Belderrig
in Mayo in the West of Ireland
Belderrig is a village of approximately 70 widely spread cottages, scenically located on the North Coast of Mayo between Ballina and Belmullet. Coming to Belderrig is travelling back 1000 million years and more. It is a present to the geologist, archaeologist and the botanist and offers magnificent scenery of sea and cliffscapes, and dramatic mountains.
The coastal area, in its simplicity, is regarded as one of the most attractive tourist targets. Belderrig is a rural area located in a region rich in historical and archaeological heritage. In immediate proximity to the village are the Belderrig Cliffs, which contain some of the most spectacular coastal geology in Ireland.
Once in Belderrig you forget traffic, haste, stress, depression.
It is the largely undisturbed openess of the countryside and the closeness of the wild Atlantic that stands in contrast with small cosy cottages with their fireplaces. Knock on any door and you are welcome.
You will be affected by the full moon in Belderrig, equally by the spectacular stars seen during a moonless night, not disturbed by background lights of towns. Whether storms bring the Atlantic to boil or the flat waters at a quiet summer evening, nature's power can be felt in Belderrig.
The essence of the Belderrig ('Belderg') landscape was captured by Seamus Heaney in a poem accompanying a thank-you letter shortly after a visit to Patrick Caulfield's house in 1974.
"Belderg"
"They just kept turning up
And were thought of as foreign'-
One-eyed and benign
They lie about his house,
Quernstones out of a bog.
To lift the lid of the peat
And find this pupil dreaming
Of neolithic wheat!
When he stripped off blanket bog
The soft-piles centuries
Fell open like a glib:
There were the first plough-marks,
The stone age fields, the tomb
Corbelled, turfed and chambered,
Floored with dry turf-coomb.
A landscape fossilized,
Its stone wall patterings
Repeated before our eyes
In the stone walls of Mayo
Before I turn to go
He talked about persistance,
A congurence of lives,
How, stubbed and cleared of stones,
His home accrued growth rings
Of Iron, flint and bronze.
So I talked of Mossbawn,
A bogland name. 'But Moss?'
He crossed my old home's music
With older strains of Norse.
I'd told how its foundation
Was mutable as sound
And how I could derive
A forked root from that ground
And make bawn an English fort,
A planter's walled-in mound
From "Belderg" by Seamus Heaney 1975
