1798 Commemoration Tara

by Participant Tue May 13, 2008 16:00

I would like to thank all those who attended our ceremony at Tara on Sunday. We recieved a warm reception and great support . We would very much appreciate it if whoever is responsible for removing the Memorial Monument would return it to its rightful position immediately, no questions asked. Otherwise may the full force of the Law be applied for this crime.

by Robert O'Coillean Wed May 14, 2008 12:31 o.coillean at gmail dot com

What a shame that such a vital part of Irish history should fall to a senseless prank! As a displaced son of Ireland (my great...grands fled to America), it breaks my heart to see many the changes that are taking place in my homeland. They so closely mirror the decline of this once-great country - loss of memory and respect for the heroes of our past (as evidenced by this most recent theft), drifting away from the family values that kept our race strong through hundreds of years of persecution by the brits, falling away from the time honored religious traditions that sustained us for centuries.
Tell me, my brothers still on Irish sod: is this really all due to our "freedom"? It seems that, just as we are coming into our own, out from under oppressive boots, we are losing our grip on all that has made us unconquerable for so long.
Do we need oppression to remember that our real strength is in our faith and our blood loyalty? Is freedom and prosperity too heady a drink for us to handle with dignity?
Please, God, let it not be so!
Ireland! Remember your faith! Remember your strengths of family and community and national camaraderie!
God bless Ireland.

by hibernophile Wed May 14, 2008 20:05

The theft of that memorial stone is a sad disgrace. And for what reason stolen? But even sadder it seems to tie-in with the treatment being metered out in the Gabhra Valley, the Hill overlooks, where bones of the dead have been unceremoniously dug up along the present line of the M.3 motorway route and bagged and tagged and dumped in a warehouse. And that is official, government sponsored policy as was destroying Lismullen National Monument and the emasculating of Rath Lugh National Monument for M.3 road-take across the valley from Tara Hill.

Strangely the sly nicking of the 1798 commemeration stone sort of shows consistency with the general, illegal "desacrelising" (Seamus Heaney's word for it!) that is presently taking place in the Tara Domain.
If the government itself doesn't show the proper respect due to a consecrated National environment one wonders what example it is for unofficial chancers to copy and maybe for as commercial a reason as the M.3 holds for some others on the grab!
Where there was for centuries an enemy without there's now the "enemy within" prepared, by the look of things, to be just as ruthless as any Imperial occupier was. And with foreign, corporate help!

Maybe this coming Saturday's Save Tara March in Dublin, May 17th, and including Tara Harpers again, can highlight both the above disgraces being perpetrated in the New Ireland of 2008. Slan