Dreams of Dalkey at the Witching Hour...

Out of the blue, I had a conversation with an old friend from high school, someone that I've rarely spoken to in the past decade. Part of it went like this:

Her: It's funny how life works...
...and how previous encounters prove themselves useful in the future…

Me: Well then, I look forward to our future encounters...

Her: Same here... who knows, maybe we will meet in Ireland on someone's grave… by chance...

--

I don't really know where that comment came from, since I don't think she knows about my predilection for graves, but it got me thinking about an old grave I had seen in Ireland, how mystical of a place it is for me, and how it seemed perfect for such an encounter. Odd too that it comes up just a week before the day when I left Ireland seven years ago (May5), which would put it no more than a few days away from when I actually made the trip to this grave.

I scanned the photos onto my computer from old film, which is why they are scratched and oddly saturated. It oddly fits my memory too, imperfectly captured and over saturated to try and make it feel as good as it looks in real life…

--

On a hill aching to be a mountain in Dalkey, on the outer edge of Dublin Bay, back in 2004 when I was a boy a long way from home. From the summit, near an obelisk erected in memory of Queen Victoria, I had a special spot all picked out to sit and think, and from there, several times a week for four months, I would do just that. From that perch, barely visible down the side of the hill, is what looks like a grave.

The only trouble was that there was no way to get to it; whatever it was appeared to be surrounded on all sides by the thorny shrubs that give Dalkey its name (from the Gaelic – Deilginis – Thorn Island).  

I decided toward the end of my stay, and after months of looking at it, that I just had to get a closer look. Sure enough, the bushes were thorny, but I had to know, so I started to work my way through them, though I had to stop every few feet to pull thorns out of my body, some of them an inch or longer. It being on the side of a cliff, I even slipped once and on instinct reached out for the nearest object, grabbing firmly a handful of thorn bush.

After a half hour of climbing and crawling and more than a little bloodshed, I came out on the other side, to a small clearing. To this… 

 

It is indeed a grave, an old Celtic cross, snapped in half and worn down by years of winds rolling off the Irish Sea, from there almost a straight drop some seventy feet to rocky coast below...

The outstretched arms of the Irish Sea, appearing calm from so high up, the sound of lapping water from the waves breaking on the rocks far below, adding to the sound of the wind swirling up from the sea...

  

Victoria's obelisk in the distance along with Killiney, Shankill, Bray Daly, Greystones and a dozen other Irish towns down the Coast Road...

The inscription, barely visible though years of erosion from the sea air and lichens, reads:

THOMAS CHIPPINDALL HIGGIN

JULY XVI MCMVI

DUST THOU ART TO DUST RETURNETH

WAS NOT SPOKEN OF THE SOUL 

As near as I could find out, Thomas was the original owner of the property and donated it to become a public park. That was about all I could find out, though I bet now that I am older and a better researcher I'd be able to find out more. For now though, that is all I care to know about him...