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[Artwork by Mary Marshall/MhaireMarscal]

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[Artwork by Mary Marshall/MhaireMarsal}

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Cillíní

EXTRACT OF ARTICLE BY FINOLA FINLAY + ROBERT HARRIS

- ROARING WATERJOURNAL – AT HOME IN CORK.

Dotted across the countryside around us, and throughout Ireland, are the loneliest places on earth. These are the cillíní – the children’s graveyards. A cill (kill) is a monk’s cell or church site, cillín (killeen) is the diminutive and cillíní (killeenee) is the plural: small churches. Ironically, the cillíní despite their names were usually non-church sites.

The teachings of the Catholic Church on where unbaptised babies go after death had evolved from a position of ‘they go to hell’ (Augustine, 4th century) to a more moderate invention of the concept of Limbo (Thomas Aquinas, 13th century) – an in-between place where these lost souls would dwell eternally, never to suffer but never to reach heaven.

They were burial grounds reserved for unbaptised children (those who died before they could be baptised or were perhaps born out of wedlock), pregnant women (because they were carrying unbaptised children), unrepentant murderers, suicides, shipwreck victims and strangers – anyone, in short, who was not ‘saved’ or whose baptismal status was ambiguous or unknown. They were used into the twentieth century. Some cillíní were also used for mass burials during the time of the famine.