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Campaign to Save Tara By Ian Worpole
 The harp that
once through Tara’s halls
The soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls
As if that soul were fled.
– Thomas Moore
The Save Tara Campaign spread its wings to New York City and the steps
of the Irish Consulate on Park Avenue on September 22 when a group of
Irish artists gathered to protest the building of a motorway, approved
by the Irish government in 2003, to run between the Hill of Tara (the
historical seat of Ireland’s High Kings), and the Hill of Skryne,
in County Meath (north of Dublin).
The motorway will run through a complex of archaeological sites associated
with the Hill of Tara, which were placed on the World Monuments Fund’s
list of 100 Most Endangered Sites in June 2007.
The New York event included piper Jerry Dixon; Strings of Tara, a group of
seven women harpists who played “Brian Boru’s March”
(Boru was the last of Ireland’s High Kings), and host Susan McKeown,
who sang “Mise Éire” (I am Ireland), a Pádraic
Pearse poem set to music. “Mise Éire” includes the
words: “Great my glory; I who bore Cú Chulainn the valiant;
Great my shame, my own children that sold their mother.”
New York musicians Isaac Alderson, James Riley and Keith O’Neill
performed a virtuoso set of tunes that had a neighboring construction
crew rocking, and various speakers including Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
Paul Muldoon spoke of the spiritual need to preserve Tara.
Meanwhile, in Ireland, a simultaneous event was held, and a huge crowd
gathered to form a human harp on Tara. Muireann Ni Bhrolcháin who
heads the Save Tara Campaign in Ireland, said she was heartened by the
turnout. “The support for the campaign is growing — this was
clearly demonstrated at the recent equinox event when 1,500 people gathered
to form a huge human harp on Tara for the international artist John Quigley.”
Ni Bhrolcháin went on to say, “With climate change a frightening
reality, it is madness to persist in building motorways instead of public
transport.” -
To lend your support to the campaign to save Tara check out (www.tarawatch.org
and www.savetara.com). |
