Wikipedia

Corleck Head

The Corleck Head is an Irish three-faced stone idol usually dated to the 1st or 2nd century AD, that was rediscovered c. 1855 in Drumeague in County Cavan and came to national attention in 1937. Its dating to the Iron Age is based on its iconography, which is similar to that of contemporary northern European Celtic artefacts. Archaeologists agree that it probably depicts a Celtic god and was intended to be placed on top of a larger shrine associated with a Celtic head cult.

The Corleck Head
Two of the head's three faces
MaterialLimestone
Size
  • Height: 33 cm (13 in)
  • Width (max): 22.5 cm (8.9 in)
Created1st or 2nd century AD
Discoveredc. 1855
Corleck Hill, County Cavan, Ireland
53°58′21″N 6°59′53″W / 53.9725°N 6.9981°W / 53.9725; -6.9981
Present locationNational Museum of Ireland, Dublin

It is carved in the round from a block of limestone. It shows three relatively simply described faces, each with similar features, including embossed eyes, thin and narrow mouths and enigmatic expressions. Its dating and cultural significance are difficult to establish. The three faces seem to depict an all-knowing, all-seeing god representing the unity of the past, present and future. Corleck Hill was a major religious centre during the late Iron Age and continued in use as such for the celebration of the Lughnasadh, a pre-Christian harvest festival that in Corleck continued into the modern period.

Archaeologists assume that the head was buried in the Early Middle Ages, perhaps c. 900–1200 AD, due to its obvious paganism and association with human sacrifice. When rediscovered, the sculpture was regarded as an insignificant local curiosity and for decades was placed on a farm gatepost. It has been in the collection of the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin since 1937.

Discovery

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The Corleck Head was unearthed around 1855 by the local farmer James Longmore while looking for stones to build a farmhouse that became known colloquially as the "Corleck Ghost House".[1][2] While the exact find spot is unknown,[3] it was probably on Corleck Hill in the townland of Drumeague, the site of a large c. 2500 BC passage grave that was then under excavation to make way for farming land.[4][5] The head was uncovered alongside the Corraghy Heads—a stylistically very different janiform sculpture with a ram's head on one side and a human head on the other.[1] Archaeologists assumed the Corleck and Corraghy Heads once formed elements of a larger shrine and were buried around the same time, probably to hide them from Christian iconoclasts who sought to suppress the memory of older pagan idols, and especially, according to the archaeologist Ann Ross, the suggestion of "surrogate sacrificial heads".[6][7] The archaeologist John Waddell believes the majority of the Iron Age stone idols were destroyed and then forgotten.[8]

The historian and folklorist Thomas J. Barron was the first to recognise the Corleck Head's age and significance after seeing it in 1934 while a researcher for the Irish Folklore Commission. Through his initial research and interviews he found that after Longmore had sold the lease on the farm to Thomas Hall in 1865, Hall's son, Sam, placed the Corleck head on a gatepost. He interviewed Emily Bryce, a relative of the Halls, who remembered childhood visits to the farm and throwing stones at the head, having no idea of its age.[9] Barron also discovered that around this time Sam Hall had inadvertently destroyed a large part of the Corraghy Idols while trying to separate its two heads.[7] Barron contacted the National Museum of Ireland (NMI) in 1937, after which its director Adolf Mahr arranged the Corleck Head's permanent loan to the museum for study.[4][10] In a lecture to the Prehistoric Society that year, Mahr described the head as "certainly the most Gaulish looking sculpture of religious character ever found in Ireland".[11] He secured funding to acquire it for the museum, and study of the head and similar stone idols preoccupied Barron until his death in 1992.[12]

Corleck Hill's Irish names include Sliabh na Trí nDée (the "Hill of the Three Gods") and Sliabh na nDée Dána (the "Highland of the Three Gods of Craftsmanship"). The literary evidence indicates that the hill was a significant Druidic (the priestly caste in ancient Celtic cultures) site of worship during the Iron Age,[13][14] and was traditionally known as once being "the pulse of Ireland".[13][15] From the early Christian period, it became a major site for the Lughnasadh, an ancient harvest festival celebrating the Celtic god Lugh, a warrior king and master craftsman of the Tuatha Dé Danann—one of the foundational Irish tribes in Irish mythology.[a][17] Corleck is one of six areas in Ulster where clusters of apparently related stone idols have been found.[b][19] Other ancient objects found near Corleck include the 1st century BC wooden Ralaghan Idol (also brought to attention by Barron),[c][20][21] a small contemporary spherical stone head from the nearby townlands of Corravilla, and the Corraghy Heads.[22][23]

Dating

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Most surviving iconic—that is, representational as opposed to abstract—prehistoric Irish sculptures originate from the northern province of Ulster. The majority consist of human heads carved in the round (that is, fully three-dimensional without a side attached to a flat background) in low relief and are mostly thought to date from 300 BC to 100 AD.[24][25] Dating stone sculpture is difficult as techniques such as radiocarbon dating cannot be used.[26] According to the Celtic scholar Anne Ross, the style of Corleck Head corresponds closely to other to other Iron Age anthropoid representations of the head [suggesting] a date in the late La Tène period".[27][28] The Corleck Head is thus placed within this period based on stylistic similarities to contemporary works whose dating has been established, mainly due to its use of the Celtic ideal of what Ross describes as "sacred triplism".[29] However, this view has been challenged by the writer John Billingsley, who points out that there was a folk art revival of stone head carvings in the early modern period.[29]

