Cave of the Cats, County Roscommon

                                      —for Seamus Brennan

In County Roscommon
in a vaulted cavern.
is the Cave of the Cats,
where the three-headed cat lived.
A racial memory 3,00 years old
begins at the end of the Bronze Age
where base dirt was transformed 

into alchemical iron
and weapons took in a new edge
shifting the balance of power.
The monster roused from sleep
by the cry of the red yew psalter
began to stalk warriors returning 

home on the long boreens.
For was that not the tree of death?
What monster stirs in these deserts
where base oil is transformed into greed?


9/19/2002-06

UAIGH na g CAT—CAVE OF THE CATS

                There are chests of gold within the burial mounds
               but mind the cats that guard them. 

—Old Irish Proverb
                           For ethno-musician, Simon O'Dwyer

In County Roscommom, in a vaulted cavern,
is Owenygat, the lair of the Cave of the Cats,
where they say the three-headed saber cat 

guarded the gates of hell.

Was it a fragment of a racial memory, 

born at the eve of the Bronze Age
at a time when the Goibniu 

transformed base dirt into alchemical iron
and weapons took on a new edge 

thus shifting the balance of power?

At Rath Croghan, the epicenter 

where Ireland’s Inanna, the Iron Age warrior,

Queen Medbh of Connaght, 

the white mare whose honeyed thighs drowned 

and crowned sovereignty onto Kings

by a ritual of intoxication,

the meade-mad Queen Medbh
whose lust launched the famed cattle raid, 

“Táin Bó Cuailnge”, a war 

that brought an empire to its knees,

is an old myth.

But at the fissure of Owenygat, 

the locals still recount how the goddess Medbh 

opened wider still to let the demons into her
and she kept the gateway to the Otherworld 

clenched tight, in order to save humanity 

from the tyrranny of ravenous beasts.

Inscribed in Ogham above the lintel 

"Hellmouth Door of Ireland,"
it says Medbh’s son and daughter,
Fróech and Finnabhair, sacred twins

were born at the limnal entrance to the Cave 

where she herself was born and buried.

Some say Medbh shape-shifted 

into the The Mórrígan, the goddess of war.
Others say that the Mórrígan was 

the blood-red Crogderg, her mother-sister.

They say, whenever a crow lands, 

the threefold Mórrígu, are stirring.
They say they take the spirits home

"in the belly of a black-winged bird"
because who reopened the gates of hell?
The Mórrígan’s errant red calf 

is bellowing in the plain of Cruachan.
You know what that leads to. 

 

The Daghda’s cauldron is churning

and rebirthing military fodder.
There have been sightings of crows 

and talk of the flaming red birds 

that wither everything their beaks touch.

The monster roused from sleep 

by the hue and cry of the red yew psalters
began to stalk lone warriors 

returning home on the boreens
for was that not the yew, 

the arrow and the tree of death?

What monster hunts by darkness 

on the plains of the Fertile Crescent
What gates to the Otherworld opened,

the crows circling the battlefield
where base oil is sucked up 

and transformed into greed?


9/19/2002; rev: 3/17 2006 (the Iraqi war); 2/2/2008 (Imbolc) 


YouTube journey into Owenynagat—The Cave of Cats (a journey into Mother Earth; still images of the entrance to the Otherworld, by Mike Croghan, with music by Afto Celt Sound System.