Tracing historical children’s burial grounds in Ireland
Historically, the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland did not permit the burial in consecrated ground of stillborn babies and infants who died before they could be baptised (a rule that ended with the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s). Instead, from at least the 17th century, their parents interred them in small, informal burial grounds known as cillíní, or ‘little graveyards’, often in isolated locations. Many of these sites went out of use in the 19th century, and, while some are known from historical records, they have only received archaeological attention in recent decades. A new study, led by Dr Marion Dowd from the Atlantic Technological University, has added vital new detail to our understanding, combining folklore and archaeology to illuminate long-forgotten sites and their poignant practices.
An early medieval enclosure at Ballinphull, Sligo, which was repurposed in recent centuries as a cillín.
To learn more about these liminal locations, Marion examined more than 350 accounts from the Schools Collection at the National Folklore Collection, and cross-referenced these with archaeological records. Through this approach she was able to identify 11 previously undocumented cillíní, as well as 16 lost burial grounds across 14 different counties, including sites located beside holy wells and crossroads, and within ringforts. Her findings were recently published in The Journal of Irish Archaeology (http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/27426849), where Marion also explores an ‘archaeology of emotion’, reflecting on the experiences of the children’s parents, as well as examining the burial sites themselves and associated beliefs. ‘Identifying cillíní in the landscape is a way of reclaiming and owning this aspect of Irish funerary tradition and giving recognition to those buried within,’ she writes.
Cillíní are vulnerable to destruction from farming and development, particularly when they are undocumented, and Marion highlights the importance of oral traditions in relocating and protecting these fragile sites, encouraging local communities to help identify and preserve them.
Text: Kathryn Krakowka / Image: Dr James Bonsall
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