I hate graveyards, and I enter a minimum. To be honest I avoid them carefully. And to avoid a hasty psychoanalytic analysis, I would add that this is not because of a fear of death, I fear that there are circumstances that cause death, but the idea of extending side by side in the same place as many unknowns to allow those remaining to keep a tangible memory of him is gone, the idea that we can want or need to gather before a stone cold and hostile or to cry communication with the feel that you lack, chills me back ...

I instinctively rallied religions that emphasize the subsistence of the soul by the recollection, even relying on the gods. Of course, these are only personal beliefs and I respect the beliefs and feelings of each. And this respect pushes me even, sometimes, to enter other cemeteries beyond our borders, to seek to understand. And to watch.

. I already mentioned the naval cemetery of St. Paul where the attacker is assumed to rest the nozzle and where you can admire one (too obvious) marble stone to honor the memory of the poet Leconte de Lisle. On the island of La Reunion the small seaside cemetery is among the great classics of tourism and I've always wondered what do the Reunion, which also come to pray at the graves of their relatives who may be embarrassed by those tourists who take out the camera as fast as their enthusiastic cries: "There! I found it! come see! ". Please, we are in a cemetery! ...

In Greenland I recently saw the crooked cross in the cemetery close to each village clinging to the rock at the edge of the icy water. Here the tombs are sometimes frustrated because of the urgency to sleep under the earth remains of a loved one in a hostile climate. Not far from Thule in the far north, I heard the wind whistling boldly between the tufts of dry grass clump on the ground severely disturbed. A melody of death, punctuated by the howl of sled dogs and the harsh elements under a leaden sky and in front of a strait hous by the hour, threatening to imprison us there until next summer. And away, facing the iceberg, a burial oldest, made of flat stones piled macrabre figure in a landscape of ice ...

Two weeks earlier in the Nuuk fjord in southern Greenland had approached real human skeletons, discovered traces of the past by a team of archaeologists a few days earlier. There, in a kind of igloo made of flat stones, the remains of a woman unchaste open to our gaze, for the benefit of history. And knowing that this skeleton could be at least two centuries did not alter my emotions but probably added to my respect.

My first human skeletons I saw them in a burial cave, or what seems to be confirmed as such photo below), on an island of Tonga, safe from curious. It was nice to know that we can not do anything for them, meet the eyes of a hollow human features is not very comfortable. As a group, perhaps you'll feel like an annoying laugh to lighten the atmosphere, as if to conjure a spell that you do not want shared. Or is this a reminiscence of the skeleton of our natural science classes when the unfortunate chattering teeth under the shocks caused by the boldest of us?

A few days later they are skulls collected in a wooden urn that the village mayor of Ua Pou introduced us to the Marquesas, Polynesia. There was no question of burial, but a trophy, loot. These heads without bodies testified to tribal rituals that allowed to separate the head from the body when they belonged to the enemy. Practices that are less than my old skeleton Greenland ...

But it is a real curiosity that I entered spontaneously in a cemetery in Tonga: the island of Tongatapu in the archipelago stuck between Fiji and Samoa interpelée these cemeteries was huge and almost spectacular. For each family tomb stands a real decoration to honor the deceased, to enable the rest in a familiar environment, created with love and respect for the living. Floral decorations, often artificial, sculptures, and huge tapestries, quilts and embroidered hand sewn giants, tracing the history of death or a local legend. I then asked permission, and I took out my camera, to testify.

In Bali I had followed a funeral procession and I photographed the steps to be cremated on the beach at South Kuta on the island, focusing on rituals taught to the younger older: offerings of flowers and fruits, weavings, sculptures, and sorting charred bones after the outbreak before offering the waves of the Indian Ocean in graceful baskets hopeful.

But it is at Carrowmore megalithic cemetery in Ireland that I felt the most beautiful emotion. Emotion, it is the right word? ... In County Sligo on the west coast of Ireland, it takes persistence to find the den of the tombs erected, one of the largest and oldest of all the 'Western Europe.

Winding roads, some junctions, and suddenly the corner of a grassy slope you see a stone that tells you your tabular entry into megalithic area. After paying the right location (mild and justified) you walk alone (e) maintained on an immense plain, striped paths traced by the footsteps of visitors before you, leading from graves in dolmens.

The oldest date back to 5400 BC, although this dating is the subject of controversy today. But most acknowledge seniority dating between 4300 and 3500 BC, an estimate made possible by the archaeological excavations that were conducted since the late nineteenth century. Artifacts, vessels, bones and intact muscle fibers, textile remnants and pieces of coal possible to date some of the graves with more precision. Human bones and those of animals, charred (up to 27 kg per grave ...) have helped to understand the rites of cremation of Irish ancestry.

But to take advantage of Carrowmore I suggest to forget the numbers to focus on the essence of the site. Store your guide book, forget the plastic sheet (in French) we just give you to help you understand the site, and let yourself go with the spirit of place.

Here, some thousands of years before you, men and women have performed funeral rites which we know much.

On this vast plateau of the Romantic County Sligo, wedged between the Atlantic and the heights of Benbulben, the wind sweeps the short grass and takes the words of the curious who seek to understand. Sitting apart on a grassy knoll, I stowed the camera for the shelter of the rain threat. The sky turns white lead, a pale light that becomes angry, the colors change at the whim of Aeolus, which brings together a stratus layer threatening over our heads, like an iron lid.

I note in my neck I let my eyes wander over the broom in flower, the rhododendron bushes that mark fuchsia fences of properties in the distance. In early spring azaleas favors subtle shades soften the chatter on the soft green meadows too often watered by the rains in Ireland.

Before me, a circle of about twenty feet in circumference, perimeter dotted with standing stones like little soldiers ensuring the rest of the deceased. Below ground, charred bones, traces of a life ultimate tough, shorter than mine. Who was he, how did she live? ...

And the wind that whispers in my ear the secrets invented a life that will remain private despite the attempts of researchers who insist. Fragments of mussel shell, a whale bone, fragments of pottery ... She was a mother He was a fisherman. A harsh fate in the Irish whipped by the elements, on a ground which hesitates between peat and heath. Cheeks reddened by the biting wind, eyes the color of water, a strong will, from that animate those who survive anyway.

On the table before me gneiss quartz chips sparkle in a final nod to life, hello fleeting spirits ghosts who haunt the place. The refrain of an Irish tour heard the night in a pub revives the memory of the Celts who trod the grass before me, those perhaps who gathered here in my place. The wild wind sings a melody that turns my hair moving screen on which is printed with a breath of esotericism, the silhouettes of others who did not know that one day, much later, their cemetery become a curiosity.

At Carrowmore must be carried away by the magic and accept the legends. The romantic landscape lends itself perfectly and you may hear, like me, the murmur of the women who whisper their secrets ...

Although I began writing this article last Tuesday, seemed suddenly released today by the circumstances, while our JT competed this weekend with reports from graveyards and cremation, while praising the impudent merits of a cremation bio (which opportunism "...), I wanted to make a quick breath of poetry in these exotic places that usually avoids.

Because the memory can not be that painful ...

Keywords: Ireland

This article was published November 3, 2008 at 6 am under 00 min in Europe . Follow the RSS comments.