All eyes on the Tomregan Stone: An unusual history
This week's Times Past column by historian Jonathan Smyth is on the Tomregan carving in Ballyconnell...
The parish of Tomregan, wrote Philip O’Connell, ‘lies partly in Co. Cavan’ and ‘partly in Co. Fermanagh.’ The old name for this territory was Tuaim Drecuin, that is, Drecon’s mound, a burial site whereupon little or no light can be shed. It seems, by O’Connell’s thinking, this Drecuin may have been a chieftain who oversaw lands within the vicinity of the River Graine, now known to us as the Woodford River.
Another interesting reference is found in ‘The Annals of the Four Masters’, which makes mention of the battle of Tuaim Drecuin where King Eochaidh of Ireland was the victor, in a pre-Christian time, dated 1,500 years before the birth of Christ. In his publication, ‘The Diocese of Kilmore, O’Connell devotes his enquiry to the history of Tomregan and the story of the University of Tuam Drecuin, from whence the parish got its name while revealing that the university was situated in the townland of Mullynagolman. St Bricín was associated with the university and in certain records there are variations in spelling of both his name and the parish, for example, in records beyond our shores he is referred to as St. Breccbuaid of Tuam Dreacain.
MacIntyre, Barron et al
The Tomregan stone at Ballyconnell Church of Ireland was found in a ditch, half a mile from the location in which the former monastery of Toomregon stood. Today, only a trace of the round tower and the church exists. In ‘Images of Stone’, Helen Hickey says of the carving: ‘This very strange carving in sandstone consists of a long oval head with large staring eyes and animal-like ears centrally placed above an arched opening.’ The stone in all probability came from a Romanesque window on the round tower, as the archaeologist Oliver Davies suggested in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquities in 1948.
In the summer of 1984, three men (who viewed the artefact with three pairs of eyes as the notes stated), led by Tom Barron, conducted their own ‘conference’ at Ballyconnell. The Tomregan stone was their object of interest. The conference, Barron wrote, ‘took place around the ancient carved stone now preserved at Ballyconnell Church of Ireland Church’ which he said, ‘came from the famous Tomregan site nearby’. Barron then talked about the people who accompanied him, he said, ‘in our conference there was a professor, Dr Coleman Barks from Athens University in Georgia. He has no special knowledge of Celtic things but is well read in anthropology and has travelled in the East.’ Barron added, ‘Our writer Tom MacIntyre was also there’ … and all ‘eyes concentrated on the stone and some new aspects came to light, I believe!’
They later came to the conclusion that the Tomregan stone was an entirely pagan representation and evidently pre-Christian. Barron said that they believed the carving to be ‘female and not male as formerly thought’.
Perhaps, concluded the three, it was a portrayal of the ancients, ‘the Great Mother giving birth to her son.’
The animal-like head of the carving with pig-like ears and nostrils was according to Tom Barron, a possible association with the ‘female black pig of Moybolgue legend in this country’, which he said, also tied in with ‘the animal head in the top of the Kilmore doorway’, which Helen Roe considered to be a representation of the head of a pig.
Convinced in their estimation that the stone carving was female and not male, Barron continued, by saying, ‘our Ballyconnell mother has extended her right open palm to represent that she is the great sustainer, and her left hand (sinister) holds a skull, indicating that she also is the destroyer of life. So, our carving indicates that this individual is the creator, the sustainer, and the destroyer of life’ and somewhat confusingly, he further explained, that … ‘the son to whom she gives life is also her father and she is his daughter.’
While ‘the upright converging supports’, Dr Coleman Barks suggested, ‘may infer the use of ‘stirrups’ used in this ancient form of childbirth. However, Barron noted, ‘I prefer to think that they represent the entrance of a megalithic tomb, where there is some evidence that births did take place.’
The findings as discussed by the three men on the possible purpose and meaning of the Tomregan stone were written up by Tom Barron and published in that year’s edition of the Heart of Breifne, a popular historical journal, edited by Anna Sexton. I think that the stone would make an interesting study in light of modern technology and new perspectives which may have come to fore since those days.
For further reading on the Ballyconnell conference between Tom Barron, Tom MacIntyre and Dr Coleman Barks, see my publication, ‘Gentleman and Scholar: Thomas James Barron’, of which copies are available in Candlelight Books, Cavan Town.
DEATH OF CAPTAIN ANDREW CARDEN
With deep regret, the Cavan Weekly News, dated Friday 1 December 1876, announced the sudden death of Captain Andrew Carden, on the Monday of that week, while travelling to Dublin. The captain formerly resided at Drumkeen, Cavan, and was said to have been very popular with all classes in the county, and in Tipperary where he later lived. The newspaper noted, that ‘he was distinguished for straightforward manly conduct’ and ‘for his unostentatious Christian charity.’ His death, it was stressed, would be ‘deeply deplored,’ and Captain Carden would long be held in ‘loving remembrance’ not only by immediate relatives, but by his wide circle of ‘acquaintances and friends.’
He was a brother of the late John Rutter Carden of Tipperary who died in 1866, and it was from him, Andrew Carden inherited the Barnane Estate, Co. Tipperary; incidentally, John Rutter Carden had evicted so many tenants from the estate that one paper went so far as to label him the ‘Tipperary exterminator.’
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