Cillin

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Cillín on Raneeny Hill in Donegal
The Cillín is in the herbaceous area in the center of the picture.

A cillín ( Irish cillín , or cealdrach or lisín leanbh ) is an unblessed cemetery in Ireland . From the early Middle Ages to modern times, Cillíns were the traditional burial place of unbaptized children. However, adults were also buried here. A large number of adults were buried in these places , especially during the famine .

The word Cillín or Lisheen means little Lios. Ireland is full of it. They are usually round or slightly oval. They were originally living spaces. The houses were surrounded by an earth wall and a shallow moat of water. Although no one has lived within a lio for over 500 years, the facilities have not been destroyed. They were treated as sacred places of the ancestors. The practice of burying people in them was quite common - especially unbaptized children who died before or during childbirth.

Cillins are often in remote locations. Usually only piles of reading stones mark the place that was secured against cultivation . Older monuments were often reused for the separate burial of the babies. There is already evidence of the different treatment of infants during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, particularly in the location of child burials in the corridors of the late Neolithic complex of Fourknocks , in County Meath . Separate burial of unbaptized infants was common during the medieval period and produced a large number of such monuments. Against this practice, which only ended in the 1960s, a movement has emerged that is moving corpses to regular cemeteries (see web link).

In some areas, the Cillíns are shown on maps . The scattered spots are very numerous, although many have already been lost. At the early medieval containment of Balriggan and on or in many Irish Raths separate burial grounds for infants were found.

literature

  • Nyree Finlay: Outside of Life: Traditions of Infant Burial in Ireland from Cillin to Cist. In: Roberta Gilchrist (Ed.): Human Lifecycles (= World Archeology. Vol. 31, No. 3). Routledge, London 2000, pp. 407-422, doi : 10.1080 / 00438240009696929 .

Web links