6/9/2023 0 Comments Grave yard![]() ![]() “The good father is said to have been a faith healer,” says Gerry Quinn, a microbiologist who grew up in the area. Out here in the Boho Highlands, part of the West Fermanagh Scarplands, five miles from the border with the Republic of Ireland, there’s a longstanding belief among parishioners that the earth Father McGirr was buried under had almost miraculous curative powers. I skirt graves marked McAfee, McCaffrey, McConnell, McDonald, McGee.At last, atop a bosky knoll, I reach the weatherworn headstone of James McGirr, a parish priest who died in 1815, age 70. I meander past the Boho High Cross of County Fermanagh, a tenth-century monument whose carvings feature scenes from Genesis and the Baptism of Christ. ![]() In this Northern Irish churchyard, burial plots line the paths like little marble farms for the dead. A thin mist billows like a mourner’s veil between the iron gates of Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, and moisture drips from the yews like tears. It’s a splendid day for a turn around a graveyard: dark, damp, forbidding.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |