A History of Ireland in Ten Body Parts E-Book

Ian Miller

• Herausgeber: Gill Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 470

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Skulls, height, hands, legs, sex organs, blood, brains, stomachs, ears and corpses – discover Irish history anew through the utterly unique prism of the human body. From the brutal beheading of the red-headed Clonycavan Man some 2,000 years ago to the ancient skulls – believed to be those of giants – stolen from islands off Ireland's west coast, medical historian Dr Ian Miller brings readers on a delightfully gruesome journey through our rich heritage. Learn about the fears of excessive tea drinking that were once such a great cause for concern on this isle – scarcely believable! Meet the doctors who revolutionised Irish medicine in the 19th century – along with the deplorable bodysnatching that accompanied this progress. Fact and folklore intertwine seamlessly throughout, providing the reader with an endlessly fascinating account of matters historical and mythological.

Leseprobe

AHISTORYOFIRELANDINTEN BODYPARTS

DR IAN MILLER

GILL BOOKS

For Laura Garland

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Introduction

1Skulls and Heads

2Height

3Hands

4Legs

5Sexual Organs

6Blood

7Brains

8Stomachs

9Ears

10Corpses

Postscript

Acknowledgements

Endnotes

Copyright

About the Author

About Gill Books

Clonycavan Man, an Iron Age bog body, discovered near Ballivor, Co. Meath, in 2003.

INTRODUCTION

Sometime between 392 and 201 BC, in a part of Co. Meath now known as Clonycavan, a 25-year-old man stooped down on his knees before an executioner and awaited his death. With a blunt axe, the executioner delivered an initial blow that split open the top of the man’s skull. A second blow lacerated the top of the man’s head, leaving a deep, gaping wound. A third and final laceration was struck across the bridge of the man’s nose, cutting deep under his right eye. This blow killed him. The young man’s nipples were pinched and sliced, his insides disembowelled and his mutilated bodily remains thrown into a bog.1

Usually, bodies start to decay immediately from the moment of death, but not this time. As the body sank rapidly, the properties of the bog shut off the oxygen supplies that normally cause decay. Anaerobic conditions, high acidity and the bog’s cold temperature prevented bacteria from growing. Sphagnum moss further shielded the corpse from decay-causing microbes. Over time, the bones disintegrated due to the corrosive effects of acids, but the soft organs – the skin, stomach, hair, nails – were preserved in a chemical process not too dissimilar from the way soft fruit and vegetables are pickled. As the bones wore away, the corpse adopted an eerily contorted position, and the skin became darkly discoloured. There the man remained for thousands of years, undisturbed and unknown to those passing by on the surface above. Until March 2003.

Bogs are scattered across the Irish landscape. These waterlogged patches of land provide fuel for humans in the form of turf and nutrients for wildlife. They also remind visitors of the sprawling wilderness that once existed before modern humans forever changed Ireland’s physical environment. Things easily go missing in bogs, and numerous artefacts from the past have been found submerged in them, perfectly preserved by the bogs’ chemical qualities. Human bodies are among them, eerily intact, with flesh and sometimes even hair. Most were victims of violence. Ireland’s bogs are perfect places to ditch a body should someone find themselves inclined to commit murder. The physical evidence is unlikely to be found any time soon. The oldest bog bodies, including the so-called Clonycavan Man, are thought to have been human sacrifices.

A well-preserved bog body from Denmark.

To date, 17 bog bodies have been found in Ireland, although some deteriorated soon after their discovery. Cashel Man is perhaps the best known, dating from around 2000 BC and discovered in Co. Laois in 2011. Buried in a crouched position with knees against his chest, his arm wrapped around his body, Cashel Man came to his end with a broken arm, a wound on his back and his spine broken in two places. He was ditched in the bogs nearby to a hill believed by archaeologists to have once been used for kingship initiations, alongside wooden stakes, a common feature in ritualistic sacrifices.

In many ways, Clonycavan Man is far more intriguing. The body was found in a peat harvesting machine and the lower torso was never discovered; it remains unclear whether this was removed as part of the sacrificial ritual or accidentally severed in modern times by the machine. Most striking about the preserved remains is Clonycavan Man’s dashing red hair, which remains intact and visible. Admittedly, Cashel Man also has a well-preserved face but, unlike Clonycavan Man, his eyes give the appearance of being closed, and his hair is less visible.

Approaching Clonycavan Man in his current home, the National Museum of Ireland (also home to Cashel Man), is a disconcerting experience. When we look at the body, Clonycavan Man’s eyes appear to stare directly back at us, a time traveller staring with reciprocal wonder and fascination into a strange, futuristic world. Gazing upon the preserved face provides us with a glimpse into how people – not too dissimilar from ourselves – looked in distant, ancient times. Far from alien, the face seems ominously familiar. It’s an experience drastically different from looking upon a fleshless skull or skeleton. Clonycavan Man’s preserved facial features offer a more intimate portal into Ireland’s ancient past. His hair, eyes and skin remind us that this head once belonged to a real person, with feelings, thoughts and behaviours much like our own.2

In reality, our bodies are constantly changing. Even since Clonycavan Man’s time, humans have grown taller. Female hip size has increased. We start puberty at a younger age and menopause at a later one. Changes have occurred in our hair colour, birth weight and body mass index.3 Of course, evolution hasn’t magically ironed out all our problems. We may live for longer, but our bones and organs fail us as we age. Throughout our extended lives, we require glasses, teeth braces, pacemakers and even artificial limbs. We rely increasingly upon technology to replace body parts and functions gone awry, leading some philosophers to argue that we are living in a ‘post-human’ era, having begun to transcend the limitations of our natural bodies.4

Approaching history from the perspective of the body offers a novel way of understanding how people experienced life in the past, whether living through momentous periods of historical change or simply getting on with their daily lives. Those experiences were lived largely through their bodies. Today, in Western countries including Ireland, our bodies are fortunate enough to be relatively shielded from infectious diseases that in the past might have prematurely ended our lives. This was made possible by curative developments in medicine over the past century (termed by scientists the ‘epidemiological transition’ or ‘golden age of medicine’).5 However, the COVID-19 pandemic that struck in 2020 reminded us of our vulnerability to germs and microbes and the enormous social effort required to protect us.6 Now though, rather than die at a young age from an infection, we live longer but suffer from chronic illnesses often stemming from our lifestyle choices. Our bodily experiences (including mental and psychological) have changed considerably, even in living memory.

