John Tierney's blog

Public discussion of burial practices can become very emotional. 

Mass and grave are the two most emotive words used in recent times. Both in public & academic discourse.

When I first started studying these things I thought mass grave would be easy to understand. But. Not so!

Over the next few months i'm going to explore the use of mass grave in an attempt to better understand our funerary practices through time.

This post starts and finishes with two different stories by two different women.

One woman was having trouble getting pregnant - she already had a few children - it just wasn't taking this time, until she went to her doctor for a chat. Talking to the doctor, who was a caring, kind, experienced woman, she came away more relaxed about the process. A month later it took.

If you've ever flown into or out of Cork airport you may have flown over Killingley graveyard. This is one of those Cork graveyards situated on the side of a slope. It is rural but with strong links to the city and pride of place within the graveyard falls to the headstone for the Rev. Florence McCarthy (d 1805).

Historic graveyards are compasses in the landscape.

If you're ever lost in the Irish countryside, a graveyard can help you get your bearings.

Catholics and Protestants are often buried together in Ireland.

Or rather, buried in the same place. The same burial ground.

We sometimes use different roads to get to the graveyard.

We sometimes use difference entrances into the same graveyard.

It's even been said some burial grounds have walls under the ground to stop our bones from mixing. We're a funny old crowd.

The Romans never really came to Ireland. They didn't really sail across the Irish Sea and bonk us on the head and kill all the chieftains and build roads and walls and towns and such.

Graveyards are made and maintained by the living, as sacred places to the memory of the beloved dead.

And the social history of a parish is wrapped up in it's graveyards.

By studying graveyards we can tell who the big landowners were; who had a middling farm and who had none. We can identify the trades families engaged in. And one of the most commonly encountered trades is that of blacksmith. For graveyards, blacksmith's made iron crosses, grave surrounds, and put together grave railings. But mainly blacksmiths made the iron gates that close-off the sacred space.

Graveyards are about slowing down.

For those of us left behind when somebody dies, they are gone, but we're still here! Doing the shopping, getting the children to school, buying a niece's birthday present to post to Scotland, ringing the insurance company; working. We do a million things.

But when we go to visit the grave we slow down.

The people who put up headstones have many names.

Stonemason, stonecutter, lettercarver, sculptor, and monumental sculptor are a few that come to mind.

Sometimes, about 1% of the time, we find the stonecutters name carved on the bottom of the headstone. It'll say something like Fecit D McCarthy.

Which is latin for D McCarthy made this!

Peter O'Connor died in Cork city, Ireland, in 1909. He was only 1.5 years old. The cause of death was natural and a woman called Margaret O'Connor paid for his burial. Presumably his mother but maybe not.