mere application of, concepts to sources (p. 28). Her opinion is reflected in other disciplines, as Legg (2005) proposes that in cultural geography, ‘terms and concepts [of the lieux de mémoire] can be utilised effectively, but only if they are heavily qualified’, and if, one might add, individual points are discussed in some detail (p. 494).

One such matter is Nora’s (1989) conviction that lieux de mémoire replace true milieux de mémoire, and that the former emerge through a lack of the latter: ‘there are lieux de mémoire because there are no longer milieux de mémoire, real environments of memory’ (p. 7). Erll (2011: 23) consequently interprets Nora’s sites of memory ‘as a sort of artificial placeholder for the no longer existent, natural collective memory’. In attempting a definition, Nora (1996) proposes that milieux de mémoire were ‘settings in which memory is a real part of everyday experience’ (p. 1). Nora (1996) therefore somewhat simplistically juxtaposes the modern period with a time in which memory was all-pervasive: ‘if we still dwelled in our memories, there would be no need to consecrate sites embodying them’(p. 1).

Georg Kreis (2010: 328) criticises this simplistic dualism and proposes that lieux de mémoire were present even in premodern milieux de mémoire. Chedgzoy et al. (2018) further stress that ‘the memory cultures of the early modern world were complex, self-conscious and highly mediated, rather than organic and unreflective’ (p. 7). This is certainly applicable to the Irish sources also, and stressing this fact throughout the following analysis will enable a broader discussion of common assumptions about the value of premodern cultures for memory studies.

Medieval Irish literati and later secular scribes certainly worked within a culture that was steeped in mnemonic discourses to which annals, genealogies, literary texts and the extensive place-name lore (Dindshenchas, see below) attest. The longevity of these sources into the early modern and modern period (particularly in folklore) suggests that rather than being mere scholarly pursuits, they functioned within a culture in which memory was a part of lived experience. Yet within this apparent milieu, we encounter sites on which negotiations of collective memory occur and become visible and tangible. These are by no means mere placeholders but enable a communal experience of a remembered past, which in turn facilitates a sustained engagement with the textual and the material tradition for identity construction.

Yet perhaps the most notable point of divergence between the sources considered here and Nora’s is that, unlike Nora’s État, premodern Ireland had no unified nation state and no imposing central(ised) force in a political sense. Rather, it consisted of unstable and fragmented political territories and alliances, with secular and ecclesiastical competition for power. A lack of centralised political power does not, however, categorically exclude feelings of cultural unity, whether in a religious or cultural sense. Charles-Edwards (1998) argues that despite its fragmentation into different kin-groups (cenéla), certain sources evoke a (linguistic-cultural) ‘unity of the Irish people as a whole’ (p. 77). In a similar vein, Ó Corráin (1978) showed that ‘the Irish were profoundly conscious of themselves as a larger community or natio’, and that ‘their learned classes were preoccupied with this very notion’ (p. 4). Many sources betray an imaginative engagement with origin stories (central to medieval identity formations), and the ogham alphabet can certainly be viewed as a cultural indicator of a ‘distinctly Irish’ culture. The Irish material may thus provide an excellent opportunity to challenge some of Nora’s assumptions, and to engage critically with the role of sites of memory in an environment that reveals a very different reflection of its cultural identity.

Enter the stones: a brief introduction to ogham and ogham stones

While the erection of standing stones appears to be an (almost) universal phenomenon, the inscription of said stones with an alphabet that has a strong cultural specification ‘localises’ these stones to a particular culture (e.g. the rune stones in Germanic culture(s)). The ogham script is first attested on stone pillars in Ireland and in areas of the British Isles where Irish influence is visible. ⁹ These inscriptions reflect the language of between the fifth and the seventh centuries AD (McManus, 1997 [1991]: 78–100). ¹⁰ In Ireland, ogham stones are found in a variety of contexts: as freestanding pillars, and/or reused over centuries ‘as building stones and lintels, built into souterrains, ring forts, churches, outhouses and other structures’ (Swift, 2002: 129; see also Moore, 1998: 23). ¹¹ The writing usually runs along the right-angle of the stone (i.e. along the arris, see Appendix 2) and consists of strokes and notches (see Appendix 1) placed relative to the stemline/arris. ¹²

The origin of the ogham script has been the subject of considerable debate. ¹³ McManus (1997 [1991]), who has produced the most extensive study of script, language and stones, concludes ‘that the alphabet was designed for the Irish language’ and that ‘it is likely that its framers were Irish and probable that they resided in the south of the country, possibly in the fourth century’ (p. 1). Whoever its creators were, the framers were trained in Latin grammar and possessed the sharp analytical skills necessary to apply this knowledge to their native language. Moore (2010) stresses that ogham inscriptions on stones show a remarkably standardised script and orthography, a fact that points to a consistent training of the ‘scribes’, and implies a desire for uniformity (p. 9).

