Sligo-based surf pioneer and three-time national champion Seamus McGoldrick has explored 6,000 years of local history for a book he has just published.
Waking Maeve: an excavation of Sligo’s landscape, myth and history spans a period from “Stone Age tomb builders to surfers, saints and rebels” to tell the story of “a county whose past is as dramatic as its Atlantic coastline”.
McGoldrick studied physics at Trinity College Dublin before building a life around the sea and surfing.
“I grew up in the orbit of Knocknarea in a village that was the hub of nineties surfing in Ireland,” he says.
“The landscape was as extraordinary as the waves, but I became hungry to know more about the mysterious cairns built by my ancestors at Knocknarea, Carrowmore and Carns Hill.
“Writing Waking Maeve led me to better understand the people who built these monuments and how they shape how we see Sligo today. Now it is time to share these stories.”
At the heart of the book is Queen Maeve, the formidable warrior queen of Irish mythology whose name has become inseparable from Knocknarea.
Local tradition places her grave beneath its great summit cairn, Meascán Méadhbha. Thought to conceal a passage tomb, the enormous Neolithic monument remains unexcavated.
But the story stretches far beyond the mountain. In Irish mythology, Maeve ruled from Rathcroghan in County Roscommon, around 60 kilometres away.
Her association with Knocknarea is one of the threads McGoldrick follows through a landscape rich in archaeology and legend.
The concentration of ancient monuments is remarkable. Around 70 of Ireland’s approximately 250 passage tombs are found on the Coolera Peninsula, according to the book.
Knocknarea, Carrowmore and nearby Carns Hill offer clues to the lives and beliefs of the people who built them thousands of years ago, he says, and notes how the same landscape later helped fire the imagination of W.B. Yeats.
Shipwrecks, surfing and the era of rock ’n’ roll also feature in a book that “connects the county’s distant past with more familiar chapters of its history”, he says.
McGoldrick joined the Irish surfing team at the age of 15 and went on to become a pioneering figure in Irish surfing. He previously featured in Afloat’s coverage of the Irish surfing documentary Made in Ireland.
He established Sligo Surf Experience, based at the National Surf Centre in Strandhill, and has ridden some of the Wild Atlantic Way’s most challenging waves, including the huge swells at Mullaghmore Head.
He sees a clear connection between his life in the ocean and his interest in what lies on shore.
“Surfing teaches you to look closely at the environment and embrace it, rain or shine. You learn to read the sea, the wind, the tide and the coast. Writing this book was another way of learning to read the Sligo landscape,” he says.
“Like surfing, my study of local history has given me a deeper knowledge, which I am keen to share. I want to stir the pot of ancient Sligo stories and help awaken in the reader the spirit of the fierce Maeve of Connacht.”
Waking Maeve: an excavation of Sligo’s landscape, myth and history is available now on Amazon.