Although many of the Ulster group of heads are believed to be pre-Christian, others have since been identified as either from the Early Middle Ages or examples of 17th- or 18th-century folk art. Thus modern archaeologists date such objects based on their resemblance to other known examples in the contemporary Northern European context.[30][31] The Corleck Head's format and details were probably influenced by a wider European tradition, in particular from contemporary Romano-British (between 43 and 410 AD) and Gallo-Roman iconography (1st century BC to the 5th century AD).[32][33] A small number of other contemporary Irish and British anthropomorphic examples have similarly composed faces,[18][34] including a three-faced stone bust from Woodlands, County Donegal, and two carved triple heads from Greetland in West Yorkshire, England.[4][35]

Description

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Face with a small hole at the centre of its mouth.
 
Narrow face with heavy eyebrows.

The Corleck Head consists of a circular piece of local limestone[36] carved into a tricephalic skull[37] with three faces.[38] It is a relatively large example of the type, being 33 cm (13 in) high and 22.5 cm (8.9 in) at its widest point.[4] The head cuts off just below the chin, giving it the appearance of being disembodied.[39] Its faces are carved in low relief and could be male or female.[40][41] They are similar in form and their enigmatic, complex expressions. Each has basic and simply described features, yet they seem to convey slightly different moods.[32] They all have a broad and flat wedge-shaped nose and a thin, narrow, slit mouth. All of the embossed (or raised) eyes are wide yet closely set, and seem to stare at the viewer; the faces are clean-shaven and lack ears.[37][42] One has heavy eyebrows, and another has a small hole at the centre of its mouth, a feature of unknown significance found on several contemporary Irish stone heads and examples from England, Wales and Bohemia.[43][44]

Archaeologists disagree on whether the Corleck Head was intended as a prominent element of a larger structure containing other stone or wooden sculptures.[39] The hole under its base indicates that it was intended to be placed on top of a pedestal, likely on a tenon (a joint connecting two pieces of material).[22] This suggests that the larger structure may have represented a phallus—a common Iron Age fertility symbol.[30][32][45]

The Corleck Head is widely considered the finest of the Celtic stone idols, largely due to its contrasting simplicity of design and complexity of expression.[32][3] In 1962 the archaeologist Thomas G. F. Paterson wrote that only the triple-head idol found in Cortynan, County Armagh, shares features drawn from such bare outlines. According to Paterson, the simplicity of the Corleck and Cortynan heads indicates a degree of sophistication of craft absent in the often "vigorous and ... barbaric style" of other contemporary Irish examples.[23] In 1972, the archaeologist Etienn Rynne described it as "unlike all others in its elegance and economy of line".[22]

 
Composite view of the three faces showing them as they would appear if the viewer walked from left to right around the head

Function

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Main article: Celtic stone idols
 
The Tandragee Idol,c. 1000 – c. 500 BC. St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh[21]

The human head is one of the earliest known figurative stone sculptures found in Ireland, with the exception of the c. 1000 – c. 400 BC Tandragee Idol from nearby County Armagh[30] and the Ralaghan Idol, c. 1100 – c. 900 BC, found less than five miles east of Corleck Hill.[22] Archaeological evidence suggests a complex and prosperous Iron Age society that assimilated many external cultural influences,[33] with the early forms of Celtic religion generally thought to have been introduced to Ireland around 400 BC.[6][46]

The number three seems to have been especially significant to Roman-period Celts.[47] Three-headed figures such as the Corleck Head are a common feature of Celtic art and according to Ross had a religious significance "fundamental to early Celtic thought and outlook".[48] Triple "mother goddesses" are common, as are sculptures of the hooded figures known as Genii Cuucullati.[49] From surviving artefacts, it can be assumed that multi-headed (as with the "Dreenan" figure and the Corraghy Heads) and multi-faced idols (such as the Corleck Head) were a common part of Irish Celtic iconography. The types are assumed to have represented all-knowing and all-seeing gods, symbolising the unity of the past, present and future.[50] According to the archaeologist Miranda Aldhouse-Green, the Corleck Head may have been used "to gain knowledge of places or events far away in time and space".[39]

Stone idols were typically used as part of larger worship sites, and many of the surviving Irish examples were unearthed near sacred wells, rivers or trees, usually on sites later adapted by early Christians for churches and monasteries.[33][51] The hole at the Corleck Head's base indicates that it was periodically attached to a larger structure, perhaps a pillar comparable to the now-lost 1.8-metre (6 ft) wooden structure found in the 1790s in a bog near Aghadowey, County Londonderry, which was originally capped with a figure with four heads.[d][52] Many of the surviving examples are of human heads, sometimes with multiple faces.[53] The modern consensus, as articulated by Ross, is that the Celts venerated the head as a "symbol of divinity" and believed it to be "the seat of the soul".[54][55][56] Classical Greek and Roman sources mention that Celtic peoples practised headhunting and used the severed heads of their enemies as war trophies, and would, in the words of Ross, "tie them to the necks of their horses, bearing them home in triumph ... the more severed heads a warrior possessed, the greater was his reputation as a hero."[54]

