ULSTER’S ANTHEM (UIRCHILL A CHREAGAIN

There’s not too much to Creggan.  About fifty houses, a small shop, an old church and a graveyard.  But it’s the last of these that guarantees it its place in the pantheon of Irish cultural history since resting there are some of the finest poets of the later stages of the Bardic period. Not only that, but the O’Neill vault is one of those places you need to visit before you die, though you’d have a better chance nowadays of getting an audience with the Pope than getting down there to view its contents.  A small underground room containing the mortal remains of the nobles of the great O’Neill clan who once ruled south Armagh from their castle in Glassdrumman.  It’s an eerie, cold but fascinating place and five minutes is enough for anyone in there amongst the bones and skulls and darkness. But it was here that one of the most famous poems in the Irish language was written by a half inebriated, destitute clip of a poet whose memory is possibly the literary equivalent of Van Goch; a flawed, slightly mad genius ahead of his era and too good for those who were judging him at the time.
As children born and reared in the village of Creggan, we lamented the fact that it was never on a map, or on a signpost or known to anyone outside of south Armagh.

By Jarlath Burns: son of Creggan