Two medieval origin legends for the ogham alphabet have come down to us, one mythological in outlook, the other rooted in a biblical framework referencing the Tower of Babel. ¹⁴ Neither is of any historical value, but both stress that ogham was invented by the Irish, specifically for the Irish language. Even in literary texts, the script is perceived as part of a distinctly Irish culture, and seemingly emerges in a deep past in which Ireland is populated by ancestral figures, or in biblical times thought to be contemporary to the ‘deep mythical past’ of Ireland. ¹⁵

There is, however, a conspicuous regional distribution of the extant archaeological stones. Of the 360 stone pillars inscribed with the ogham alphabet currently recorded in Ireland, c. 70% are located in the south-west. ¹⁶ For Johnston (2013), this suggests that ‘ogam was strongly associated with certain people’ and may ‘have acted as communal identifiers’(p. 13). While this is plausible for the archaeological evidence, literary sources describe the erection of ogham stones all across Ireland, ostensibly understanding them as a pan-Irish phenomenon.

Most (early) inscriptions on archaeological stones are short and remarkably formulaic. ¹⁷ They consist only of a male name in the genitive case and a patronymic and/or tribal affiliation, that is, ‘of X son of Y (of the tribe of Z)’ (see Appendix 2). ¹⁸ ‘Monument’, ‘stone’, ‘grave’, ‘name’ or ‘property’ is hence implied before the name. ¹⁹ Moore (1998) claims that the archaeological ogham stones could have marked anything from a sacred place, a burial ground, a grant or title to land, a tribal boundary, a church foundation, a hermitage or a combination of any/all of these, and overlapping functions over time are likely.

Although ogham stones are explained predominantly as burial markers in the literary texts (albeit not in the legal material), few archaeological ogham stones have been reliably recorded in association with individual graves (Mallory, 1992: 130; Thomas, 1971: 98). ²⁰ Ogham stones could, of course, have marked entire family burial grounds (fertae) or cremation burials (Swift, 1997: 31), factors that may inhibit the identification of stones with individual burial remains. Yet the burial practices described in the sagas – one man or a small group being interred, a stone being placed over his or their head, with the ogham inscription on it bearing his name – do not appear to be supported by the archaeological evidence, making it likely that the texts (post-dating the archaeological stones) to some extent engaged with the stones imaginatively. ²¹

Ogham stones may have served several interrelated purposes. Moore (2010) argues that they ‘may have functioned as memorials, grave-markers or territorial markers’ – all roles linked to mnemonic aspects (p. 10). McManus (1997 [1991]: 165) explicates the role of the stones as markers of land and boundaries but raises the point that since burial seems to have taken place at boundaries, ‘it is possible that the two functions were complementary’ (see also Moore, 2010: 15). In this case, the stones could enforce kin (or group) identity by providing a visible and tangible connection with their ancestors, but simultaneously mark ownership of land as well, fulfilling, as Johnston (2013: 12) phrases it ‘territorial, genealogical and charter-like roles’ (see also Charles-Edwards, 1998). Despite the ongoing debate on their function (and the above-cited roles do not need to be mutually exclusive), ogham stones clearly provided material mnemonic connections to the past and served to integrate this past into the present experience of the landscape, an endeavour in which the literary texts readily took part.

Imagining pagan times: ogham stones in sagas and poetry

If one looks at modern Irish literature in English (Seamus Heaney) or Irish (Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill) or at folklore, it would appear that the inhabitants of Ireland are still particularly preoccupied with places, and with an ‘Irish sense of place’ (Sheeran, 1988). ²² Such an interest is evident already in medieval literary sources, in which the landscape, its names and the monuments therein are intimately connected with Irish culture, and are a permanent, tangible reflection thereof. The analysis of ogham stones from a memory studies perspective must acknowledge such an enduring engagement, and the sense of cultural permanence it evokes. Perhaps more so than uninscribed stone pillars, ogham stones thus symbolise a distinctly Irish presence on the land, because they reference a script that is intrinsically Irish, and was devised for the Irish language in the deep past of biblical or mythological times, and because it is Irish names that are inscribed in it.

