Shyane

It's not every day you discover a potential fairy mound or Sídh. So this find was particularly exciting to me. I initially heard of a Sídh near the banks of the River Suir outside Thurles from Professor Ronald Hicks's facebook page, where he detailed all the Sídhs he had visited in Ireland. He described the area as Shyane which comes from the An Sian which means Fairy Mound (http://www.logainm.ie/en/2214?s=shyane). A quick search shows that Shyane was actually the civil parish name for the combined townlands of Clobanna, Rossestown & Coolgarrane.


He said about it that "From the Paps, according to "Two Tales about Fionn," Fionn went to Ely, centered on the barony of Eliogarty, County Tipperary, chasing Cul Dub, who jumps back and forth across the River Suir before going into a síd." Its an exciting story to imagine, Fionn MacCuill hunting the Cul Dub or Black Hound from The Paps of Anu in Co. Kerry to the rich pastures of Tipperary and the hound evading capture by diving into a Fairy Mound.


I had a look on archaeology.ie to see if there were any candidates for this Síd in Shyane and nothing really jumped out at me. Two possibilities I thought were a graveyard in the townland of Clobanna and a large ring-fort outside of the townlands in Ballyduag. I visited both in early March 2016 and of the two I felt the graveyard had the best chance of being it. The sign outside the graveyard describes it as Shyane graveyard, so that must be how it is known locally, and on the northern side of the graveyard and church, there are the remains of an earthwork which could be described as a bank of some kind of low mound or barrow (It could equally be described as the normal humps and bumps that are associated with old church sites). From the site the bit of the Devils Bit could also be made out clearly to the North-West in roughly the area where the Summer Solstice sun would set (I have always had a theory that the sun must set or rise within it from some significant monument on either side of the mountain). I took some photos and decided that without further evidence I would have to wait until I got a chance to check through the Irish Folklore Commission data held on microfilm in Thurles library.

Archaeology.ie has this to say about the graveyard and associated church "Situated on a low rise of ground in undulating countryside with a nearby river ravine to the S. The site is listed in the ecclesiastical taxation of the Diocese of Cashel in 1302 where it is referred to as the 'Chapel of Sidan', (CDI, vol. 5, 283). The poorly preserved remains of a rectangular church (TN035-078) constructed with roughly coursed limestone rubble. The jambstones of the destroyed doorway are reused as an entrance gateway to the graveyard which contains nineteenth and twentieth-century headstones. The OS Letters describe the church with only the N wall destroyed and a twin-light limestone window in the now demolished E gable (O'Flanagan 1930, vol. 2, 186-7)."

Thankfully instead of me going to the library, the library came to me in the form of the newly digitised information in the School Manuscripts just two weeks ago. You can imagine my excitement at this news and my very first search in it was at the local school in the area and there it was, conclusive proof in my mind that this graveyard at Clobanna is the remains of a Sídh.


"Shyane was bounded by Moyne, Rahealty, Thurles & Loughmore. Name is Teampall an tSideáin, Church of the Fairy Hill. The ruins are still on the hill from which it receives its name."
http://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4922209/4860869/5015955


So what does this mean? I suppose you could speculate that the graveyard and church have been built on a low mound that may have been the remains of some prehistoric monument. As we see from the previous Sídh's that I have posted, many of them are cairns or passage tombs dating back as late as the Neolithic. If anyone is from the locality I would like to hear more about the folklore attached to the graveyard (and morbidly I know) and I wonder has anything unusual ever been found there over the years while digging graves there?