The story of Cáit na Pluaise
The rock shelter known as Cáit na Pluaise’s (‘Kate of the Cave - pluais meaning cave) is located at the base of a natural inland cliff off the Kerry Way in the Caherdaniel side of Coad townland of Coad.
The story of Cáit is told by Pádraig Ó Loingsigh in his wonderful 1999 publication, now out of print and a collector’s item, Bórdóinín. It is here, following her eviction from her house after the famine, that Cáit set up home for herself, her children and her sister Nora. It is not certain what her surname was - one source saying Sheehan and another Regan. Cáit had one cow and some goats which grazed at the front of the shelter. We don’t know exactly how many children she had. One of her sons, upon entering college to train to be a teacher, responded to a question concerning the kind of dwelling his family inhabited that he came from a house with a roof of one slate.
The cave which became the family’s dwelling after their eviction is still of local interest, as seen in the Sneem Parish Newsletter (right).
Located in a landscape abundant in rocky outcrops with dangerous wet boggy ground leading to the entrance, it is prudent to go to Cáit na Pluaise’s with a guide. I am grateful to John Sweeney of Coad for first taking me there and telling me all the lore.
Cáit na Pluaise’s consists of a sheltered area measuring c. 12 square meters, partly enclosed at south by a low wall in a state of collapse and at east by a wall obscured by vegetation including nettles. Boulders, with smaller rocks between the gaps embedded in a mortar-like clay, form walls at south-west and west and north-west. The roof is formed of a massive single stone measuring c. 20 square meters - ‘the roof of one slate’, its load borne, like the capstone of a megalithic tomb, by the rocks on which it sits. The ‘roof’ reaches a maximum height above ground level of just over 1.5m at the entrance. The roof slopes down to ground level at west, leaving little standing room within the shelter. On the far side of the west wall, a second shelter is accessible by climbing up steep slippery rocks and then crawling through narrow gaps. It is totally enclosed and roofed by another boulder, less massive than the first (a house with a roof of two slates!). This portion is long and narrow - widening at the rear where it is lowest, and only 1.5m wide at its midpoint. Here, there is sufficient standing room in parts for a person six foot tall to stand comfortably. A low fairly smooth-surfaced slightly sloping rock at the west side could serve as a ‘work counter’ or as a bench. It is lightly scored with lines and other marks.
In the recesses of the two shelters, deposits of shells, consisting largely of periwinkles but with some limpets, are poignant remains of meals past. This nourishment would have been supplemented with butter and potatoes brought by neighbours. Other signs of habitation include sherds of dark brown and green glass and unglazed pottery. A long flat-surfaced boulder outside the shelters at NW makes a comfortable seat - maybe it was here that, as Ó Loinsigh tells us, friends played cards. Pillows or cushions could have been stuffed with bog cotton which grows here in profusion. Meadowsweet strewn on the ground would have made the air fragrant.
The landscape along the Kerry Way and periwinkle shells within the cave
Impoverished, it is told that Cáit would run out onto the Butter Road (the modern-day Kerry Way) to beg from passers-by. According to the folklore collector, Tadhg Ó Murchú, she was famous as a herbalist and so may not have been wholly reliant on charity. At the very same time that she and her family were living in a boulder-shelter, gentlemen in tailed coats and top hats were marveling at the rock art in nearby Liss. In 1851, Mr. Jermyn of Castlecove House led Lord Adare and Charles Graves to the outcrop whose carvings had been exposed by turf cutting a few decades previously. Graves, later to become (Anglican) Bishop of Limerick, had taken the lease of Parknasilla House as a summer residence. Meanwhile, there was rock art of a different and also very interesting caliber in Cáit na Pluaise’s!
On my second ever visit to Cáit’s, having studied archaeology at UCC in the meantime, I was amazed to see the inner face of the entrance boulder to the second shelter was covered in incised marks of a type that I had read about in my studies. Towards the left edge of its face are the initials JM, MOC, MM and D (or P) T. I must have seen on my first visit and dismissed all the carvings, as others surely have, as graffiti or ‘doodles’. This time, I looked at them in an altogether different light. I had also just recently read a paper entitled ‘Witches’ Marks and Lovelorn Shepherds: Inscribed Rock Art in a Remote Valley’ by Robert Harris and archaeologist Finola Finlay
Different in style to passage tomb art and open air rock art, the carvings in Cáit na Pluaise’s belong to a category of rock art called COMBS - the acronym coined by Tipperary woman, archaeologist Dr Elizabeth Shee Twohig, from the types of site in which this particular type of incised or ‘filiform’ rock art occurs - Caves, Outcrops, Megaliths and Boulder-Shelters. The initials could have been added at any stage and do not necessarily bear any relationship to the carvings. That the carvings occur on the rock at the entrance to the shelter is also typical of COMBS rock art.
The carvings in Cáit na Pluaise’s are very distinctive and include a carefully executed hexagon, boxed Xs, boxed crosses, radials, a ladder-like motif, parallel lines with some intersecting each other at right angles, a kite-like motif and dots. These motifs are characteristic of the COMBS tradition. In Ireland, the handful of such carvings known to occur in boulder-shelters include an example at Cooleenlemane in Co. Cork (which was occupied by a couple and their children in the 1840s). ‘Pluais na Scriobh’- (Cave of the Inscriptions) at Glanrastel in Co. Cork has carvings consisting of a multitude of closely-set blocks of finely incised parallel grooves, most of which run vertically up the rock face. COMBS carvings, like those in Cáit’s, were recorded in limestone caves during the 1860s by W.F. Wakeman in Co. Fermanagh (Wakeman 1866-69). Two caves at Knockmore, ‘The Lettered Cave’ and ‘Gillie's Hole’ and a cave at Loughnacloyduff in the townland of Clogherbog. These carvings also included boxed Xs and radials. On outcrop in Sallahig in the Inny Valley, there are lines, crosses and three-line pointed ‘arrow’ shapes.
The carvings that were made into the cave’s rock
The COMBS carvings could date from any time but are generally thought to be medieval in date. Shee Twohig (2004) refers to an illustration in a paper by Caroline Earwood (1997) of COMBS type carvings on the wooden lid of a bog butter container in Roysmoylan Co. Roscommon. Harris and Finlay refer to the recent discovery at Creswell Crags in Nottinghamshire of COMBS style carvings which generated great excitement in early 2019. Dubbed ‘Witches’ Marks’, the carvings are believed to be ‘apotropaic’ i.e., having the power to avert evil influences or bad luck and so might more accurately be dubbed ‘anti-witch’ marks. Diagonal lines, boxes and mazes are thought to be symbols for capturing or trapping evil. Did Cáit make the marks? Whoever made them was aware of the motifs typically used in ‘anti-witch’ marks – the same and similar marks found in Cáit na Pluaise’s occurring in similar shelters not alone in Ireland and England but also in France and southern Europe.
The Archaeological Survey of Ireland lists only 5 rock shelters for the whole country. They are defined as ‘the area beneath a natural overhang at the base of a cliff or crag that was used for occupation, burial, etc. These may date to any period from prehistory onwards’. Possibly our rarest monument type, the addition of Cáit na Pluaise’s to the record brings the number of rock shelters for the Republic from 5 to 6!
References
Finlay, F. and Harris, R. (2019) https://roaringwaterjournal.com/…/witches-marks-and-lovel…/…
Shee Twohig, E. (2004) An Enduring Tradition - Incised Rock Art in Ireland, published in Megaliths to Metal - essays in honour of George Eogan edited by Helen Roche et al.
