There’s a moment towards the start of Manchán Magan’s inspiring two-part documentary, in which – great etymologist that he is – he addresses his name, Manchán, which means ‘little monk’. By his own admission, he reeks of the priesthood.
“Just take one look at me,” he says, “I was obviously a priest in every single incarnation until this one. I will always find a little cell, the smallest hole that I can be in to write or to live in. Manchán was originally a pagan name, Mongán. He was the son of Manannán mac Lir. It had been a pagan deity, which was taken over during Christianity.”
Magan’s latest gospel, which underpins the documentary, and the award-winning book its based on, examines the ancient, binding ties the Irish landscape, including its rivers, mountains and caves, has with the stories and myths we tell ourselves; and what he argues is a yearning at large – perhaps accelerated during the Covid pandemic lockdowns – to reconnect with nature.
“Is it true to say that our myths and stories are linked to the land?” wonders Magan. “If we go out into the land, do we get to understand the stories? Can we unpack the insights and wisdom in them in a more meaningful way? I was aware of that as a concept from the songlines in Australia, from reading about Apache elders in New Mexico, or the work I’m doing with Cree elders in Edmonton and the Tsleil-Waututh in Vancouver, Canada.
“They’ve great tales and legends. When they go out on the land, they tell them in place. The land becomes alive. You suddenly see deeper levels of wisdom contained in the stories. A great example in Ireland is the Keash Caves. When I went up there with Marion Dowd, the expert on caves from University of Sligo, she unpacked it, and it wasn’t academic anymore.
“Suddenly, you see these caves as an entrance way to the other world and hown, say, the goddess Anu, or Áine, is this land sovereignty; she’s a representative of pregnancy and the fruitfulness of the land. She’s this abundant, life-giving force. Lough Gur is the classic example, how her pregnant belly is there, rising up from the lake in Lough Gur. Her breasts are down the road in the Paps of Anu. It’s all there.”
Magan recalls his days as a backpacker in Peru or Bolivia, where he was shown goddesses in the landscape, etched out. “I didn’t think I would find the same in this modern island on the edge of Europe,” he says.
Magan’s own personal journey, bubbling away in the background of the documentary, puts a different hue on the story he tells. Towards the start of filming in 2023, he was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. In his own words, it’s “a beautiful irony” that he has spent years as a writer and storyteller focused on healing, convincing people that ancient Irish culture and the Irish language can be saved, that it’s not dying, while at the same time his oncologist is telling him that his cancer is, ultimately, incurable. He’s finished a year of hormone treatment and radiation and feels “brilliant” now, but awareness of his mortality is addressed in the documentary.
“I talked about my cancer a few times in the documentary, but the place that really got me was on Inis Mór,” he says. “I’m standing in the middle of a graveyard beside a church and the church is being swallowed up by the sands and the land. It was hard not to be aware, ‘Oh, wait, we are all here for the shortest possible time.’
“I’ve always had that connection with the spirit world since I was a young child. That’s always meant more to me, it’s been more real to me than reality. I could slip away from this earth at any time, all too easy. I don’t have kids depending on me so it’s easy for me to say that.”
is stunning to watch, full of dramatic, star-soaked cinematography. Ireland has rarely looked so beautiful. Filmed over four seasons, it concludes with a raucous Samhain parade in Clonakilty, Co Cork, a time to celebrate the wildness in us, as winter creeps in. Magan ends on a hopeful note. Even though darkness is looming, and people will die over winter, there’s always a glimmer ahead. At some point, the days will get longer, and the grass will grow again.
“The land in Ireland is alive,” he says. “It wants to teach us things. They call the Burren ‘the learning landscape’. The landscape is a manuscript of old knowledge about how to connect with woodlands, rivers and animals, and how all of those are important. They’re connected with the rising of the sun, the seasons, the equinox, and the solstice. All of that is everywhere you look – in the place names, in the landscape itself and the stories. It wants to communicate with us. I feel that strongly.
“When I speak with elders from other cultures, they say the same. They say we’ve lost so much of our old songs, our stories, our knowledge, but it’s still in the landscape. All we need to do is go out and walk it, and redo the old rituals, even in an awkward way. It somehow sparks ancestral resonance inside of us and makes us feel better. Even if that’s just walking, cycling, hiking or swimming, going back out into the landscape somehow nourishes us.”
- The first episode of is on RTÉ One, Thursday, July 17 at 10.10pm
One of the striking aspects of Listen to the Land Speak is the prominent role that women – goddesses rivalling the best of Greek or Norse mythology – play in Irish identity. There’s St Brigid, of course, patron saint of childbirth and brewing – she once brewed a lake of beer; the Cailleach, a hag who shaped Ireland’s mountains, rivers and landscape; and Áine, a goddess of fertility, invoked by farmers hungry for a good harvest, who, it was said in the nineteenth century, used to lure the best musicians from around the county to her palace underwater in Lough Gur, Co Limerick.
“It’s a new awakening in Ireland,” says Magan. “For a long time, we thought Ireland was about Cú Chulainn and Finn McCool. Pádraig Pearse was very keen on that – the only way to keep [ancient Irish] culture alive was by fighting, by blood sacrifice. His time emphasised the male warrior – to go out and fight for freedom. Once we had that, then we were able to look deeper into our stories and that’s what myths do. A myth is not a single narrative at a particular place. That’s the beauty of myths – they change for each year.
“So, around the world, this idea of a more sensitive consciousness, a more Earth-based idea, if you were using naff language you’d call it the age of Aquarius, is rising again. It is only natural cultures will remember that they did once have a more female-centric, matriarchal culture. It’s happening in Ireland, and it’s happening in indigenous cultures around the world.”
