Take a walk or climb to any mountain top in Ireland and you will find that someone has been there before you and left their mark. These marks vary in size – from a church, like the one on Croagh Patrick, to a simple cross. If we look back further in time, we see our ancestors did the same thing thousands of years ago, only then they put in place piles of stones known as cairns. Some of these cairns were used as burial sites, and some were put there as statements; perhaps “I live here,” or maybe “stay away; this is my mountain”? Over the last forty years or so I have come to know the summit of Galtymore (917.9m), located on the border of Tipperary and Limerick, very well and in doing so I have unearthed some of the rich history of the marks that have been left there. Talking to hillwalkers and local people from around the Galtee Mountains, I was told that the mountain only had two small stone cairns on it well into the 20th century. As more and more people started to climb the mountain it was only a matter of time before people started to add to these. The first cross was erected on the summit of Galtymore by the Christian Brothers in Mitchelstown, Co Cork. It was an iron cross set into a triangular plinth on a base. Br Dominic McKenna, who was Brother Superior of Mitchelstown CBS, had decided to erect a cross there to celebrate the 1932 Eucharistic Congress. Work commenced on June 10th, 1933, and the cross was blessed by Father W Ryan CC of Galbally parish, Co Limerick, on July 2nd of that year. The location of this first cross is not far from a broken ‘trig’ pillar at the eastern end of the mountain – the remains of the base and plinth can still be seen. A testimony was placed under the base giving the reasons for erecting it and the names of the people responsible, and it’s probably still there. This cross stood for nearly thirty years and fell just before Br Dominic’s death in 1962. Pictured this page: Cross erected on Galtymore in 1933. Photo: Kavanagh family collection Previous page: Jimmy Barry painting the cross on Galtymore. Photo: Jimmy Barry MOUNTAIN LOG GALTYMORE CROSSES 43
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzcyMDA=