Sunday’s Well - A Visit to Cork City
Shannon Michaela Doree Smith
Author’s Note: This blog draft sat unpublished for the last five years. I think my bent towards perfectionism may have been involved in that. I wrote this blog in Ireland as a pilgrim. Today I sit looking out at NYC spending time with friends and colleagues from along so many parts of life’s journey including my spiritual lives with Indigenous relatives and women dance pioneers - they weave together in the fabric of Somatics and EcoSomatics.
2020 was a difficult year for all of us but it presented opportunities for growth and for change. I was given this opportunity to be in the place where my ancestors left for the Americas and to try to understand more deeply what happened to them and what about that is embedded in my DNA? What about that is longing for expression? I remember distinctly arriving in Cork City and being drawn like a magnet to this location and sitting beside this marker in the photograph below - feather and all. I was buzzing. I was sure it had been a well or a grotto or both. As I explored Cork more I found similar markers at not only the site of the old Sunday’s Well itself, but above Lady’s Well, and on the bridge across the Bhride River in Blackpool. I would be most grateful to know who thought to put these markers in the city landscape for those who would find them! Much later I read Amanda Clarke’s account describing the location of this well (Tiobar Bhrianach on Wise’s Hill) and met a local whose grandmother had worked at the nearby distillery and recounted the well being used for ‘uisce beatha’.
Sharing here something I posted in a White Caucus space following my visit to Cork Water Works where I learned about the water history in the town my Irish ancestors came from. Apparently the entire town was organized around the water that flowed from the Lu out to the Atlantic. Cork City was and is part of the more industrialized south of Ireland, in part due to the journey of the Shannon River, her Loughs and Tributaries. Cork Harbour would have been a primary if not THE primary trade port in the late 1800's. So the focus of the town would have been to provide water and eventually electricity to the industrialized aspects and to the workers. Prior to the Water Works, women and children died collecting and carrying water. Due to its role and value, Cork also would have been key for attack from the Siege on Cork in 1690 to the Burning of Cork by British forces in 1920 during the Irish War for Independence. As is true in so many fights today, the story would have been that the Brits looted and burned the city, cut the water hoses and blamed IRA men for starting the fires. Investigations later revealed the true cause. You may also find it of interest that Mother Jones was baptised in the same parish church (or an early version of) the North Cathedral, Cathedral to Saint Mary and Saint Anne, where my ancestors' records were found.
For context of the White Caucus, many of the participants in these spaces are into the activism side but struggling to open the self inquiry required to make lasting systemic change. The photo I took here is also from Cork City at the end of Sunday's Well Road near to the Franciscan Abbey (what's left of it along with the access point to the well site which is closed to all except the City Council). Sunday's Well was covered over unfortunately and there is only a marker in the wall and sidewalk concrete where it was. This particular spot on the road in the photo, a local chose on his own to landscape with these stones (unclear why but there are 2 circles) and there are flowers too you can't see in the frame. It looks like there may once have been a grotto on this spot, as it is in the bend of the road, but now the Lady's statue looks out from above at the top of the hill. It does, however, sit directly across the road from an un-celebrated marker - an original stone taken from the fallen abbey that was used alongside simple bricks in the construction of a seemingly insignificant wall, with only a few letters carved into it, which would have signified the Virgin Mother's presence. There is no sign to draw your attention to it. I was just lucky to find, and to have a local Franciscan happen by and tell me about it. (Of course I have many photographs but the collection of them is not yet posted / edited down.)
August 12, 2020
"I just learned the other day (And hopefully I will get to write about it) that there was a theory that the Irish were the ‘missing link’ in evolution BETWEEN apes and black bodied people. The British, while occupying Irish soil, came and measured Irish people’s heads / skulls to see if they could prove it. The more I learn, the more I grow weary of figuring out who suffered / suffers more. Healing isn’t supposed to be a competition. But it is something that we all have our moment when we get to tell our story and be witnessed, heard and understood. We are working hard now because there are people who desperately need to tell their story because the harm being done is just too much to bear. That’s what makes it their turn. I got my turn as a woman over the last several years. I could say as a white bodied woman - many of the spaces I healed in were predominantly 'white' - but they weren’t exclusively white. I sat with, danced with, and sang with women from so many places and so many skin colors / tones. We took the example of our BIPOC elders. We learned how to introduce ourselves with our family names and where they are from. We sang for each other’s ancestors. We sang in each other’s languages. We sang for each other’s hearts to be healed. Healing is not a competition. It’s a commitment. To all beings being free."
As I continue the journey, more news comes. So, this article below was shared by Marie Coyne this morning, from the Inishbofin Heritage Center where they are trying to repatriate skulls taken from the island to be measured. Inish - bofin (Isle of the White Cow) is another place I was very much drawn to and spent a wee bit of time. It is where I met the American archeology grad student who ended up interviewing me for the book on wells coming out of Notre Dame. He was part of the archeological dig on Inishshark - a small island off of Inishbofin where there is a pilgrimage site to St. Leo. So interesting to come from Cork with this new bit of knowledge and then see how the places where I have been staying and researching were both impacted by this chapter in our history of colonization. This article was published out of Maynooth just now - Aug 11th, 2020 - the day before I shared that post above and has a clip from a tv program on the subject from 2012.
The head-hunter who measured Irishmen's skulls
You'll see the first photo in the article was taken where I am writing this from, Inis Mor. Photo taken in 1892.