This book examines Irish history through a unique lens: 10 different body parts. (Admittedly, I cheat a little. ‘Blood’, ‘height’ and ‘corpses’ are technically not ‘body parts’.) It provides a fruitful and entertaining way of introducing readers to the complexities of Irish history by revealing how physical (and mental) experiences shaped that history. The book aims not to be comprehensive but to be informative, engaging and insightful.

In the pages that follow, we will consider ancient skulls stolen from islands off Ireland’s scenic west coast; the giants believed to have once roamed Irish lands; and fairies, leprechauns and banshees. We will meet the famous scribes, including St Patrick, who, all by hand, preserved our knowledge of ancient Ireland. We will look at not only old traditions such as Irish dancing, Sheelana-gigs and Irish sports but also the empty Irish stomachs that accompanied the Great Famine and the mental health crisis that soon followed, at the time blamed on excessive tea drinking and ether drinking. Great orators such as Daniel O’Connell, whose speeches changed the course of Irish history, and controversial romantics including Charles Stewart Parnell, Maud Gonne, W.B. Yeats and Oscar Wilde make their appearance, as do the doctors who revolutionised Irish medicine in the nineteenth century (and the bodysnatchers who helped them), as well as the scientists, anthropologists and literary figures who, from the late nineteenth century, sought to uncover and better understand the ways of the ancient Irish. And much more too.

CHAPTER 1

SKULLS AND HEADS

The human skull has changed significantly over time. Think of the Neanderthal skull, with its large middle face, angled cheekbones, hefty brow ridges and huge nose. Neanderthal skeletons look recognisably human but contain not-too-subtle differences that remind us of how fundamentally different earlier types of human beings once appeared. Over the past 10,000 years, as the Ice Ages receded, the bodies and faces of most large animals grew smaller, including humans. Our brains shrank slightly too. Humans no longer depended as much on large jaws because we began to chew softer, more processed foods than our predecessors. Some scientists even believe that our faces are generally smaller than those of humans living only 300 years ago.1

A typical Neanderthal skull.

Skulls are useful for protecting our brains and housing our facial muscles. Faces have a crucial psychological function for humans. They are central to perception, cognition and behaviour. The uniqueness of each and every one of our faces makes us singularly identifiable to others. We rely heavily upon facial recognition to remember the myriad of individuals we encounter throughout our lives. As our brains perceive, process and remember faces, they also guide the presumptions we make about other people’s behaviours and personalities. It’s for such reasons that skulls, heads and faces have acquired such symbolic importance in human culture. This symbolism also helps explain why many figures of historical importance ended up having their heads brutally removed.

CLONYCAVAN MAN’S HEAD

While gazing upon the remains of Clonycavan Man, our neural pathways recognise a human face. The remnants of his facial features automatically prompt our brain to process the neural mechanisms of face perception. So, when looking at him, we start to pose fundamental questions. What type of person was Clonycavan Man? What was his personality like? How did he behave? How did he live his life? Faces are very communicative, explaining why Clonycavan Man’s contorted expressions, the apparent eye-to-eye contact and the preserved mouth and ears all unnerve the observer. His ancient facial expression looks far from happy, encouraging us to empathise with the pathos and sadness of a man being brutally murdered.2

Clonycavan Man is one of Ireland’s oldest faces. His head is contorted and flattened due to the weight of the peat and his skull having dissolved in the bog. Nonetheless, in the 2000s a team of forensic anthropologists and artists used a state-of-the-art computer system to recreate his facial appearance. He looks surprisingly modern. His hair sweeps backwards from the front to form a bun on top of the head, in a tall arrangement. He also had short stubble above and below his lip and under his chin, resembling a moustache and goatee beard. Remnants of a hair tie were found too.3

The reconstructed face of Clonycavan Man.

Visitors find themselves curiously drawn to the hair still appended to Clonycavan Man’s skull. Human hair is simply not meant to survive through the millennia. It is an extremely rare occurrence when ancient hair becomes miraculously visible to us. In 1780, the Drumkeeragh body was discovered in Co. Down, the remains of an ancient woman found by surveyors near Drumkeeragh Mountain, close to Ballynahinch. A braided lock of hair from the body was given to Elizabeth Rawdon (also known as Lady Moira) in 1781, whose interest in the body encouraged her to publish an article in the Journal of Archaeologia. In this, she recalled how Lord Moira had ordered a survey to be undertaken of a farm on his estate. It was the surveyor who brought the plait of hair to Lady Moira, informing her that he had taken it from a human skull recently dug up by a tenant.

16.5-inch hair plait saved by Lady Moira in the 1780s. Still undated, it might be medieval.

In a small turbary situated at the foot of the Drumkeeragh Mountain, not far from Slieve Croob, the heart of the mountainous region known as the Dromara Hills, the tenant had been cutting turf for his winter’s fuel at a depth of four-and-a-half feet when he came across some hard gravel. Digging further, he discovered the skeleton of a young woman. Around the bones lay many preserved garments. Further investigation revealed that the tenant’s father had been digging in the very same area some fifty years earlier to a depth of eleven feet and had been the first to discover, and then rebury, the corpse. After being bribed with a handsome payment, the tenant handed over the plait of hair.4

This was the first documented scientific investigation of the remains of a bog body, and the lock of hair and some cloth fragments still survive today. A nineteenth-century description by prominent doctor William Wilde (father of Oscar) read:

The hair of the individual was long, silky and of a deep chestnut colour, but how far this brownish-auburn tint is the original shade of the hair, or the result of the bog colouring, is questionable. Its present hue would be much coveted in our own day. The plait was formed of three strands, interwoven after the manner depicted in the adjoining woodcut, and closely resembles the mode of wearing the hair in vogue among children and young girls a few years ago. The entire plait is now fourteen inches long.5

But Clonycavan Man was much older, making the survival of his hair all the more fortuitous. The hair is also of interest because of the insights which it reveals into ancient Ireland. It seems that Clonycavan Man lived at the height of the Celtic Iron Age. At the time, the Celts were divided into a bewildering 150 kingdoms across Ireland. To confuse matters further, each had its own ruler. Ireland’s Ice Age ended around 15,000 BC, and Ireland and Britain separated from the European continent around 12,000 BC. The first evidence of permanent human residence in Ireland dates from around 10,500 BC. Ireland’s prehistoric period ended around AD 400, somewhat later than the rest of Europe and Near East, and the island was probably fully populated by hunter-gatherer humans between 7000 and 6500 BC. Ireland’s Bronze Age commenced around 2500 BC and merged into the Iron Age when the Celts arrived between 500 and 300 BC.6 Clonycavan Man seems to have lived towards the end of that period. Further afield, the Romans were conquering much of Europe, but Ireland remained unconquered.

