On The Monks Trail

At Kilmalkedar in Kerry I approached two Dutch tourists thinking they might be locals who could help me understand what I was looking at.

I had expected  something very old but the church there was Romanesque, from 1134.

They asked me, was 1134 not old enough?

I told them about nearby Reask where you can actually see how a small community of 5^th or 6^th century Celtic monks lived out their lives.  It is simple, self-sufficient and authentic, revealing a time strange to us because we were never told about it.  

Kilmalkedar probably began like Reask but changed in the Middle Ages when it became a stopping point on the pilgrim ‘Saints Way’ from Ventry harbour to St Brendan’s Mount Brandon.

The Reask-like cells disappeared and a Romanesque church replaced them. It resembles Cormac's Chapel in Cashel, built about the same time. However, reminders of an earlier past are scattered around:  an ‘alphabet stone’ from 550AD,  ogham from 600AD, an ancient sundial and slab crosses.

The ‘alphabet stone’ is also called an ‘abcdarium’ because a teacher once used that piece of old tombstone to write Latin letters for young Irish scholars. The script is 7^t century Roman and includes the symbols k, q, x, y and z. which are not part of the Irish alphabet. I took a photo but you need to go to the internet to appreciate it.  

Despite the attractions on the site, the miniature figure of a walking monk caught my eye. It must indicate the direction of the ancient ‘Saints Way’.  Did it also lead to an earlier church?  

At first the monk’s signs were easy to follow. They were usually at gaps or stiles where decisions had to be made. But then they disappeared. I spent an hour searching the hillside, occasionally stopping to look back at the dazzling beaches of Smerwick Harbour and Dingle Bay.

What could be more fitting? I had come there looking for Ireland’s distant past and had lost the trail on a Kerry hillside.  Yet what I was seeing made the effort worthwhile.