The belief in the great antiquity of both the ogham script and the Irish language is expressed in written sources from the Old Irish period (seventh–ninth centuries) to the native schools of Classical Modern Irish (seventeenth century). ²³ However, things get more complex if we approach ogham stones through their function as monuments within the texts. Written sources of the medieval period outline a rather conspicuous divide. Legal material commonly relates ogham stones to territorial claims (proof of entitlement to land, McManus, 1997 [1991]: 163–166). On the other hand, non-legal texts (such as ‘sagas’ and poems) see them predominantly as grave-markers erected as part of ostensibly pre-Christian burial rites and associated with individual (i.e. personal) inhumation burials (see also McManus, 1997 [1991]: 153–166). Swift (1997) points out that across premodern Irish texts (both legal and literary), ogham stones in fact fulfil ‘the same three purposes that are indicated for stone pillars in the Bible: that is, as memorials for the dead, as boundary markers and as proclaiming the ownership of estates’, but the clear focus on burial rites in the sagas will underlie the following analysis (p. 42).

Today, the sagas are viewed as complex and at times critical products of a Christian society with a deep-seated interest in its past, and in how that past is reflected in the (contemporary) present. Up until the twelfth century, Irish secular texts were produced in monastic contexts by trained Christian scribes (thereafter the production switched to families), hence many of the texts discussed below would have been committed to writing initially within monastic contexts. Today, these texts are no longer seen as offering accurate reflections of the time in which their narratives are set (often pre-Christian). Rather, the ‘sagas’ are mapping out an Irish prehistory by drawing on their native tradition (and landscape), Christian historical writings (Orosius, Eusebius), biblical influence (see McCone, 1990), and even on their literary imagination, as Ó hUiginn (1992: 49–52) outlines (see also Herbert, 1988, 2007).

To delineate the role of ogham stones as sites of memory it is not strictly necessary to resolve the question of whether the literati ‘were familiar with the practice of erecting stones bearing memorial inscriptions in Ogam, though this had long since died out in their own day’, or whether they were ‘projecting into the past the familiar custom of doing the same in conventional script and accommodating to the time-scale of the story by having the inscription written in Ogam, which was known to them to be of considerable antiquity’ (McManus, 1997 [1991]: 155). In fact, Christian grave-slabs at the time (bearing Latin inscriptions) do not present as clear a parallel as McManus’ comment would suggest, and it is unclear how much exactly the medieval literati knew about the (original or changing) function(s) of ogham stones. ²⁴ However, except for several references in which ogham is written on sticks for communicating short messages, the sagas generally depict ogham as ‘a vehicle for memorial inscriptions’ on stone (McManus, 1997 [1991]: 154), and hence as a script intimately linked to monumental, memorial practices. ²⁵

The strong link this creates with their ancestral past – the ancestors marking and altering the landscape with memorials to their dead – saw the landscape as inscribed with the heroic and/or ancestral actions narrated in the sagas. This enabled a participation in a cultural identity that was expressed spatially and mentally (on a diachronic level), engaged with the origin of customs, and continuously made the past present. As is by no means unusual for medieval Irish literature (or the medieval tradition at large), it is an etymologising origin legend – in this case part of a genealogy – which claims to narrate the earliest use of an ogham stone as grave-marker. ²⁶

The genealogy is found in the twelfth-century manuscript the Book of Leinster (fol. 320c 27–30), although it was probably composed earlier. It says that the prehistoric king of Munster, Cétchuimnech mac Áeda Deirg, was the person for whom memorials in ogham were first erected in Ireland: ‘Cétchuimnech, for whom monuments in ogham were first made/erected in Ireland’ (McManus, 1997 [1991]: 155). ²⁷ The anecdote appears to be a creative etymology on the king’s name – which may be translated as ‘first-remembered’ – and is revealing in many ways. First, it associates the remembering of a specific individual with a memorial in ogham. Second, the origin of the custom of erecting ogham stones is firmly situated in the pagan era, that is, in the deep time of which most of the sagas narrate. Third, the origin of the custom is located geographically in the south-western province of Munster, where c. 70% of the archaeological stones are extant today. The short passage thus outlines various interesting aspects, such as implicit connections to place, to tradition and to memory.

This triad is also prominently outlined in the Finn Cycle tale Acallam na Senórach (‘The Colloquy of the Ancients’, early thirteenth century). ²⁸ It narrates how St Patrick meets the long-lived sages Caílte and Oisín and how they travel around Ireland together with the sages relating the origin of place-names and stories about their previous adventures to the saint, who has their accounts written down. Caílte and Oisín belonged to Fionn mac Cumaill’s (Finn MacCool’s) war-band but miraculously survived hundreds of years into the Christian period. They therefore represent a direct link to, and have personal knowledge of, the ‘pagan heroic period’ in which many literary texts purport to be set. On their journey, Connon (2014) observes, ‘the composite landscapes created by these places tell a story’, a story that is rooted in personal memory and links acts of remembering with the present shape and names of the land (p. 21). Within one of these narratives, Caílte describes a typical funeral scene: ‘They were placed in the grave after that, their stone was raised and their name was written in ogam’. ²⁹

Such in-tales of allegedly pagan times within a frame-narrative set in Christian times (fifth century) narratively link these two timescapes, and also relate the former to the time of the composition of the text (thirteenth century). The actions in the past (in-tales) affect the present (frame-tale), with toponyms (place-names) and memorial monuments such as ogham stones being encountered by the saint and other figures inhabiting Ireland at the point of Christianisation. This immediate experience prompts questions about the past so that toponyms and monuments such as ogham stones provide both cognitive and material links between past and present. ³⁰

It may be implied that toponyms and monuments remained important in the thirteenth century when the text was composed precisely around such sites of remembering that evoke a landscape reflecting a cultural identity. The texts thus add a literary dimension to Cosgrove’s (1984) assertion that ‘in landscape we are dealing with an ideologically-charged and very complex cultural product’, which simultaneously incorporates material and symbolic experience (p. 11). This suggests that textual and lived-in landscapes oscillate, and draw on each other in forming sites in which the thus produced memory comes to crystallise. ³¹

The phrase used in Acallam na Senórach is indicative of a highly formulaic depiction of pagan burial rites in early Irish texts, which only slightly varies in terminology (McManus, 1997 [1991]: 154). The long ‘heroic saga’ Táin Bó Cúailnge (‘The Cattle Raid of Cooley’), for example, was probably first written down around the ninth century, but is preserved in its earliest form in a twelfth-century manuscript. The text depicts a very similar reference to the burial of a warrior named Etarcomol: ‘then his grave was dug and his headstone was planted in the ground, his name was written in Ogam and he was mourned’. ³²

However, texts may add short etymologising origin legends to this formula, frequently connected to toponyms and place-lore. Aidedh Ferghusa (‘The Death of Fergus (mac Léite)’) is a death-tale of unknown date preserved in a sixteenth- and an eighteenth-century manuscript. ³³ It states that, after Fergus’ death, ‘his grave was dug, his name written in ogham and his lamentation-ceremony all performed; and from the monumental stones [uladh] piled by the men of Ulster this name of Uladh [Ulster, a province] had its origin’. ³⁴ The cairn erected in addition to the inscription in ogham is linked to a creative etymology much like the one about Cétchuimnech, binding monument, land, toponym and people together. This interest is widespread in Irish place-lore (Dindshenchas), short narratives in prose or verse explaining how a place-name was created. Much like ogham stones, place-names are therefore seen as a result of the ongoing impact of an Irish presence on the land. With a wit that rivals Isidore’s Etymologiae (seventh century), the Dindshenchas form a ‘mythological geography of the country’ (Sjoestedt, 1949: 24), much as the ogham stones form a mythological archaeology. ³⁵

Tochmarc Étaíne (‘The Wooing of Étaín’, probably of ninth-century origin) is a tale with a complex and fragmented transmission history, and one of the few texts that does not narrate the erection of an ogham stone in either real time or retrospectively. ³⁶ Étaín is married to king Eochaid Airem but the king’s brother, Ailill, falls in love with her and is consumed with love-sickness. ³⁷ When Eochaid has to leave the royal court, he instructs Étaín to care for Ailill and, in the event of his death to ‘dig his earthly grave, to raise his standing-stone and his pillar and to inscribe his name in Ogham’. ³⁸ The ogham inscription is only mentioned in the longest version of the tale, but it adds to the otherwise much shorter descriptions of the burial rite befitting a king’s brother. ³⁹ Fry (1999) states that across sagas, references to ogham stones erected during burial rituals ‘indicate how a medieval audience would have wanted to believe the great legendary Irish kings, queens and warriors of a ‘golden age had been buried, and what would have been considered appropriate markers for their graves’, an argument supported by at least some versions of Tochmarc Étaíne (p. 138).