The Celts were composed of various groups who gradually developed a single culture based largely upon the use of bronze and iron. They arrived in Ireland with a working knowledge of iron and ordered their society into a hierarchy of warriors, with druids at the top of the social scale. Their kings were crowned at the Lia Fáil, a summit on the Hill of Tara, close to the bog into which Clonycavan Man was thrown. The three blows which felled him were not applied arbitrarily. For the Celts, three was a sacred number. The blows may have represented the three different forms of the goddess to whom the sacrifice was being made.7

Aerial image of the Hill of Tara.

The hair reveals much about the ancient grooming habits of Celtic men. People in the distant past, just like us, combed and styled their hair. Clonycavan Man’s modest height, 5 feet 2 inches, set off speculation that he preferred to coif up his hair with gel to appear taller than he actually was. When archaeologists investigated the mysterious gel still contained in the bog body’s hair, they established that it was made of vegetable plant oil mixed with resin from pine trees found only in Spain and south-west France, suggesting strong evidence of Iron Age trade across western Europe. This discovery of Iron Age hair gel caused considerable interest

Clonycavan Man also had well-manicured nails. The healthy state of his fingertips and hands, and absence of bodily scars, suggest that he was not a man accustomed to carrying out manual labour. Instead, he was most likely from the upper echelons of society, a wealthier individual who enjoyed interactions with continental neighbours. Someone important had to be sacrificed for the desired results to occur.8 Perhaps Clonycavan Man was even a king.

After being subjected to all these examinations, Clonycavan Man’s body was impregnated with a water-soluble wax solution and freeze-dried. The drying process took approximately six weeks.9 He now forms part of a National Museum of Ireland exhibition, resting beside various materials connected with ancient rituals: weapons, jewellery, feasting utensils, wooden carvings, quern stones and butter deposits known as ‘bog butter’. Archaeologists speculate that these objects may have been associated with the inauguration of a new king.10 What is most striking, however, is the multitude of secrets which even half a preserved body, and specifically the head, can disclose about everyday life in ancient Ireland. A few strands of gelled-up hair reveal a wealth of information on ancient trading patterns and Ireland’s ancient interconnectedness with nearby European countries, but they also prompt our brains to imagine an ancient Celtic world now long lost to us.

THE RED-HAIRED IRISH

Although Clonycavan Man’s hair colour was probably dark, its preserved remnants give the impression that he had naturally red locks. This erroneous impression links to stereotypes of the Irish being a nation of redheads (or, more derogatorily, ‘gingers’). Leprechauns, for instance, are always depicted with red hair flowing from under their tall, oversized green hats.

Debates on this matter have endured for centuries. In 1892, Catholic-oriented Boston periodical Donahoe’s Monthly Magazine ran an article entitled ‘Are the Irish a Red-Haired Race?’ This question followed on from observations made in 1860 about the colourful hair of Irish members of the Papal Brigade. At the time, the Papal States were under threat from Italian nationalism, which sought the unification of the various regions in the Italian peninsula. Pope Pius IX dispatched a group of papal emissaries to Ireland to recruit an Irish battalion to fight in Northern Italy.11 The author, who anonymously signed off as ‘Irish Citizen, Chicago’, noted that:

As far as our observation has extended, only about two or three per cent of the Irish can be truthfully described as being red-haired. There is a beautiful shading of auburn in the dark locks of many Irish women – the most beautiful hair to be found among mortals; heavy, glinting and luxurious – but nobody, unless he was colour blind, could call them red or strawberry tresses.

The author added:

There is a great deal of beauty in brilliant red hair – not the brick-coloured type – and a handsome woman, with a mass of red locks, is all the more beautiful in consequence, especially as snowy skin is a usual accompaniment of such hirsute adornment, particularly in Irish women.12

Similarly, in 1887, barrister Alexander George Richey wrote about a specific physical type of Irish person also characterised by red hair, in his influential A Short History of the Irish People, although he noted that this appearance was particularly common only among the ‘Scottish colonists in Ulster’. Elsewhere across the island, ‘the asperities and angularities of this type have been softened down, probably by a mixture of Iberian blood’.13

While obviously appreciating the pale-skinned, red-haired variety of Irish woman, these authors concluded that, despite the myth, red hair wasn’t any more prevalent in Ireland than in Scotland or England. They were correct. Nowadays, around 10 per cent of Irish people (roughly 500,000) have red hair, but Scotland does indeed have a slightly higher proportion, with about 13 per cent of Scots having red hair. The Vikings are thought to have introduced red hair into the Irish gene pool from the ninth century AD. One Norse document describes Thor, son of one of the gods of Asgard, as having a head full of red hair, a bushy red beard and a quick temper. Scientists associate red hair with a recessive gene called MC1R. Rare, this gene is found only in around 2 per cent of the world’s population. To produce a red-haired child, both parents must carry a copy of the gene, although the trait can skip generations, adding to the rarity of red hair. Redheads with blue eyes are especially scarce.14

Negative cultural stereotypes abound about red-haired Irish people. In Gulliver’s Travels, Dublin-born Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) wrote of the Yahoos (crude, dirty brutes who lived in the land of the Houyhnhnms) that ‘the red haired of both sexes are more libidinous and mischievous than the rest, whom yet they much exceed in strength and activity’. Not all Yahoos had red hair, but those that did, particularly the females, were the most dangerous. A female Yahoo who attacked Gulliver sexually was a redhead. Evidently, Swift’s portrayal of the Yahoos was not flattering and is believed to represent the Irish. An irrational people, they represented humanity’s worst side, being ‘the most filthy, noisome and deformed animals which nature ever produced’.15

