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This print is part of my 2020 Dreamscapes collection which was created for the wonderful Turbet Island Dreamscape Trail in Belturbet, Co Cavan.
What is a dreamscape?
In the dictionary the word dreamscape means “A landscape or scene with the strangeness or mystery characteristic of dreams.”
Each print in this series of Dreamscape has a beautiful story to tell. I created each in response to the landscape and extensive historical and mythological research of the local land. The unique story comes with the print and gives an extra special depth of meaning. It makes a unique gift for anyone interested in folklore or nature.
The Story for this piece:
An Cailleach or the veiled woman is among the most ancient deities venerated in Ireland, in my version the Cailleach’s power lies in the ice and cold of winter. Once it was said that she ruled all the world, when the green things slept for untold aeons beneath her thick icy cloak, until she was given cause for great sorrow and wept floods of tears across the land, her heart melting to a thaw and letting loose the rivers. As she wept she dropped many large rocks from her apron which became mountains and hills, and her hammer shaped the valleys below. In this dreamscape the first human awakens and the first plant emerges from the ice. The first animal appears too, it is the Woolly Mammoth who belongs to the ice age. Remnants of a Woolly Mammoth are believed to have been found on this island in recent years, proof that the land we stand on is very ancient indeed.
I think about time, what does it mean? The young girl in my dreamscape is a lady I met recently named Margaret Timmons. Margaret was born in 1917 in Killylea and still lives in Belturbet, she is 101 now and will be 102 this December 2019. She isthe oldest living member of the community now, but was once -of course- a small girl. She remembers very clearly her father carrying her over the bad floods on Christmas morning to get to early morning mass inBelturbet town
