Mound, motte, holy well, standing stone, earthwork, barrow, church, castle, crannog: what good heart does not rise just a little, like a horse's head to the sound of a distant horn, at the sight of those words in rubric on a map? Such enchanting mysteries are evoked by those neat red letters; vanished rites, forgotten ways, deities to be expiated, kings propitiated, saints revered, spirits calmed, fairies appeased.
The sheer immensity of our archaeological wealth becomes truly apparent on the perfectly splendid Discovery 1:50,000 Discovery series of maps from the Ordnance Survey of Ireland. For which God bless mapmakers; they are one of the pillars upon which civilisation rests.
Without maps there are no roads, no signposts, no safe travel, no law, no lawful government and trade of only the most primitive and localised variety. Without maps, travellers get lost and eaten. Here be dragons. An uncharted land can expect governance only by raiding parties exacting tribute; it cannot expect the delivery of measured and daily authority and an assured and lasting peace.
Mapmakers are artists and surveyors and archaeologists and sociologists and explorers: they have to measure and draw and sit in hostels at night talking to people to find out what is what and what is where. Mapmakers are wonderful; and I doubt very much if there are more wonderful mapmakers anywhere than the people who have made the Discovery Series.
A thing of beauty
For these are simply works of great art, as much to be browsed over on a winter's evening as to be pored over upside down and half folded over the steering wheel during a summer's holiday. For a great map is not just a tool but an informative thing of great beauty, visually delightful, yet speaking to those who consult it of lost civilisations and forgotten ways, of battles fought and bodies buried, of conquest and of conversion.
And such names there are on our landscape. Beside Lough Ennell (Loch Ainninn) there is a townland called Tallyho, and not far away is Castlelost; and near those townlands are bitoponymic locations which perhaps suggests two competing tribes, such as one finds where Prussian meets Pole - Bellfield or Brannockstown, Claremount or Cummingstown, Morerow or Tonlagee, Anneville or Rathduff, Commeenlonagh or Aghanamanagh. And how did the mapmakers discover these obscure places with their obscure names known only by a few score local people? Is that not in itself a wonder?
Each place has a history, and even the dreariest bog has a secret to reveal; let your finger traverse the featureless marshlands south of Rochfortbridge (Droichead Chaislean Loiste) and the names speak of lost Oaklands, Derryarkin, Derryiron, Derrycoffey, Derrgreenagh, all of which were so distinct that they merited separate names: and then glory be, an effusion of rubric Mound, Holy Well, Graveyard, Standing Stone, Graveyard, Barrow, Deserted Settlement, Fortified House, and not far away an entire necropolis of barrows: what energy must once have gone into that culture of death. And there it is, beneath your finger, the residue of an entire world, a civilisation as complex as Babylon's, and now as vanished, yet present to this day on the humble Offaly flatlands north east of Daingean, and discoverable only on a map.
Superb present
The Discovery Series sell at about £4.50 each, and they are wonderful value: a complete set would make a superb if slightly extravagant present. However, it does say something about the marketing skills of the Ordnance Survey Office that it gives no discount whatsoever on a bulk purchase of the entire set. Discount is given solely on the bulk purchase of copies of each individual maps, and that of course is of interest only to retailers. Much as I love maps, I am unlikely to want dozens of the same one.
It was with a slightly drooping spirit that I heard of the expected increase in tourism over the next year; for tourism is generally speaking idiot-recreation, the unselective and purely transient experiencing of the most conspicuous features of other people's weather, culture, topography. But at least in that regard we are luckier than Benidorm or Nice. We tend to get the more discerning visitors, for only the abjectly cretinous would come here for our climate, and the most that can be said about much of our scenery is that it rather resembles the instructions bawled to slave seamstresses, or the comparable though differently vowelled orders to toiling farm-labourers broadcasting seed. It is so-so.
Toil and terrors
But properly equipped, a tourist can transform the most apparently mundane part of the midlands into living history, for a good map is a time-machine. It will not just meticulously reassure you of your whereabouts, but it will also enable you to read the landscape, to sense the toil and the terrors of those civilisations which built the raths and the mottes and named every single thing you can see; and in those names repose such fresh mysteries and such haunting questions - for what was the temple in tiny Templemacateer near Horseleap, and what stories lie behind the rival names for the one place of Stonehousefarm Demesne or Meersparkfarm outside Kilbeggan?
Mystery upon mystery as the Discovery maps open Ireland up in a quite marvellously enriching way. It is a shame that their extraordinary quality has not been matched by the marketing effort which they deserve; but that is probably impossible, for they are simply masterpieces.