Swift drew from millennia-old stereotypes, presumably recognisable to his contemporary readers. Satan himself was covered with red hair, according to the Bible. Jewish communities were traditionally associated with red hair (the so-called ‘Red Jews’) and for centuries faced persecution and discrimination. Early Christians associated red hair and beards with evil and sins.16 In Irish mythology, Badb, the goddess of war and death, who commonly took the form of a crow, used to meet heroes in the guise of a red-haired woman.17

While today red hair is more commonly associated, sometimes erotically, with images of pale-skinned female Irish beauty, red-haired women were historically held in low repute. In folk culture well into the twentieth century, encountering a woman with red hair first thing in the morning was an omen that forebode bad luck and evil. As one proverb stated: ‘Let not the eye of a redhaired woman rest on you.’18 To counteract the negative effects of coming across a red-haired lady, the unfortunate victim had to return to his starting point. If he met a white horse along the way, any spells cast were averted.19 However, red-haired men enjoyed a far better reputation. The Red Captain was a spirit thought to appear in the form of a red-haired young man whose presence, unlike that of his female counterparts, brought good fortune.20

Máire Rua O’Brien (also known as Red Mary).

The most notorious female redhead was Máire Rua O’Brien (1615–1686), an Irish aristocrat who married three times to retain family lands. Her nickname, Red Mary, derives from her rouge hair. She is a notorious figure in Irish folklore, and numerous (exaggerated) stories and legends are associated with her. She lived during the Irish Confederate Wars (or Eleven Years’ War), which took place between 1641 and 1653. As with many Irish conflicts, the main issues revolved around whether Catholics or Protestants should hold political power and whether Ireland should be self-governing or subordinate to the parliament in England. In 1649, a large English Parliamentarian army, led by Oliver Cromwell, invaded Ireland, massacring many soldiers and civilians. The conflict ultimately led to the repression of Catholicism from the 1650s after the end of the Cromwellian War (1649–53). The death toll was huge. An estimated 400,000 to 600,000 people died on Irish soil.21

During this conflict, Máire backed the Royalist cause against Cromwell’s forces. With her first husband, Conor O’Brien, she built one of the finest houses erected in seventeenth-century Ireland. However, he died at the hands of the Cromwellians, and the property was forfeit. Máire became determined to marry a Cromwellian to regain her property. John Cooper was her chosen candidate, although he soon died after Máire reportedly kicked him in the stomach when he insulted O’Brien. According to some rumours, she threw her third husband out of the window before marrying another 22 men, most of whom met a grisly end. She was also rumoured to enjoy hanging her maids from the tower by their hair. Eventually, she suffered a witch’s curse and was fastened in the hollow of a tree, her red hair entangled with its roots. However, her ghost escaped to forever haunt Leamaneh Castle. Another legend states that she was hanged by her hair from a tree. Either way, Máire’s red hair figures prominently in her mythology.22

DECAPITATION

Red Mary would probably have approved of Cromwell’s ultimate fate. In 1659, Charles II of England was restored as King of England following a brutal Civil War. Upon his restoration, Charles announced that Cromwell must be executed for regicide. (His father, Charles I, had been beheaded.) Cromwell had died in September 1658, but Charles didn’t let this deter him. In 1660, Cromwell’s corpse was taken from Westminster Abbey, dragged through London’s busy streets and hanged in chains at Tyburn, an area of London synonymous with the gallows. Cromwell was then posthumously beheaded in front of a rapturous, although somewhat bemused, audience. His head was placed on a 20-foot spike on the roof of Westminster Hall, where it rested until 1685, when a storm blew it down.23

The word decapitation comes from the Latin capitis, which translates as ‘of the head’. Severing the head swiftly deprives the brain of oxygen and causes the body’s organs to fail. Human heads are notoriously tricky to dislodge from a living body, and executioners commonly botched beheadings, requiring multiple attempts and causing excruciating pain to the soon-to-be headless person. When Cromwell’s corpse was decapitated at Tyburn, it took the executioner eight blows to cut through the layers of cerecloth that wrapped his body. A successful decapitation requires powerful, accurate action, and a sharp, heavy blade. Even the most experienced executioners usually had to inflict a few blows before a person’s head was fully cut off.24

Interestingly, the severed heads of some sea slugs can grow a new body. In the 1940s a chicken named Miracle Mike attracted international fame for living 18 months without his head.25 Humans are not so fortunate. How long we can remain conscious after decapitation is unclear, although numerous macabre experiments have taken place. The guillotine is often remembered as a grotesque, barbaric invention of the French Revolution, but it was actually intended as a humane execution contraption which got around the problem of botched beheadings and the cruelty of inflicting several blows on the neck of a living person. Death under the guillotine was meant to be instantaneous but was still a bloody business.26 Promises of a speedy, relatively painless death led to the replacement in France of the executioner’s axe with the guillotine, but onlookers insisted that many of these heads continued to blink, breathe, blush, grind their teeth and even communicate for some time after being severed.27

One French physician who attended an execution approached as soon as the severed head, dislocated from its body, had fallen into the blood-stained basket below. He called out the name of the executed man and was convinced that the head made eye contact with him before lowering its gaze. Once again, the physician called out the man’s name and noticed similar signs of consciousness. Based on this apparent communication, the physician concluded that human heads could retain consciousness for 25–30 seconds.28 Subsequent experiments involving slicing off the heads of laboratory rats appear to confirm this.29

There is another interesting, and little-known, fact about the guillotine. The Irish might well have invented it. In 1307, Murcod Ballagh was the first person in the world recorded as having been executed by guillotine. The death took place in Merton, Co. Galway, according to Holinshed’s Chronicles, published some centuries later in 1577, and the executioner was named David de Caunteton. Both names appear in the justiciary rolls for January 1308, which hints at the veracity of this story. Ballagh was an outlaw, which meant that his captors had the right to execute him upon apprehension without going through any legal process. Ironically, two years after Murcod’s death, his executioner, David de Caunteton, suffered the same fate.30

In some ways, this is reminiscent of the beheading game, a literary trope found in Irish mythology, which tells of a mysterious stranger arriving at a royal court to challenge a hero to an exchange of blows. In this game, the hero might decapitate the stranger, but the stranger then inflicts the same wound in return upon the hero. The stranger is a supernatural figure, which explains how this unlikely event is possible, although this fact only becomes evident to the hero when the stranger unexpectedly retrieves his own decapitated head. If the hero submitted to the return blow, he was rewarded for his valour and suffered only a minor wound. Metaphorically, the tale is thought to represent the hero coming of age through a symbolic death and rebirth.

