The Mysteries Of Knockbride

“The Mysteries Of Knockbride” (2024)

Acrylic on canvas with gold enamel painted sides

48 x 36 x 2” / 91.4 x 121.8 x 4cm

€3600 

I was selected by Cavan County Council along with 9 other artists to create an artwork based on The Corleck Head, the legacy work of historian Tom Barron and the landscape of Knockbride, culminating in the exhibition “Knockbride, An Artists Response”. 

About the artwork

My painting is a tapestry of the rich history and legends of Knockbride, Co. Cavan, documented by historian Thomas Barron, a leading authority on St Brigid. Central to the composition is Corleck Hill, depicted as a living entity and the body of the Corleck Head, which may have been brought there for ceremonial purposes. The hill also symbolises the re-emergence of Brigid, both priestess and saint, whose festival was celebrated with fires here during Imbolc and her stone head was once worshiped on the nearby Hill of Drumeague. Many tales connect her to the area including its name Cnoc Bríde, the hill of Bríd.

One theory suggests that a carved head of Brigid was part of a larger Celtic pantheon that included the Corleck Head. Over time, this stone head was brought into the local church, where Brigid was transformed into St. Bride of Knockbride. When the parish church was relocated, Fr. Owen O’Reilly, the parish priest from 1840 to 1844, transported Brigid’s stone head from the old church in the west to the new site in the east. According to legend, as he passed Roosky Lake, the head mysteriously ‘jumped’ out of his carriage and vanished into the water, never to be seen again. Here in this painting Brigid re-emerges from the waters, reclaiming her rightful place, holding the small stone horse said to have sparked Barron’s passion for history and archaeology in his youth and the glasses he wore while immersing himself in research.

Flanking the hill are the Iron Age crannogs on Corraneary Lake, where Barron conducted excavations. In tribute to Barron’s deep respect for folklore I’ve included the Knockbride white cow-goddess with a trifold personality, echoing both Brigid and the Corleck Head. The cow’s colour changed with the moon phases – red as the goddess of love and war, white of birth and growth, and black of death and fortune-telling.