It is telling that sagas generally narrate both the erection and inscription of the stones (Tochmarc Étaíne being a rare exception), but that no memorial engagement (mourning, visiting of stones by relatives, etc.) is described after the burial ceremony. However, MacGugan (2012) points out that medieval Irish texts more often ‘emphasise the creation of sacred space’ [to which the she adds burial sites, sk] rather than their reuse (p. 189). It should also be briefly mentioned that in both Aidedh Ferghusa and Tochmarc Étaíne, the reference to the burial ritual and to ogham stones is only found in later versions of the text, an observation that could reflect their transmission history or perhaps a conscious later engagement with these memorial stones for a variety of reasons (such as adding an archaic, pre-Christian touch to the narratives). ⁴⁰

The depiction of ogham stones as grave-markers in literary texts is continued in the modern period as part of the formulaic burial rite. Oidheadh Chloinne Tuireann (‘The Fate of the Children of Tuirenn’) is a tale echoing those of the Mythological Cycle yet dated to the sixteenth or seventeenth century. ⁴¹ The hero Cian is killed and improperly buried by the three sons of Tuireann. Cian’s own son, Lug, later finds his grave and has him exhumed. Cian is briefly revived and relates the manner of his death before being reburied properly. This time, the burial ritual includes an ogham-inscribed stone as a grave-marker: ‘Cian was again placed in the grave after that; his tombstone was erected over his tomb, and his dirge was sung, and his name inscribed in ogham’. ⁴² Although an early modern composition, Oidheadh Chloinne Tuireann tells of the ‘mythological time’ also depicted in Tochmarc Étaíne and in which the invention of the ogham script is also situated. A conscious reference to ogham stones at this period suggests that they were part of a literary Irish construction of the past that was continuously meaningful to both the composers of the texts and their audience.

An even later text, Laoi Oisín ar Thír na nÓg (‘The lay of Oisín in the land of Youth’), is an example of modern poetry building on Finn Cycle material and drawing on motifs belonging to the oldest elements of early Irish literature. ⁴³ It was attributed to the famous eighteenth-century Co. Clare poet Micheál Ó Coimín by its first editor, Brian Ó Luanaigh. ⁴⁴ Like in Acallam na Senórach, the Fenian warrior Oisín (son of Finn MacCool) converses with St Patrick. Oisín had left his father’s warrior-band to follow a mysterious woman to Tír na nÓg (‘The Land of Youth’), where time stands still.

When Oisín returns to Ireland, he finds that several centuries have elapsed. In the now-Christianised Ireland he encounters St Patrick and recounts his memory of olden (read: pre-Christian) times. In stanza 77, he describes the burial of a heathen giant:

The giant grim we buried him

Deep down in earth in widest grave –

We raised a stone his grave to note

And his name we wrote in Ogham-craev. ⁴⁵

Like Acallam na Senórach, the laoi has a threefold layering in terms of temporal arrangement, each separated by several centuries: the pagan time of the in-tales (i.e. the stories recounted from memory), the newly Christian time of the frame-tale (i.e. the dialogue between Oisín and St Patrick), and the eighteenth century, when the laoi was composed. It is in the first of these eras that the erection of ogham stones is situated, even if we may imply that the trope was still a meaningful literary motif in the eighteenth century, not least because the archaeological stones could still be experienced by a contemporary audience.

Ogham stones in texts as material, symbolic and functional entities

That an eighteenth-century poet would consciously draw on the ogham burial formula when narrating of pagan times shows the longevity and cultural value of the motif, and allows the story, and the text, to stand (and be understood) as a continuation of earlier material. In this case of an obvious reuse of the motif, a key feature which Kreis (2010) has identified for lieux de mémoire becomes apparent: they are part of the past but still ‘present’, and unite a historical dimension with acts of remembering (p. 7). Even if elsewhere, as McManus (1997 [1991]) argues, ogham may be used in later compositions ‘in the looser sense of ‘written Irish’, this does not diminish the cultural distinctiveness and the mental connection with the ‘ogham’ stones it appears to evoke in other texts (p. 156).

