Benwhisken, the beautiful and quite strangely shaped mountain to the north of Benbulben. This is the entrance to the magnificent Horseshoe valley, one of the little-known wonders of Co. Sligo.

Me and my mythical totem pole at Moytura 2000, a festival we organised at Lough Arrow to mark the Millennium and celebrate our local mythology.

News i14 January 2008 Hmmmmmmm...... I'm not too good at keeping up with my news page. To tell the truth, I haven't been to too many monuments lately, what with children, music and gardening. I recently visited a beautiful mass rock in the townland of Tawley, not far from Cliffoney, which is surely a Christianised standing stone. I also went down and tidied up St Brigit's well, just outside Cliffoney village. This beautiful and neglected spot has a modern (1950's) statue of Brigit housed in a little concrete booth. There is an Early Christian cross slab on the site, which has a swastika carved in the top of the cross. It probably dates from around the fifth century, and resembles the carved stones on Inishmurray island a few miles away. I have also been practicing a lot of tunes on the fiddle. We are going over to play in Lugano, south Switzerland, for St. Patrick's weekend - there are big festivities to mark the 400th anniversary of the Flight of the Earls. Here is a suggested session set for the event: The Sligo Maid/The Woman of the House/The Morning Star - reels The Lilting Banshee/The Butcher's March - jigs The Stack of Barley/The Bantry Bay - Hornpipes Drops of Brandy/The Kid on the Mountain - slip jigs Planxty Irwin/Planxty Fanny Power - Carolan The Salamanca/The Banshee/The Sailor's Bonnet - reels The Kesh/Morrison's Jig/Donnybrook Fair - jigs The Liverpool/Chief O'Neills - Hornpipes The Kerry Polka/Bog Down in the Valley/Maggie in the Woods - polkas Cooley's/The Silver Spear/The Mountain Road - reels The King of the Fairies - set dance Sonny Brogan's Mazurka/Shoe the Donkey - mazurkas 1 November 2003 Well, having spent a lot of time in 2002 rebuilding this website, I hardly got near it in 2003 - it has been exactly a year since the last update - the trip to the Easkey river valley to visit the dolmens there (Giants Griddle, below). I was an archaeology student (part-time, NUI Galway) up until May 2003 when I graduated with first class honours. I really enjoyed learning about Gaelic Medieval Ireland and the Norman invasion and subsequent history. I will post some of the essays I wrote on the site in due course. I also spent some of early 2003 teaching for the VEC - I visited about 35 national schools in county Sligo and gave a slide show on the stone age heritage and mythology of the county. This was well recieved and I got to show a life-size image of the Entrance stone at Newgrange to about 1,500 kids. In September 2004 I took up the fiddle and went to the Drumshanbo school of traditional music, and this is what I have been up to for the last few years, which is the main reason that this website has recieved so little attention since. I finish my third year of a very enjoyable time spent playing and learning tunes from Paddy Ryan, a highly respected teacher and fiddle player from North Roscommon. 19 April 2006 Sketchbooks Woodblocks Rubbings & Paintings Medicine Wheels Totem pole Casts The Milwaukee adventure