Brush, ink and watercolor illustration from ‘Ireland in Iceland: Gaelic Remnants in a Nordic Land’ written by the late Manchán Magan. The illustration supports the phrase: Cuirfidh mé cloch ar do charn (I will put a stone on your cairn/burial mound). An old Irish phrase, a premonition and an elegy to those who’ve passed. One of innumerable gemstone phrases and old words I learned from Manchán. Mythology and folklore is bound up in the world of the dead as much as it is the world of dreams and visions. To pass on myths is to share stories of those who have bit the dust, those of the soil and the particles, or ‘scim’. Those of the mists, of the ‘sí gaoithe’ (gust of wind/fairy mist). The bard or ‘fili’ forges a glimpse of the forms they used to take and lives they lived. In doing so, the moments of their lives are reactivated in a sense across spacetime. The past takes presence again, in hyperbolic fashion. Mythology is reality through stained glass. Manchán, cuirfidh mé cloch ar do charn!
Aodh Ó Riagáin is Oreganillo., producing comics, illustration, animation, graphic design, modelling and more.