Such references may be part of a more encompassing attempt of the medieval literati to engage with the stone monuments they perceived around them, and of the early modern composers to create a pre-Christian atmosphere for the narratives. Understanding the stones as ancestral burial markers created a convincing link to the warriors populating the sagas. It also demonstrated that these very forebears had claimed the land both spatially and culturally: the landscape, as Lethbridge (2016) phrased it for the Norse sagas, became ‘imprinted’ with their presence (p. 56).

In doing so, the ogham stones created a culturally binding force akin to Nora’s lieux de mémoire. Furthermore, they appear to draw on all three categories that Nora outlined for the lieux de mémoire, namely physical, symbolic and functional meaning. To recall Nora (1989: 19, see also 1990: 19):

lieux de mémoire are simple and ambiguous, natural and artificial, at once immediately available in concrete sensual experience and susceptible to the most abstract elaboration. Indeed, they are lieux in three senses of the word – material, symbolic and functional.

On a symbolic level, ogham stones are symbols of a great heroic past and thus create a tangible link between said past and any given present. On the functional level, they act as burial markers within the sagas and show how a conscious engagement with the lived-in landscape may influence literary tropes.

The dual existence of ogham stones as evoked monuments in textual production and as a material presence in the lived-in landscape is a key point in their role within Irish memory culture. Engagement with the ogham stones oscillates between the concrete sensual experience and the symbolic: If one allows for the mental image of the literary stones to build on the material archaeological stones in an imaginative way, and for the sensual experience of the archaeological stones to be evoked mentally by engagement with the sagas, they even operate with two ‘materialities’: one made of (material) rock and the other of a mental concept of ‘stoneness’. Both, it may be argued, conjure images of permanence and memory, embodied in their interaction.

It is the mental interaction between the lived-in and narrative landscapes of the texts that allows for the production of medieval sites of memory. In looking over the edge of the manuscript folii and considering the memory culture of which both archaeological and literary ogham stones formed part, one may begin to grasp the significance these monuments held over several centuries. Although their mentions may be few, the fact that they occur from the ninth to the eighteenth centuries, and specifically at points when texts refer to a distinctly pre-Christian ‘deep time’, suggests that the cultural permanence that they appear to make tangible formed a part of both diachronic and synchronic remembering. Far from being the remnants of milieux de mémoire, they are the threads that hold them together.

Monument, memory and lieux: some comparative remarks

Similar ideas have been proposed in other disciplines. In landscape archaeology, the mnemonic role of monuments and the processes by which monuments trigger remembering on either a personal or a cultural level have been foregrounded. Various studies outline how the landscape comes to embody material prompts to remember and commemorate (see Andrén, 1993, 2013; Hall, 2015: 192–197; Ní Ghrádaigh, 2015: 231–236). As Busset (2017) observes: ‘Stone monuments are about memory: they can be used to join the past to the present, they commemorate and they endure’ (p. 16). ⁴⁶ In relation to British sources, Williams (2006: 144–145) proposes that funerary monuments both ‘create memorable sensory engagement for the mourners’, and ‘connected retrospective pasts with prospective futures’, a comment that is of considerable relevance to the literary sources discussed here.

Williams’ (2006) earlier argument that monuments participate in a ‘commemoration of kin, ancestry and group identity’ likewise fits the sources discussed here remarkably well (p. 158). Yet such overlapping commemorative functions, often linked to the reuse of monuments, are at times hard to document for the prehistoric period. In the case of the ogham stones (or the Scandinavian rune stones), it is, however, possible to document the pluralistic and heterogenic mental engagement with these monuments in the medieval period through textual analysis. Although in itself a limited endeavour, this approach may fill an important gap in the study of these monuments, and draws attention to the media that anchored them in cultural memory.

The material aspect of such monuments plays an important part in their mnemonic role. Jones (2007) observes that ‘[a]s physical materials, artefacts provide an authentic link to the past and as such can be re-experienced’(p. 3). This is relevant for the cultural coordinates of the society, for as Jones (2007) concludes, ‘(b)y addressing living rock as if it were the traces of past events (…), people situated themselves historically in the landscape’(p. 220). Textual analysis can contribute to such discussions from a literary perspective, at least for the medieval and early modern period. By operating from the above-mentioned dual perspective, and by creating an intimate interplay between archaeological and literary stones, it becomes possible to focus on the ‘workings’ and the ‘media’ of cultural memory. This fills an important gap in our appreciation of the mnemonic functions of stone monuments, as it allows us to trace how people engaged with the world around them, as well as with their literary tradition, through sites of memory.

