The Celtic Riddle

"Next is a curse be on these stones. Haven't a clue on that one, but the one after that is Leinster's Hag to Eriu's Seat. There's a mountain in Leinster province called Sliab na Caillighe, or Mountain of the Hag. That's one. Eriu, we all know, is one part of the triple goddess of Ireland. Her seat, if that is what we want to call it, is said to be right here in the Dingle peninsula, in the Slieve Mish Mountains. Jennifer, Sliab or Slieve na Caillighe is not far from Tara and the Hill of Tailte."

"Got them!" she exclaimed. "Both circled. The mountains in the Dingle too."

"Right. Next?"

"I'll skip the ones I don't know and just give you the ones I do," Alex said. "I mean, frankly, I have no idea where the Umbilicus Hiberniae might be. Hibernia is an old name for Ireland, and umbilicus, well, I have this thought that it might be like the Greek concept of omphalmos, the navel of Greek civilization at Delphi. I don't know what the Irish equivalent could be. However, Aine's Mount to Macha's Stronghold I can locate: both ancient goddesses. The old word for Mount is cnoc, now spelled Knock. There's a place called Knockainy in Munster, which was a sacred center in that province a long time ago, sacred to the goddess Aine, so Knockainy, or Cnoc Aine, Aine's Mount. Ma-cha was also a goddess, a horse goddess, apparently. Macha's Stronghold would surely be Emain Macha, now called Navan Fort, in Ulster. Close to Armagh, Jennifer."

"Got them both," she said after a few minutes.

"Grianan Ailech to Granard, down the line of the noonday sun. Grianan Ailech is the supposed home of the Dagda, one of the gods of the Tuatha de Danaan. I think it's way to the north, Jennifer."

She checked the map index. "Grianan Ailech, yes, right at the top. Granard," she paused, "almost directly south, 'round about the middle of Ireland. Okay, marked them both."

"Almu's white to Maeve's Red. You were right about Maeve, Lara. Queen and goddess of Connacht. Very powerful woman. Her capital was at Rathcroghan. Almu was another goddess, referred to as 'the White.' Her home was on Knockaulin, that word knock or cnoc again, now the Hill of Allen, then the seat of the Kings of Leinster."

We waited until Jennifer had found them and marked their place.

"Due east, Partholan turned to die," I said. "I remember Partholan from Denny's story of the Battle of Mag Tuired. He was one of the early invaders of Ireland, wasn't he? He and his people perished mysteriously, if I recall. Plague or something."

"That's right. The Book of Invasions of Ireland tells of several different peoples who came to Ireland in the dim past. Partholan was one of the first and is said to come from the west, from out in the Atlantic somewhere, by some accounts. He and his followers did battle with the Fomorians, those primitive creatures who were later defeated by the Tuatha de Danaan. Partholan is supposed to have driven these Fomorians north into the sea. But then they were afflicted by a plague of some kind. The place Partholan and his people are supposed to have gone to die is the Plain of Elta Edar, supposedly the first area to be settled in Ireland. It is just about due east of the Seat of the High Kings at Tara, north of where Dublin is today."

"I've got Tara," Jennifer said. "I'll mark the area east of that and north of Dublin."

"That's it," Alex said. "The others, I either can't figure out, or they refer to the object itself rather than the location, or something. One's like 'all seen and seeing fire eye,' for example. I could find no reference to such a thing in the books I've read. The same for the cursed stones and the cup lifted to the stone."

The three of us looked at the map. We had Jennifer's little circles all over the place, north, south, east and west.

"Do you think we have to go to all these places?" Jennifer wailed. "It would take us months. They're all over the country. Northern Ireland, even!"

"There must be something else here," I said at last. "First we are given clues that are lines from a poem. Then, we find these clues lead to other clues, all in ogham. At least some of these clues lead to other locations, but they're all over the map, literally. The object can't be in all these places, surely. We've circled ten spots, for heaven's sake. We can't be doing this right. I mean, is Jennifer right? Does this mean we have to travel all over the country looking for yet another set of clues? I don't believe it can be this complicated. Surely, Eamon wanted his family to find the treasure, not spend their lives in idle search."

"Maybe it's join the dots," Jennifer said. "But how?" She took a pencil and joined them. All we got was a somewhat smaller area of Ireland. "We could crisscross the dots in some way, but I don't see any pattern, do you?"