The story originates in the Fled Bricrenn legend, in which three heroes – Cú Chulainn, Conall Cernach and Lóegaire Búadach – are invited to a feast in which they are put through a series of trials, some involving supernatural figures, to establish who was superior. The beheading game subsequently featured in several Arthurian romances, most notably those featuring Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.31

Much to the distaste of modern sensibilities, decapitation was a historically common form of human execution (although it was usually performed on living, not dead, victims). Across Ireland, archaeologists have discovered a total of 56 sites containing evidence of 68 beheadings dating from ancient times.32 A beheading could signify a military victory, or it could be used to punish serious crimes.

The beheading of Murcod Ballagh in 1307 with a contraption similar to a guillotine.

A group of people gathered around a wooden contraption similar to a guillotine. Many individuals wear armour and one person in the left foreground is seated on a horse. There are buildings and a hilly landscape in the background. Murcod Ballagh is on his knees with his head secured in the wooden contraption. The blade is being held above his head, suspended by a rope. In the foreground, an object on the ground resembles a sack.

From around the fifth century, Ireland became predominantly Christian, following on from a mysterious period between AD 100 and 300 which saw population levels and living standards plummet, for unknown reasons.33 The years 800 to 1000 witnessed Viking raids and Norse settlements along the coast. Around this time, many of Ireland’s ports sprang up: Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick. At the lake dwelling of Lagore, Co. Meath, 14 skulls have been found showing evidence of decapitation, probably dating from the period 500–1000. They might have been displayed around the edge of the site. Far more extensive evidence of decapitation has been found at a Viking enclave in Dublin, established in the 900s. The skulls discovered there are similar to written descriptions of trophy heads from that time. After 1171, when Henry II arrived, human remains continued to be used extensively as trophies, including heads.34

Ireland consisted of many different territories ruled over by many different factions before the Norman invasion of 1169–71. The Normans had invaded Britain the previous century, and King Henry II encouraged his Welsh barons to invade Ireland to strengthen his western border – and keep his barons busy. When he landed in Waterford with a large fleet in 1171, Henry was the first English king known to have set foot on Irish soil; he conferred the title Lord of Ireland on his son John. However, a Gaelic resurgence between 1350 and 1500 testified to two contrasting groups then existing on the island, each of which identified primarily with either English or Irish culture.35 Decapitation was still common, either as punishment for crime or tactic of warfare. Most headless corpses discovered have been men, suggesting strong links between beheading and warfare. In earlier times, severed heads would be thrown into the grave along with the rest of the body, but the absence of buried heads in later periods suggests that they were used instead for trophy or display purposes.36

As punishment for treason and serious crimes, beheading formed one part of being hanged, drawn and quartered. One execution sentencing read:

That you be led to the place from whence you came, and from thence be drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution, and then you shall be hanged by the neck and, being alive, shall be cut down, and your privy members to be cut off, and your entrails taken out of your body and, you living, the same to be burnt before your eyes, and your head cut off, your body to be divided into four quarters, and head and quarters to be disposed of at the pleasure of the King’s majesty. And the Lord have mercy on your soul.

After this ordeal, the executioner held the head aloft shouting, ‘Behold the head of a traitor. So die all traitors.’ The heads and quarters were then mounted on the city walls and gates. Sometimes the heads would be parboiled in heavily salted water to impede decay and discourage birds from feeding on the remains. The process of quartering the body was also believed to risk eternal damnation for the executed person.37

From the mid-1530s, decapitation became even more common as the Tudor dynasty sought to cement its control of the country.38 English expansion outside of ‘the Pale’ (that part of eastern Ireland controlled by the English government in the Late Middle Ages) was attempted, and sustained efforts were made to replace the Irish language with English.39 At Dublin Castle, seat of the English government, the heads of rebels, outlaws and cattle thieves adorned the outlying forts. The government kept its cash reserves at Dublin Castle, so bounty hunters would travel to the capital to deliver their bloody, severed heads and obtain their ‘head money’ from the treasury. Archaeologists working around Dublin’s city walls regularly discover portions of human heads, an indication that these were of executed men whose heads were displaced and displayed. Among these sites was Isolde’s Tower, located at the north-east corner of the walled city. Overlooking the river that served as an entry point into the city for many travellers, it would have been one of the first sights visible to anyone approaching the city by boat.40

This grotesque display of severed heads reminded onlookers of the Crown’s authority and power. Severed heads differ from skulls. They serve vastly different symbolic purposes. Still resembling the living, they were publicly displayed to remind onlookers of the consequences of disobedience, crime and rebellion.41

Execution of Robert Emmet in Thomas Street, Dublin, 20 September 1803.

A public execution scene with a large crowd of onlookers. In the foreground, rows of soldiers in uniform, some on horseback, forming a barrier around the execution site. A wooden scaffold with a set of gallows is visible, where the execution appears to be taking place. A focus on a man beheading and holding a human’s head. In the foreground, soldiers are attacking a crowd of people.