The tangible, material aspect of this must not be neglected, for as Jones and Russell (2012) propose, archaeological sites ‘can play an important role in terms of providing the material dimension of the past to which people express their affiliation, sense of belonging, and social identity’(p. 275). Even in texts, ogham stones are cognitively linked to such aspects precisely because, as Rekdal (2014) stresses, the archaeological ‘ogham stones represent material perceived of as more solid than parchment’ (p. 114). Whether or not the earliest textual mentions of ogham stones are based on genuine knowledge of pre-Christian burial rituals (and this is debatable), at least the early modern reuses of them are testimony to an effort to put ‘the puzzle back together: inventing the past to fit the present, or, equally, the present to fit the past’ (Fentress and Wickham, 1992: 201).

Such a juxtaposition of narratives and the lived-in landscapes from a mnemonic perspective has also been addressed in neighbouring disciplines. Glauser (2007) argues that in Icelandic saga literature ‘it is first and foremost the landscape and the events localised in it which play the decisive role as guarantors of memory’(p. 20). Hermann (2014) adds that

mnemonic places in Old Norse-Icelandic literature most obviously reflect the spatial environment of the Icelandic landscape, and it is not least the topography of saga-texts and their literary mapping of the natural and cultural landscape which is crucial when considering the relation of saga-texts to mnemonic places. (p. 28)

Lethbridge (2016) makes a very similar argument by asserting that, in the case of medieval Icelandic sagas, people ‘imprinted their lives’ on the landscape but, simultaneously, also ‘made places memorable’ and fixed them in their minds (p. 56–76). This suggests that it was not only modern nations that ‘consecrate particular sites as crystallising ‘memory’ (Legg, 2007: 459) but that medieval cultures in fact reveal similar concerns, expressed and made tangible through an engagement with the landscape in culturally specific terms.

Such studies unearth a memory that is not part of medieval theories of ars memoriae (see Carruthers, 1990), but borne out of an engagement between medieval thought and the inhabited landscape. Exploring the cultural significance of monuments such as ogham stones can add a valuable, different perspective to work that has focused predominantly on geographies of power and politics (see, for example, Harvey and Jones, 1999; Jones, 1999; Jones and Fowler, 2008) and shows how well before the rise of modern nations, cultural identity was mapped out through sites of memory.

Concluding remarks

The foregoing arguments have proposed that ogham stones fulfil a variety of functions within the mnemonic tapestry of Irish cultural memory that can be understood more fully if linked to sites of memory. These stones contribute to a feeling of cultural identity and unity by successfully linking people and landscape, past and present, (Christian) literati or poets and ‘their’ ancestral (pre-Christian) ‘heroes’.

In the case of the ogham stones, milieux and lieux are dependent on each other and in fact invigorate the longevity of the topos – a longevity that would hardly have occurred if the stones had not continued to be meaningful across cultural and political shifts. Across archaeological and textual boundaries, ogham stones are at once material, symbolic and functional sites of memory. Oscillating between the material and the imagined/narrated time, however, they challenge a rigid distinction between the material and the immaterial, and instead presuppose a cultural memory in which the perceptual and symbolic are combined. Ogham stones are not merely narrative markers of pastness, but complex media within cultures of remembering. Engaging with the discursive constructions of the past emerging from such media can enhance our understanding of the relationship between physical and mental aspects of cultural memory (and its workings), and this successfully shifts attention to the processes of mediation (rather than singular receptions).

Such observations allow us to ‘reconceptualiz(e) the relation between past and present’ and outline ‘an alternative to the supposed linearity and pastness of [modern, sk] history that takes the form of the persistence of an unresolved past into the present’ (Chedgzoy et al., 2018: 7). ⁴⁷ Breaching disciplinary, temporal and linguistic borders can lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the continuous reinvestment of such monuments from the ‘internal’ perspective of the sources. This is necessary to outline how a culture situates itself both culturally and geographically within its own tradition and on the land it inhabits. Furthermore, such dialogues are necessary to capture the scopes of such interactions; not addressing such issues bears a real risk for perpetuating assessments of premodern memory cultures as organic and unreflective, rather than acknowledging that they are ‘complex, self-conscious and highly mediated’ entities (Chedgzoy et al., 2018: 12).