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Belmullet- Béal an Mhuirthead
“mouth of the Mullet [Peninsula]”
Belmullet has two bays, Blacksod Bay and Broadhaven Poet and Nobel Prize recipient Seamus
Bay, linked by Carter’s canal running through the Heaney wrote a poem called “Belderg”
town. which he enclosed in a thank-you letter
In 1715 Sir Arthur Shaen, an English landlord settled to Patrick Caulfield, after he had visited
in Erris, began work on this small town on a wet and him in Belderrig in 1974. This poem
marshy area near ‘The Mullet’ peninsula. To drain this effectively captures the essence of the
marshy area and to form a passageway from Blacksod pre-historic Belderrig landscape.
Bay into Broadhaven Bay, Shaen had a canal excavated
which would allow small boats to pass from one bay to They just kept turning up
the other. And were thought of as foreign’-
Léim Siar is a popular B&B here with views of Blacksod One-eyed and benign
Bay. Here you can meet a curious melange of cultures They lie about his house,
in the summer months as proprietress Hannah Quigley Quernstones out of a bog.
takes on Woofers to assist in the running of her business.
As only Irish and English are permitted on the premises, To lift the lid of the peat
you may get to hear some German youth speaking their And find this pupil dreaming
cúpla focail!
Of neolithic wheat!
“... the impression one gets of the whole life is not a gloomy When he stripped off blanket bog
one. Last night was St. John’s Eve, and bonfires - a relic
of Druidical rites - were lighted all over the country, the The soft-piles centuries
largest of all being placed in the town square of Belmullet,
where a crowd of small boys shrieked and cheered and Fell open like a glib:
There were the first plough-marks,
threw up firebrands for hours together. Today, again, there
was a large market in the square, where a number of The stone age fields, the tomb
Corbelled, turfed and chambered,
country people, with their horses and donkeys, stood about
bargaining for young pigs, heather brooms, homespun Floored with dry turf-coomb.
flannels, secondhand clothing, blacking- brushes, tinker’s A landscape fossilized,
goods and many other articles. Once when I looked out Its stone wall patternings
the blacking-brush man and the card-trick man were Repeated before our eyes
getting up a fight in the corner of the square. A little later In the stone walls of Mayo
there was another stir and I saw a Chinaman wandering
about, followed by a wondering crowd. The sea in Erris, Before I turn to go
as in Connemara, and the continual arrival of islanders
and boatmen from various directions, tend to keep up an He talked about persistance,
interest and movement that is felt even far away in the A congruence of lives,
villages among the hills.” How, stubbed and cleared of stones,
His home accrued growth rings
pp. 206-207. Of Iron, flint and bronze.
Fallmore- An Fál Mór So I talked of Mossbawn,
A bogland name. ‘But Moss?’
St. Derbhile lived in the 6th century here at Fallmore, He crossed my old home’s music
on the Southerly tip of the Belmullet Peninsula. With older strains of Norse.
Here you can visit the remains of her church, “Derbhile’s
bed” and a holy well, Tobar Deirbhle. I’d told how its foundation
Shipwreck Was mutable as sound
And how I could derive
Several ships of the Spanish Armada went down A forked root from that ground
in the mighty waters around North Mayo in the And make bawn an English fort,
A planter’s walled-in mound
From “Belderg” by Seamus Heaney
1975
216
“mouth of the Mullet [Peninsula]”
Belmullet has two bays, Blacksod Bay and Broadhaven Poet and Nobel Prize recipient Seamus
Bay, linked by Carter’s canal running through the Heaney wrote a poem called “Belderg”
town. which he enclosed in a thank-you letter
In 1715 Sir Arthur Shaen, an English landlord settled to Patrick Caulfield, after he had visited
in Erris, began work on this small town on a wet and him in Belderrig in 1974. This poem
marshy area near ‘The Mullet’ peninsula. To drain this effectively captures the essence of the
marshy area and to form a passageway from Blacksod pre-historic Belderrig landscape.
Bay into Broadhaven Bay, Shaen had a canal excavated
which would allow small boats to pass from one bay to They just kept turning up
the other. And were thought of as foreign’-
Léim Siar is a popular B&B here with views of Blacksod One-eyed and benign
Bay. Here you can meet a curious melange of cultures They lie about his house,
in the summer months as proprietress Hannah Quigley Quernstones out of a bog.
takes on Woofers to assist in the running of her business.
As only Irish and English are permitted on the premises, To lift the lid of the peat
you may get to hear some German youth speaking their And find this pupil dreaming
cúpla focail!
Of neolithic wheat!
“... the impression one gets of the whole life is not a gloomy When he stripped off blanket bog
one. Last night was St. John’s Eve, and bonfires - a relic
of Druidical rites - were lighted all over the country, the The soft-piles centuries
largest of all being placed in the town square of Belmullet,
where a crowd of small boys shrieked and cheered and Fell open like a glib:
There were the first plough-marks,
threw up firebrands for hours together. Today, again, there
was a large market in the square, where a number of The stone age fields, the tomb
Corbelled, turfed and chambered,
country people, with their horses and donkeys, stood about
bargaining for young pigs, heather brooms, homespun Floored with dry turf-coomb.
flannels, secondhand clothing, blacking- brushes, tinker’s A landscape fossilized,
goods and many other articles. Once when I looked out Its stone wall patternings
the blacking-brush man and the card-trick man were Repeated before our eyes
getting up a fight in the corner of the square. A little later In the stone walls of Mayo
there was another stir and I saw a Chinaman wandering
about, followed by a wondering crowd. The sea in Erris, Before I turn to go
as in Connemara, and the continual arrival of islanders
and boatmen from various directions, tend to keep up an He talked about persistance,
interest and movement that is felt even far away in the A congruence of lives,
villages among the hills.” How, stubbed and cleared of stones,
His home accrued growth rings
pp. 206-207. Of Iron, flint and bronze.
Fallmore- An Fál Mór So I talked of Mossbawn,
A bogland name. ‘But Moss?’
St. Derbhile lived in the 6th century here at Fallmore, He crossed my old home’s music
on the Southerly tip of the Belmullet Peninsula. With older strains of Norse.
Here you can visit the remains of her church, “Derbhile’s
bed” and a holy well, Tobar Deirbhle. I’d told how its foundation
Shipwreck Was mutable as sound
And how I could derive
Several ships of the Spanish Armada went down A forked root from that ground
in the mighty waters around North Mayo in the And make bawn an English fort,
A planter’s walled-in mound
From “Belderg” by Seamus Heaney
1975
216
