Countrywide Full Episode 27/06/26
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Countrywide on RTE Radio 1.
Hello, good morning, how are you? On the programme between now and nine. Raising the bones of the country in Waterford. Pole dancers pretending to be pirates in Mayo. Most excellent vending machines in Cavan. And learning to share in Cork. I do hope you're well and you can stay with us until nine o'clock, which is when the heat warning officially ends. About one o'clock this morning, there was a very welcome... fresh or cooler breeze blew its way in through the open bedroom window but you know what being up and about since about five o'clock this morning I can tell you it's not quite time just yet to take the butter dish out of the fridge it is still a little bit sticky there First person I would like to introduce you to this morning is a very interesting man who has written a must-read book.
David Keown is a bit of a Waterford-born Indiana Jones. He's a man on an archaeological quest to discover Ireland's ancient lifting stones and revive a sport and a culture, stone lifting, that has almost been erased from the landscape entirely. His book is called The Wind Beneath the Stone because the moment when you first raise a stone off the ground in stone lifting is called giving it wind. I met him at a deserted Bunmahan stage cove, the cliff rocks literally green with copper still seeping from the old mines. And this is where David trains on a selection of increasingly heavy looking rocks. The wind under the stone is stage one. Up the lap is stage two. And up the chest is stage three. Right, come on.
Come on now.
Don't mess.
So again, I'm setting myself up. Like Flardy always spoke about, scraping the ground away to get balance. So you have a nice, firm base. I'm sitting myself directly over the stone, right over the middle of it. See the way it's kind of more weight on this side, so I know I'm going to have to put more force through this side of the body. Find my handles, get underneath it, push the ground away to my legs, sit it in, hands around, and up it comes. Oh my God, you make that look so simple. It's never easy, you just get better at it.
What was this? Why did we do it? How widespread was it? So, the more I've been digging into this, the more I've realised it's not just man-lift rock, because I was enamoured by the culture of it in Scotland and in Iceland. And I knew there was a whole culture of it, and also in the Basque region and Spain. And I always thought it was a really cool thing to look at. You know, you're lifting a stone, it's primal, there's strength involved. But what I realised through the research over the past couple of years was there's a whole cultural aspect to this that I missed out on at the beginning. So these were rites of passage. They were rites of passage from boyhood to manhood. They were job interviews to become like a fisherman or a stonewall builder on the islands of Inishmahe.
They were lifted to honour the dead at funeral games. They were lifted to honour the living at weddings. They were lifted to honour the harvest at harvest festivals. They were sometimes parts of chieftains' initiation rites. And the more I've delved into it, the more I've realised that the seam of this runs deep through who we are as a people. How widespread do you think it was? Was there a lifting stone in every townland or in every parish or a couple in every county? When I go west and I see the amount of lifting stones that are in Connemara and on the islands, I've literally just found two in the last month on Inish Mahan. Again, that's four in the island of Inish Mahan and I'm sure there's more.
I think there was one of these in every town and I really think there was. It was like pre-GAA, you know. It was the gathering. It was people who gather on a Sunday. It was also powerful.
What is stone lifting and why is David Keown reviving it in Ireland?
People would gather on a Sunday before or after Mass, and this crops up all over the place. Before or after Mass on a Sunday, the men would gather and lift the stone. And not just the men, too. I mean, obviously, it would be more of a masculine thing, but there is specific female lifting stones in Ireland as well.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–4:17
2
What is stone lifting and why is David Keown reviving it in Ireland?
4:17–10:48
3
How were lifting stones used as rites of passage and community rituals?
10:48–19:57
4
How did famine and emigration contribute to the disappearance of stone‑lifting culture?
19:57–34:39
5
How did David research and locate forgotten lifting stones using folklore archives?
34:39–46:45