That said, the Irish also enjoyed head-taking.42 The Greeks and Romans wrote regularly of the Celts’ reputation as head-hunters and of an enthusiasm among Celtic warriors for cutting off the heads of their enemies slain in battle, hanging them from their horses’ necks and finally nailing them up outside their homes.43 Sometimes, they embalmed the heads of their enemies in cedar oil and put them on display.44 Heads played an iconic role in Celtic religion, and some historians discuss a ‘cult of the severed head’.45

By all accounts, in the Tudor period, the ‘native’ Irish still possessed a predilection for severing heads, and this motif appeared regularly in representations of the ‘Wild Irish’ on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage. The English regarded this as barbaric and bloodthirsty, despite being similarly predisposed to removing the heads of enemies and traitors. A thin line existed between atrocity and justice, and much depended upon who was doing the head-chopping. From the Irish perspective, the practice, when performed by the English, offered firm evidence of English brutality. When performed by themselves, it was simply justice.46

Only after the eighteenth century did such practices fall out of fashion, partly because of a growing distaste for public executions, concern about the public revelry surrounding the gallows and the availability of alternative punishments such as transportation to Australia and long-term imprisonment.47 By then, judges could only authorise decapitation after a criminal had been executed. Even this was only used in a handful of more serious cases of crime. Death by hanging became the most common execution method.48 When Robert Emmet was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason in 1803, following a failed attempt at overthrowing the British government after the Act of Union (1800–1), he was hanged until death before being beheaded. The executioner refrained from cutting the body into four pieces. By this time, the medical profession was actively seeking bodies for public dissection, which further discouraged the mutilation of bodies and corpses.49

Taking all of this into account, it should now be clearer why the Irish population greeted news of Cromwell’s beheading with much glee. The removal of his head symbolically confirmed perceptions of Cromwell as a war criminal. The aforementioned Cromwellian War of 1649–53 saw Cromwell imposing harsh times on the Irish Catholic population, partly to punish them for the 1641 Rebellion, which had seen Protestants massacred in Ulster. Catholic landowners had land confiscated and Catholics were no longer allowed to live in towns. Catholicism was banned, and priests were hunted and executed. Even after the Restoration of 1660, Catholics were barred from public office.

The Drogheda Massacre of 1649 still looms large in Irish popular memory for its remarkable severity and brutality. Cromwell’s troops killed priests and monks on sight and set light to Catholic churches with people inside. Civilians and soldiers were massacred, and few Royalist soldiers survived. These atrocities were then replicated in Wexford and Clonmel.50 Most shockingly, around 50,000 Irish people were transported to Barbados between 1652 and 1656, where they were treated cruelly.51 Few people in Ireland mourned when news reached them that Cromwell had lost his head.

This brings us to yet another famous head in this fraught period of Irish history. From its earliest times, Christianity had demonstrated an interest in fragmented human bodies and used pieces of heads as relics. In the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, some skulls were carefully severed after death to create a relic. Saintly heads tended to be passed around a lot. It was believed that some saints managed briefly to stay alive after execution, being able to pick up their detached head and take it in their arms while they walked to a place where they wished to rest forever. These were known as ‘head carriers’.52

In St Peter’s Church, Drogheda, rests the preserved head of St Oliver Plunkett, encased in an intricate golden shrine. It reminds onlookers of the religious persecution that accompanied the Cromwellian period, and beyond. Born in Co. Meath in 1625, Plunkett became a Catholic priest in 1654, and the Irish bishops appointed him as their representative in Rome. However, this coincided with the aftermath of Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland and the subsequent banning of Catholic practice. Quite sensibly, Plunkett decided against returning to Ireland for many years. In 1669, he was appointed as the Catholic archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland and eventually set foot again in Ireland only in 1670.

St Oliver Plunkett’s preserved head at St Peter’s Church, Drogheda.

Plunkett was the last victim of the Popish Plot, a fabricated conspiracy that stoked anti-Catholic hysteria between 1678 and 1681. Fictitious fears that Catholics were conspiring to assassinate Charles II heightened social tensions. Plunkett was arrested in Dublin on 6 December 1679, imprisoned in Dublin Castle, found guilty of high treason by an all-Protestant (and hardly impartial) jury and sentenced to death. He was hanged, drawn and quartered on 1 July 1681 at Tyburn, England. His body parts were buried in the courtyard at St Giles-in-the-Fields, although they were later exhumed. Then, Plunkett’s dismembered head began its travels. Over the centuries, it enjoyed time in Germany, Rome and Armagh before arriving in Drogheda in 1929, where it remains. The majority of the body can be found in Downside Abbey, England, although a few parts remain in Germany.

Plunkett was beatified in 1920 and canonised in 1975. This was big news. Plunkett was the first new Irish saint for almost 700 years (although 17 other Irish martyrs have since been beatified). In 1997, Plunkett was promoted to a new position: Ireland’s patron saint for peace and reconciliation. Pilgrims still travel to Drogheda to view the shrine, with its encased head. The head is more than just a skull. It survives in relatively good condition. Scorch marks are still visible from when it was thrown into a fire shortly after its removal, before being quickly saved. Although the eyes appear closed, the nose, teeth and basic outline of a human face are discernible, and even a few hairs rest peacefully on the brown-coloured head. To some, this remarkable facial preservation itself offers evidence of the miraculous nature of Plunkett’s head.53 In contrast, Cromwell’s head is still associated with shameful behaviour, so much so that it remains buried in an unmarked location in Cambridge. No one would think to display Cromwell’s head, perhaps for fear that it would swiftly be vandalised, probably by an Irish person if they got the opportunity.

THE STOLEN SKULLS OF INISHBOFIN

In 2023, Trinity College Dublin made international headlines for all the wrong reasons after finally agreeing, following years of public campaigning, to return a set of skulls taken in the 1890s from Inishbofin, an island off the coast of Galway. Trinity publicly apologised for having kept 13 skulls snatched by two ‘academic head-hunters’, although only after much public discussion and the signing of a petition by all of the island’s 170 inhabitants demanding the skulls’ return. The stolen skulls were returned in a broader international context of debate about colonial legacies in Western museums, heritage and commemoration, and the housing of human remains in anthropological collections that were tainted by nineteenth-century colonial violence and scientific racism. At the time, statues of former slave merchants were being regularly tossed into the sea in cities such as Liverpool and Bristol. But what had motivated the academics to abscond with the skulls in the first place?

In 1890, British ethnologist Alfred Cort Haddon, with his student Andrew Francis Dixon, sailed to Inishbofin under the pretence of carrying out a fishing survey. While there, they secretly stole the 13 skulls from St Colman’s Monastery, convinced that they had stumbled across specimens of Ireland’s indigenous people. Even the boatman who ferried Haddon and Dixon away from the monastery was unaware of the pilfered goods being harboured on his vessel. In those stolen skulls, Haddon and Dixon thought, rested physical evidence of an original Irish people – a pure, uncontaminated prototype largely untouched by civilisation and modernity, perhaps even more ancient than Clonycavan Man. The academics deposited the skulls at Trinity, where they were stored in a collection for over a century alongside others taken from elsewhere on the Aran Islands and from St Finian’s Bay in Co. Kerry. The university has not yet returned these other skulls.

