Did you know that the Tybroughney pillar in Co Kilkenny is recognised as one of the most interesting early carvings in Ireland? If you didn’t, you might be excused.
It is hard to find up a narrow country road with no signs. On arrival a mountain of used tyres block the view. A notice on the tree beside a locked gate sounds promising: ‘Graveyard and Church. 6th century monastery of St Modomnoc who brought the first bees to Ireland’. But from there on you are on your own.
Having negotiated the gate you must find your way across a muddy field to an equally boggy lane (and more gates). When you calculate you must have arrived all there is to see, beside the mountain of discarded tyres, is a clump of heavy undergrowth. Unless you are a persistent historic-site-finder you would give up at this point.
However, convinced that there must be more, I searched around and noticed a number of stone shafts struggling to be seen among the vegetation. I took photos of them hoping one might be the ‘famous’ Tybroughney Stone. Time and neglect made them all look the same.
It was only when I had time to dig into the internet that I discovered what I had nearly missed. The images on the stone, which had once been part of a High Cross, were beyond anything I had expected. There were vivid spirals and strange animals. One was a centaur with two arms and an axe in each. What were they doing on a Christian cross? My thoughts went back to the hunting scenes on other crosses in the area.
The internet provided help. The images I could now see (thanks to the internet) were not unique, they were taken from a book, the Physiologus, compiled in Greek in Alexandria during the 2nd century. It listed the deeper meaning of animals, birds, and fantastic creatures from a Christian perspective. Obviously the makers of the Irish crosses were familiar with it.
The centaur, half man and half horse, ‘by his dual nature was held to symbolise the conflict between Good and Evil’. The unicorn permits itself to be captured by the innocent. The pelican, shedding its blood for its young, points to the salvation of mankind by the death of Christ. Lions feature because of the story that an old lion revived its cubs which were born dead by breathing on them. The phoenix burns to death and rises on the third day from the ashes.
Tybroughney has Modomnoc, the monk who brought the bees to Ireland, Vikings who came up the Suir and settled there , King John of England who visited and built a castle. Each has an interesting story but for me the Stone, unfortunately buried beneath shrubbery and behind a mountain of tyres, beats them all. It deserves the title of ‘most interesting early medieval carvings in Ireland’.
Now you know but to look at it you have to go to the internet.
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