Notes

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  1. ^ The Lughnasadh was one of the quarterly Gaelic calendar festivals, the others being the Samhain (beginning of winter), Imbolc (spring) and Bealtaine (summer).[16]
  2. ^ The others are Cathedral Hill in Armagh town, the Newtownhamilton and Tynan areas in County Armagh, the southernmost part of Lough Erne in County Fermanagh, and the Raphoe region in north-west County Donegal.[18]
  3. ^ The townland of Ralaghan is about 7 km (4.3 mi) south-east of Corleck Hill.[3] Barron recalled being approached in a bog by a man holding a large stick-like object which turned out to be the Ralaghan Idol. The man told him that he intended to throw it back into the bog and that "we're getting dozens of these carved sticks and putting them back. You see, you can't take what's been offered ... the other day one of us got a beautiful bowl, bronze or gold ... carved and decorated all over." When Barron asked him where the bowl was now, he said they had thrown it back "at once, fearing bad luck to have kept it.[20]
  4. ^ The Aghadowey pillar was carved from a tree trunk and had four heads, each with hair, that is today known only from a very simple 19th-century drawing annotated as a "Heathen image found in the bog of Ballybritoan Parish Aghadowey".[52]

References

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Citations

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  1. ^ a b Waddell (2023), p. 320
  2. ^ Barron (1976), pp. 98–99
  3. ^ a b c Waddell (1998), p. 360
  4. ^ a b c d Kelly (2002), p. 142
  5. ^ Waddell (1998), p. 371
  6. ^ a b Ó hÓgáin (2000), p. 20
  7. ^ a b Ross (2010), p. 66
  8. ^ Waddell (2023), p. 210
  9. ^ Ross (2010), pp. 65–66
  10. ^ "Thomas J. Barron. Cavan County Libraries. Retrieved 3 March 2024
  11. ^ Mahr (1937), p. 415
  12. ^ Duffy (2012), p. 153
  13. ^ a b Barron (1976), p. 100
  14. ^ Ross (1998), p. 200
  15. ^ MacKillop (2004), p. 104
  16. ^ Waddell (2023), p. 247
  17. ^ Ross (2010), p. 111
  18. ^ a b Rynne (1972), p. 80
  19. ^ Rynne (1972), p. 78
  20. ^ a b Ross (2010), p. 65
  21. ^ a b Warner (2003), p. 27
  22. ^ a b c d Rynne (1972), p. 84
  23. ^ a b Paterson (1962), p. 82
  24. ^ Rynne (1972), p. 79
  25. ^ Ross (1960), p. 14
  26. ^ Gleeson (2022), p. 20
  27. ^ Ross (1967), p. 124
  28. ^ Armit (2012), pp. 34, 54
  29. ^ a b Armit (2012), p. 37
  30. ^ a b c Waddell (1998), p. 362
  31. ^ Morahan (1987–1988), p. 149
  32. ^ a b c d Kelly (2002), p. 132
  33. ^ a b c Kelly (1984), p. 10
  34. ^ Waddell (2023), p. 321
  35. ^ Rynne (1972), plate X
  36. ^ Rynne (1972), pp. 79–93
  37. ^ a b O'Toole, Fintan. "A history of Ireland in 100 objects: Corleck Head". The Irish Times, 25 June 2011. Retrieved 4 February 2022
  38. ^ Aldhouse-Green (2015), p. 43
  39. ^ a b c Aldhouse-Green (2015), p. 46
  40. ^ Cooney (2023), p. 349
  41. ^ Ross (1960), p. 13
  42. ^ Ross (1960), pp. 13–14, 24
  43. ^ Waddell (1998), pp. 360, 371
  44. ^ Kelly (2002), pp. 132, 142
  45. ^ Ross (1960), p. 22
  46. ^ Ross (2010), p. 23
  47. ^ Aldhouse-Green (2015), p. 47
  48. ^ Ross (1960), p. 15
  49. ^ Ross (2010), p. 66
  50. ^ Ó hÓgáin (2000), p. 23
  51. ^ Aldhouse-Green (2015), p. 48
  52. ^ a b Waddell (1998), pp. 361, 374
  53. ^ "A Face From The Past: A possible Iron Age anthropomorphic stone carving from Trabolgan, Co. Cork". National Museum of Ireland. Retrieved 22 April 2023
  54. ^ a b Ross (1960), p. 11
  55. ^ Eogan; Herity (2013), p. 245
  56. ^ Zachrisson (2017), pp. 359–60
  57. ^ Davidson (1989), p. 138
  58. ^ Welsh (2022), p. 215

Sources

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