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Will the dead save the living?

Hard on the heels of last month's story deploring plans to shift human remains from a nuns' burial ground in Cork, Little Nelly to make way for a developer to build an apartment block and office buildings, attention is now focused on the discovery of 700 skeletal remains in a burial ground lying in the path of the controversial Ballyshannon by-pass road in Donegal.

Following the initial discovery of six or seven graves, archaeologists were summoned to the site at Ballyhanna, near the abandoned Great Northern Railway line, and soon discovered they were only a small segment of a much larger burial ground, dating back to the period 1100 A.D. to 1400 A.D.

Coins buried with one body dated back to 1250 A.D.

What seems unbelievable is the claim that no knowledge of the site existed among the local population. That, simply, is not true.

It was always understood by people living in the vicinity that a church building of some sort had once stood on the spot. In fact, persons who walked the uneven ground stretching from the Higginstown Road to the Ballinacarrick Road, something which one closely associated with this e-zine did in his youth, were aware of the fact that the site had historical significance. It was by no means a popular stroll because of the nature of the terrain.

In hindsight the site's recent identification as "a Cistercian 'church of ease'
burial ground for people who lived beside the River Erne", may well have been the reason that a small area on the south side of the Erne remained in the parish of Kilbarron rather than the parish of Innismacsaint. The mother chapel of the Cistercians was the Abbey of Assaroe on the north side of the river.

That at the moment may be conjecture. What is solid fact is that once more the graves of the dead are under threat if the planned route of the by-pass road is not altered. That alteration should be accompanied by a necessary second change, the re-routing of the by-pass through the town of Ballyshannon itself. At present its planned route will cut the town in quarters, steering business to other centres, and once more will show a callous, uncaring disregard for the wishes of local inhabitants.

It remains to be seen if Requiescat in Pace still means anything in "the island of pavers and cementers".

Maybe the dead in Ballyhanna will yet save the living in Ballyshannon.

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