Irish Roots Weekly

Enduring Spirits: From Shadow to Story in Ireland’s Past

Ireland’s heritage lives not in museums alone, but in the pulse of stories that refuse to fade. They rise from mist and memory - from goddesses who shape the wind to market squares thick with barter, from shattered homes to ancient trees and film reels where the old myths still wink from behind the curtain of imagination.

This week, our journey through time brings together five echoes of that endurance - stories that remind us how power, loss, and creativity have long intertwined across Ireland’s landscape and soul.

The Morrígan – She Who Shapes the Storm

Long before Ireland knew itself as a nation, there was the Morrígan - the shadow that moves between crow and woman, goddess and omen. She is not worshipped as the saints are, but acknowledged as a force older than prayer. In the myths of the Ulster Cycle, she circles battlefields, her black wings spread over the dying, her cry rising above the clash of iron.

She is the watcher of endings and the voice that names them. When kings rose, she tested them; when heroes fell, she bore witness. Even Cú Chulainn, Ireland’s great champion, met her three times before his death - once as a young woman offering her love, once as an eel that tripped his stride, and once as a crow that marked his passing.

To some, she brings fear; to others, she brings truth - the kind that strips illusion bare. The Morrígan is Ireland’s wild will, the storm that renews by breaking what has grown stagnant. She is the reminder that strength and surrender are not opposites, but the same turning of the tide.

The Pig Market, Cork – 1905

From myth’s silence we step into the noise of Cork City in 1905, where the pig market filled the air with shouts, laughter, and the shuffle of hooves. Farmers arrived at dawn with their carts, the streets echoing with the calls of traders and the squeals of livestock. Children helped guide pigs through the crowd, clinging to ropes or scraps of cloth, their boots slipping on the cobbles as buyers haggled nearby.

At the turn of the century, pigs were more than food - they were livelihood. In many farmyards, the animal was known as “the gentleman who pays the rent.” The sale of a well-fattened pig could keep a family solvent through winter or fund the next season’s seed. Cork’s market, one of the busiest in Ireland, stood as a meeting place of resilience - proof that work, not wealth, sustained the island.

The photograph taken by C. L. Wasson in that bustling square captures not just commerce, but connection - neighbours bargaining, laughter mixing with the low hum of survival. Heritage, here, is not carved in stone; it is lived in the clatter of boots and voices on cobblestone.

Eviction at Moyasta, County Clare – 1888

From the toil of the market to the trials of the tenant, another kind of struggle unfolded in the fields of County Clare. In July 1888, Robert French arrived in Moyasta to capture what remained of Mathias Magrath’s home after eviction. The wall had been smashed open by a battering ram, ordered by a landlord unmoved by Magrath’s plea for time to meet an increased rent.

Such scenes scarred Ireland during the Land War, when thousands of tenant families were cast from the land their ancestors had worked for generations. Behind every statistic stood a story - of a mother carrying her children into the rain, of neighbours sheltering one another, of communities rallying in quiet defiance.

Yet from those injustices came transformation. The tenant leagues, the Land League’s campaigns, and later reforms of ownership reshaped rural Ireland forever. French’s photograph of Moyasta endures as witness: not only to suffering, but to the courage of those who stayed rooted when the earth itself seemed to turn against them.

The Yew Tree of Muckross Abbey

Far from the noise of eviction or trade, in the still cloister of Muckross Abbey near Killarney, a single yew tree rises toward the light. Its trunk twists upward through centuries of devotion, its roots gripping both soil and stone. Some say the friars planted it when the Franciscan abbey was founded around 1448; others believe it may be older still, a continuation of Ireland’s ancient reverence for the yew as a tree of endurance and eternity.

Yews have long been symbols of resurrection - evergreen amid decay, standing sentinel over churchyards and ruins. The one at Muckross has watched empires rise and crumble, its dark leaves absorbing the silence of prayer and the echo of psalms sung by long-departed voices. Rain drips from its boughs onto cloister stones worn smooth by generations of monks, poets, and wanderers seeking peace.

In its living presence, we see the continuity of faith and the stubbornness of beauty. The yew reminds us that heritage is not merely what was built, but what still breathes in quiet corners when all else has fallen away.

Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959)

From abbey to cinema, the thread of imagination never falters. In 1959, Walt Disney turned his lens to Ireland with Darby O’Gill and the Little People, bringing the wit and wonder of Irish folklore to the silver screen. Jimmy O’Dea’s King Brian of the Leprechauns rules with charm and mischief, forever outsmarting Albert Sharpe’s wily Darby in a battle of pride and promises.

Filmed partly in Wicklow and on California sound stages, the film is remembered not for its trickery but for its heart - a blend of laughter, longing, and the belief that the old magic still hums beneath the fields. Its leprechauns may sparkle with studio light, yet their spirit remains unmistakably Irish: clever, bold, and unwilling to surrender wonder.

Whether they argue over gold, pride, or the price of a wish matters little. What endures is the echo of Ireland’s storytelling instinct - that joy and truth can share the same hearth, and that the line between myth and memory is never far apart.

A Heritage Still Alive

From the Morrígan’s shadow to Cork’s marketplace, from the broken wall at Moyasta to the yew of Muckross and the laughter of Darby O’Gill, one truth carries through: Ireland’s strength has always lain in remembrance. We remember through words, through music, through the quiet act of looking back so that we might understand what endures.

The past is not distant here - it walks beside us. It speaks in the wind through the trees, in the echo of a market bell, in the hush of an abbey at dusk. And sometimes, if we listen closely enough, in the mischief of a leprechaun still laughing somewhere just beyond the veil.

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