Inishbofin’s stolen skulls, housed for over a century at Trinity College Dublin.

A board labelled ‘Inishboffin, Haddon and Dixon’ hangs above the skull shelf. There are several human skulls in transparent plastic bags, each labelled with a number. The numbers are 247 A207, 252 A213 and 253 A210.

A Cambridge-educated anthropologist and ethnologist, Haddon was appointed Professor of Zoology in 1880 at the College of Science, Dublin. His early papers researched embryology and marine biology, and his most famous fieldwork took place on the Torres Strait Islands, in the western Pacific Ocean, between north-east Australia and the island of New Guinea. The indigenous people of the islands interested Haddon as he believed them to be relatively unadulterated specimens of human beings, a living portal into how humans once looked and behaved before we became modern. It was usual at the time for anthropologists to collect ethnographical specimens and deposit them somewhere back home. The British Museum in London is full of them. In Australasia, Haddon justified his removal of ‘native’ body parts by claiming that their safety was under threat from missionaries determined to obliterate non-Christian traditions.

Haddon remained in Dublin until 1893, before moving to Cambridge, although he continued to publish his thoughts on Irish skulls for some decades. By the nineteenth century, Irish people’s enthusiasm for cutting off heads had thankfully waned. Anthropologists such as Haddon now presented observations of the practice elsewhere in the world as a curious relic of a pre-‘civilised’ past which Westerners had transcended and left behind. In 1901, Haddon published his research on the Torres Straits Islands in the aptly titled Head-Hunters: Black, White and Brown.54 Intended for a scholarly audience, Head-Hunters offered readers a captivating glimpse into how other people lived across the globe and how our ancient predecessors might have organised their societies and cultures. In the days before global interconnectedness, such books allowed Westerners opportunities to get to know people living in distant regions, with anthropologists presenting themselves as intrepid global explorers.

Haddon was fixated with ‘native’ traditions of chopping off human heads, and Head-Hunters listed an array of reasons for head removals in the Torres Strait Islands. Among some tribes, procuring a human skull was an indispensable necessity for young men looking to take a young maiden’s hand in marriage, for it suggested that he was brave and strong enough to protect her, theorised Haddon. Women were known to actively propose to men known to have secured a skull. Some tribes believed that the person from whom the head had been separated would be their slaves in the next world. Other reasons included reprisal for injuries, a vendetta or blood feud and bringing home war trophies.55

Skulls were of particular interest to anthropologists due to the popularity of craniology, an investigative discipline which categorised the various ethnic groups (or human races) using bodily measurements, including those of the skull. Many craniologists were influenced, knowingly or otherwise, by the racial prejudices of their day. Claims that Africans and Aborigines had smaller skulls than white Europeans supported racist ideas about the alleged inferiority of ‘native’ communities, their unsuitability for self-rule and the need for a paternalistic colonial presence. Most damaging to the reputation of non-Europeans was the (inaccurate) assumption that smaller skull size meant lower intelligence.56

Inishbofin islanders having their skulls measured in 1892.

The scene shows a group of men outdoors surrounding a man sitting on a chair in the middle. Another man is measuring the skull of the sitting man with a device like a calipers. The bottom of the photograph is labelled ‘anthropometry in Inishbofin’.

Until the nineteenth century, the mind had been thought to exist in the lower organs, typically the stomach or heart, but phrenologists, most prominently Franz Joseph Gall, popularised the new idea that our minds are located in our brains.57 Hence, the secrets to our personalities now rested inside the human head. However, brains were hard to investigate. Extremely messy organs, they disintegrate rapidly once removed from a human corpse and are difficult to keep in shape when detached from the skeletal frame. Skulls were the next best thing. Retaining their hard, durable shape, they proved much easier to measure.58 Craniologists meticulously measured skulls, hoping to accurately decipher and categorise human ‘types’, ‘races’ and ‘species’. With their human skulls, craniologists held in their hands a unique three-dimensional object replete with eye sockets, arches, protuberances and apertures available for quantifying. They devised a plethora of ways of measuring the various parts of a human skull.59

Haddon was not the first scientist who indulged in measuring Irish skulls (although he became the most notorious). Belfast-based naturalist and anthropologist John Grattan had undertaken considerable research into Irish skulls.60 Grattan started off his career as a pharmaceutical chemist in 1825, and in subsequent decades he became enthralled by Gall’s phrenological ideas. When one of his friends, Edmund Getty, undertook an archaeological survey of the round towers of Ulster, he chanced upon a large number of skulls buried in the floors of these towers, presumably the remains of the beheaded from some centuries previous, which he asked Grattan to examine. In 1857, Grattan presented his findings at a public talk in Dublin and took the opportunity to exhibit a craniometer, which he had invented for measuring skulls. Like Haddon, Grattan was intrigued by the ‘origin stories’ of the Irish people. He also saw the purpose of ethnology as being to ‘investigate the progressional history of the various races of mankind’. The use of the term ‘progressional’ suggests that Grattan perceived the skulls as having once belonged to a race of people not yet civilised or modern. He wanted ‘to decipher the faint and fading records of antiquity’ and ‘penetrate the mystery that enshrouds the earlier conditions of our race’.61

Grattan was fascinated by the idea of getting to know the human races who had once lived untouched by modernity and believed that remote communities still existed who were yet to fully progress into a civilised state. In the Society Islands of the South Pacific, Grattan observed, could be found stone hatchets, flint arrowheads and bone implements ‘identical to those of the remote ages of our own country’. This somewhat simplistic model of human progression convinced Grattan that observing ‘native’ communities might offer a direct window into the lives and appearance of ancient people.

Undoubtedly, Grattan overestimated the lack of contact with modernity, and the extent of genetic change within those communities over the millennia, but his ideas were nonetheless influential. He was particularly intrigued by understanding what the Celts had looked like before their genetic intermingling with Vikings, Normans and the British.62 Grattan died in 1871, leaving his ongoing research into Irish skulls unfinished. One of the most morbid publications of the time, which can still be read at the spectacular Linen Hall Library in Belfast, is a catalogue of 63 skulls from across Ireland collected by Grattan and bequeathed in the 1870s to the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society.63

Grattan’s sisters later granted Haddon permission to consult Grattan’s private notes. Haddon also had access to the notes of esteemed British ethnologist John Beddoe. In 1867, Beddoe published a prize-winning essay entitled ‘The Origin of the English Nation’, which he later expanded into an 1885 book, The Races of Britain. In his book’s opening pages, Beddoe noted that ‘it was the ancient controversy respecting the colour of the hair of the Celts, then burning briskly enough, and even now still smouldering, that led me to begin systematic numerical observations in physical anthropology’. Here, Beddoe referred to the ongoing fascination with the famed red hair of the Irish and wondered if this was a remnant of original Celtic features.

Impressed by Darwinian ideas of heredity, Beddoe thought that hair and eye colour retained more permanence over time than other physical characteristics, as ‘whenever a distinct and tolerably homogeneous breed has been established, its colours may remain very much the same so long as the conditions of natural selection remain nearly identical’. However, Beddoe noted that samples of ancient hair were hard to find. ‘As to whether red hair was more common then than now, we cannot have the same assurance,’ he wrote, adding that ‘such hair as has come down to us from individuals of ancient races is generally stained and altered, so as to be untrustworthy evidence’.64

Skulls provided more concrete physical evidence. Beddoe believed that the Gaelic Irish racial type derived from a large-jawed ‘Africanoid’ stock and visited Ireland several times to observe ‘the physical characteristics of the natives’. He investigated 31 skulls in Dublin’s museums, mostly from Co. Kerry and Connacht, while observing living heads in Munster. He concluded that ‘the modern Irish skull is usually rather long, low and narrow, when compared with the average of English skulls, and these characters are still more marked when the comparison is extended to other European races. It seems probable that the Irish have narrower heads than the Welsh.’ He recorded a strongly marked superciliary ridge extending across the nose, making a horizontal line below the eyebrows, as well as a low forehead, with a long, prominent nose featuring a large tip. Beddoe was convinced that people resembling the true ‘native’ Celt still lived in remote regions of Ireland that Norsemen, Englishmen and Scotsmen had never fully reached – romantic regions protected by mountains or the sea. He blamed Cromwell and his troops for diluting the original Celtic gene pool.65

This fascination with the secrets contained within Ireland’s ancient bodily remains ultimately motivated Haddon and Dixon to steal Inishbofin’s skulls. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Haddon’s interest in Irish peasant life rested not in finding solutions to the country’s relative lack of industrialisation or offering suggestions for social improvement, but instead, as a naturalist, in documenting how ‘ordinary’ people, or peasants, lived. Nor does he come across as overly prejudiced against the Irish, unlike many of his contemporaries. Haddon described the men whom he encountered in the Aran Islands as ‘extremely pleasing people’, slightly below the average height, with ‘pleasant open countenances’ and ‘fairness of the complexion’. As he elaborated, ‘these people are very kindly and friendly, fearless, independent, and manly, and they used to be extremely honest, so much so, that if you lost a purse, you would always find it the next Sunday or saint’s day on the altar of the chapel’. Nonetheless, Haddon noted, this honest character had faded in the last half century due to (unspecified) negative external influences.

That said, the people of Inishbofin were a different kettle of fish. Haddon encountered there ‘a darker and more burly people, who are also of a more truculent disposition. They are suspicious of strangers, and there is not much good feeling between them and the people on the mainland, each giving the other rather a bad character.’ Haddon seemed oblivious to the fact that the ‘natives’ might well have good reasons to be suspicious of him and the unwelcome enthusiasm of Dublin-based researchers for arriving on their island, poking into their lives and, as it turned out, stealing the skulls of their ancestors.66

In a lecture delivered to the Royal Irish Academy in 1892, Haddon announced that ‘it is a remarkable fact that there is scarcely an obscure people on the face of the globe about whom we have less anthropographical information than we have of the Irish’.67 Perhaps the Irish had been too close to home to interest many ethnologists, or too white to appeal to the anthropologist’s pressing concern with demarcating difference between white and non-white people. Other contemporary researchers had to rely upon chance finds such as 50 skulls dating back to the eighth century AD found in Donnybrook, the best preserved of over 600 humans massacred there.68

However, the skulls discovered by Haddon, having been snatched from a remote, isolated island, seemed potentially more revealing about Ireland’s ancient past. Haddon explained to his captive audience that he had given the 13 skulls to Trinity’s Anthropological Museum (which operated between 1891 and 1903, with its collections subsequently held in storage), but quietly overlooked his dubious pilfering of the skulls late at night. Haddon prided himself on having secured the first skull specimens from that region of Ireland, despite few of them being in good condition. Most were broken or weathered and, due to this, were probably a little smaller than they would have originally been.69

Residents of Inishbofin around the turn of the twentieth century.

Most of the residents appear to be elderly men wearing hats. One of them is looking down, another is turning to his side with a cigar and others are engaged in a conversation. A child is running in front of the seated men.

Haddon then proceeded to read through his list of measurements. To the modern listener (and perhaps even to most Victorians), Haddon’s research reads inexplicably as a seemingly unending list of monotonous, meaningless skull measurements. Every nook and cranny of the skulls had been subjected to some sort of measuring. Haddon speculated that the average Irish skull was typically long, low and narrow, with zygomatic arches not much expanded. The Irish were of average height (67 inches on average), and broadly similar to the population of western Britain.70

In these calculations, lives and personalities that had once been full and rich were reduced to a barely comprehensible rota of sizes and dimensions, dehumanising the people who once occupied them and stripping them of identity and personality. Haddon didn’t want to get to know the humans behind the skulls in the same way that modern visitors to the National Museum of Ireland engage in an imaginative process of getting to know Clonycavan Man. This tedious quantification of human skulls tells us more about Haddon than the skulls’ former owners.71 Most puzzling is Haddon’s lack of general conclusions or commentary upon these supposedly pure artefacts of Irish Celticness. The absence of any explicit interpretation dehumanises the skulls further still.72 The impression given is that the measurements were being presented for reference only, but for who or what purpose remains unclear.73