The Myth of King Gog

By Cormac MacConnell

IT’S been a while since I paid my respects to the great dolmen at Poulnabrone on the dome of the Burren. I was passing today and I didn’t pass.

I stopped and joined the multinational throng walking across the slab stones of the Burren to the dolmen that draws a couple of hundred thousand visitors every year. It is one of the really big tourist attractions in Co. Clare and there are always people around it, winter and summer alike.

It was baking hot today, really hot. The mercury hit 30 Celsius at Shannon and it felt even warmer at Poulnabrone.

I sauntered slowly over to the ancient burial stone among the scores of tourists coming and going. There was a couple with red and green Mayo jerseys on them just in front of me and one word led to another.

I complimented them on beating Galway the previous day in the Connacht football final and then somewhat wickedly sympathized with them at what was before the team now. Those of you not too au fait with Gaelic football will not know that Mayo usually play like lions in their own province, but more like lambs once they leave it.

The Mayo man riposted that at least they won a couple of All-Ireland titles in the past, unlike Fermanagh. We had good craic over that.

Another couple joined in there somewhere. They were from Utah and puzzled that the weather was so hot in the west of Ireland. It was like home and the woman said she’d been looking forward to the lovely soft Irish rain.

When were they leaving? Out of Shannon on Friday.

“The heat wave,” I said, “is tipped to last past Friday, ye will just have to come back in September to get that lovely soft Irish rain.”

“I was thinking of starting up a business bottling it for export,” said the man from Westport.

When we reached the dolmen itself there were about 100 people in the vicinity, many of them Japanese, and about 30 standing close to the ancient monument listening intently to a small roundy man in shorts and a red sweatshirt.

As we had been approaching I’d heard his twangy Dublin accent, without listening to what he was saying. When we joined the group I began to listen and it was not too long, for sure, before I recognized that the Dubliner was doing about as good a bit of leg pulling as I’ve ever heard in my life.

Some of the visitors must have asked him about the dolmen’s history as we were coming over, and I’d say that launched him into delivering as colorful a bit of historic fiction as I’ve ever heard. And would ye believe that two or three camcorders were recording the entire yarn, and several Japanese and German groups were taking notes!

To my certain knowledge the history of Poulnabrone is sketchy enough. The experts don’t know who lies below except that it would have been a person of considerable substance and authority. The experts don’t know if there is only one person down below or a considerable number of remains.

Dammit, the Dubliner knew it all! I’d missed the beginning but it was clear that the rascal even had a name for the long dead pagan King Gog for God’s sake and Gog had ruled the Burren with a hand of iron (before the Iron age mind you) and was a noted fighter.

The Dubliner told his audience that there had been a class of a grey dragon in the Burren that time, six and seven feet long, and Gog was able to kill them with his stone axe.

He also had 47 wives and every one of them was poisoned on the night Gog died at the age of 70 (which was a fierce age that time) and he had sired over 100 children in his time and those wives, said the Dubliner, were buried down there along with the old king.

In the wintry nights, he said, the local people of the Burren claimed they could hear the crying voices of the dead wives in the winds over the stonelands. And that, he said, was the story.

They applauded the rogue when he was finished. I did too. What does it matter if it was fiction?

In the absence of real knowledge a bit of a myth is magic. The Irish Tourist Board should recruit this man immediately, I thought to myself, watching him being surrounded by a host of new friends, including the woman from Utah who had now forgotten all about the soft rain.

I did not try to meet the rascal but I caught his eye at some point and transmitted a broad wink in his direction. I got a broader one back by return. He was the kind of character, that Dubliner, that you’d love to meet over a pint, but I think you would not buy a used car from him.

Driving away, leaving them all behind, meeting more visitors arriving, my head was full of the story of King Gog of Poulnabrone, slaying dragons, siring children by the new time, and the possessor of nearly 50 wives.

I’ll never pass Poulnabrone again without smiling, be it rain or shine.