There is a pool in my home townland of Lios Dubh ~ Black Fort. It fills in winter with the winter rains and offers a picturesque vista to enjoy with a 1000 year old ringfort of the Gaels lying beyond it on the hill. Local tradition states that this ringfort is called Lios Bán. To think of the history of this place is amazing. This pool has probably been filling up every winter since the Ice Age, 13,000 years ago. The Irish Elk would have drank from it before the forests came along with bears and wolves. Hunter gatherers would have walked through the dense oakwood then present and foraged all the wild plants which have now dissappeared. Early farming and the building of Loughcrew would have focussed the minds of the Neolithic peoples who came from the middle east. The Irish language still shares similarities to middle eastern semitic language family. There was another wave of invaders in the bronze age which brought dairying and horse craft and the Celtic curse known as hemochromatosis and the characteristic Irish fair skin. Treasures of gold and wrought metals and precious stones could have been traded between these green rolling hillocks. Gaelic kings would have traversed these hills on way to the Tailteann games or the anointing of the high kings of the provinces of Connacht, Meath or Ulster. Maybe Lios Bán has seen devastation and murder in the well known practice cattle raiding of Gaelic Ireland. Nearby is the Black Pigs Dyke, a fortification built to stop cattle raiding parties from Ulster encroaching southwards perhaps. The Gaels would have played hurling with camáns and raced horses, feasted and raided and produce beautiful artworks. English invasions led to land changing hands, a horrendous time for the Gaels of Ireland and the Maxwell family owning chunks of County Cavan until they were put out of it.
