Once Through Tara's Hall

By Marc-Yves Tumin

Joe Murphy, my great and good friend from Co. Cork, shot a glance at the pub door as it opened, nodded to me, and smiled with a secret wisdom.

We were recovering from work in one of our favorite haunts, Niles, near Madison Square Garden. Only a few steadfast souls remained as my pal regaled me with stories of the Emerald Isle, and our bartender nonpareil, Jimmy Bannon, swooped in with salvers of Littleneck clams, steaming Irish coffee, and smoked Irish salmon.

Suddenly, from the abyss emerged a traditional Irish musician accompanied by a step dancer. The former brandished a metal pipe and began playing jigs and reels. The latter commenced threading his way through some intricate divertissements. After a few transporting tunes, the magical pair passed around a hat, and, as quietly as they'd arrived, stole off into the darkness. It was a wondrous moment.

I recalled that evening last Friday, as I reclined in the back of a parlor at Glucksman Ireland House in Greenwich Village. A runnel of anticipation sifted through the visitors and washed against the tall bookcases by the windows, reflecting the paving stones of the ancient lane outside -- Washington Mews, a private carriageway, landmarked, with roots in the Victorian Age.

I was attending a traditional music concert featuring a button accordionist and sean-nos crooner, big Breandán Ó Beaglaoich, a native of West Kerry, and a brilliant elfin fiddler, Co. Dublin's Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh. Their wicked noise, witty banter, and bilingual ballads enchanted the audience.

The musicale evoked memories of Jane Jacobs et alia foiling the Terrible Tarmacer, Robert Moses, from driving his Manhattan Expressway through Washington Square Park. Jacobs, oft dismissed as "just a housewife," coined a phrase, "Trusting the local," to describe an effective means of deterring disfiguring incursions by city planners. The preservation of the historic character and integrity of our neighborhoods is her legacy.

It was, therefore, terribly poignant to hear a Dublin vocalist, Susan McKeown, appealing to us to help subdue a gross iniquity being inflicted on the Celtic landscape. This Saturday morning at 11, Irish harpers and kindred spirits will gather on Park Avenue, outside the Consulate General of Ireland, to support the protection of an imperiled historic site: Tara, in Co. Meath.

As I write, the M3 motorway builders are knocking down trees, piling on earthworks, bisecting the Tara-Skryne Valley, and bludgeoning the storied terrain.

Here is where the high kings repaired for coronations. Here is where St. Patrick converted the Irish to Christianity. And here is where the iconic hill's essential surrounds, its mystical obelisks, and their timeless Neolithic interstices are being sacrificed to the clueless god of immediate concerns.

The World Monuments Fund in Manhattan put Tara on its list of the Hundred Most Endangered Sites for 2008.

Having survived the marauding millennia, will it prevail against the pavement-mad panjandrums? Demonstrations opposing the destruction of 5,000 years of history are taking place in Ireland and elsewhere. Now the friends of Tara are gathering for one final stand.

"The Irish community here in America, as well as those at home, want our heritage preserved for future generations," Ms. McKeown told the Examiner.

"Saturday's report from the European Union Petitions Committee should be seen as an opportunity for the Irish government to take a step toward dispensing with unnecessary road building and to seek environmentally friendly alternatives for transport."

"Tara Hill, which is the centerpiece of a large archaeological landscape with hundreds of significant sites, is the ceremonial and mythical capital of Ireland," the president of the World Monuments Fund, Bonnie Burnham, told the Examiner.

"It would be a huge loss to the world if Tara's surrounding landscape, about which we have much to learn, is destroyed for a highway development that will only encourage more rapid and inappropriate development. We are horrified at the prospect of a radical alteration of such an important site and call upon the authorities to reconsider their decision."

"The Irish government is vandalizing Ireland's most important archaeological site," the traditional musician and organizer of the Blarney Star concert series at NYU's Ireland House, Donald Meade, told the Examiner.

"They are in such a hurry to pave over part of Tara that they're bulldozing ancient monuments in the middle of the night. Irish Americans, and all friends of Ireland's culture and heritage, should add their voices to the protests against this short-sighted and irresponsible policy."

"It is exactly as Susan McKeown said at the concert: 'Your feet on the street will make the difference,'" a fiddler and composer from Co. Clare, Meadhbh Boyd, told the Examiner. "People need to take part or this effort will be futile.

"I find myself to be very passionate about this, and I find it difficult not to sound bitter. I am sure you understand why. So many people are upset about this. They just cannot do this to our heritage. What are they going to do next? Strip us of all that defines our culture?"

Stay tuned.