The Blindboy Podcast - The Lost Irish Tradition Of Lifting Heavy Stones

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

David Keohan is using folklore to rediscover the lost Irish tradition of Stone Lifting. An ancient practice that incorporated tests of strength and training Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pinch the pigeon you wicked Vincents. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. We've had a week of particularly violent and erratic weather here in Limerick. Hot sun followed by tropical storms. Like something out of Miami. That's a direct quote. I was walking out of my office by the taxi rank and it was really, really hot and warm. And all the taxi drivers were resting against their cars and the heat because that's what the taxi drivers do when it when it's hot outside they all pull up in the rank in the daytime and then they kind of lean against their bonnets get

a bit of sun and they talk to each other and then I went into the shop. And when I came back out. It just suddenly burst into a tropical storm. Like out of nowhere. These big fat raindrops. And it came down so quickly that. There were these two taxi drivers. Men in their 50s. And they were both wearing white shirts. And the rain came down and drenched them.

So that they were. Basically nude. shirts and the rain came down and drenched them so that they were basically nude, the water had penetrated the whiteness of their shirts so that you could see their entire torsos, they were pink men, these men were bright pink because their white t-shirt, it was a wet t-shirt

competition with middle aged taxi drivers and I came out and this is the first thing I saw big dinner plate nipples-aged taxi drivers. And I came out and this is the first thing I saw. Big dinner plate nipples on these taxi drivers. And they're soaking wet. Thundering lightning above. And they're clambering desperately

to try and get into their cars. And the both of them are just screaming at each other. It's like Miami. It's like something over in Miami. And then the rain went away. Because it was like a flash. miami and then the rain went away because it was like a flash a flash thunderstorm that went away and then the sun came back out again and came back out so quickly that the streets were steaming and then i went walking down this this other street bedford row and dimrick down towards the terry wogan statue and this street is having an issue at the moment in that there's just too many

bards in the trees and the bards do shits like unbelievable amounts of shits on the pavement of Bedford Row but they do so much shit that the entire street smells like bard shit and the thing is you should you shouldn't really know what bard shit smells like it's something you see but bird shit is so small that it's olfactory footprint is something that's usually outside of our awareness not like cow shit or dog shit which has a more cavalier waft like the only time I've ever been acquainted with the smell of bird shit is if i accidentally stick my finger into it or once in my life where a bird shat into my hand and i said fuck it i have to smell it it's on my hand and you go and i say that's strange i don't know what

to make of that smell is it piss is it shit i don't know it's just the smell of bard shit it's not pleasant but it's not going to ruin my week like if I got dog shit on my hand but Bedford Row and Limerick at the moment just smells like bard shit because there's hundreds of thousands of bards gathering around the trees and just shitting on the ground on the same street there's a bronze statue of Hollywood actor

Richard Harris and I was thinking as a solution they should dress Richard Harris up as a hawk for the summer months to frighten the birds away so the whole street smells like bird shit but the storms have washed that away

so come and visit Limerick if you want to see wet t-shirt competition between taxi drivers in their 50s and if you want to smell a street a street that smells like bird shit on your way to the Terry Wogan statue come to Limerick

City if you're interested in that so I've got a a very entertaining podcast for you this week with a guest who was doing fascinating strange groundbreaking research in an area that intersects folklore history mythology and strength training. But before I speak with this guest, I want to read ye a short story by one of my favourite short story writers, a fellow by the name of Liam O'Flaherty. Liam O'Flaherty was born in 1896. He was from the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland.

He was in the IRA in the 1920s. He was a founding member of the Irish Communist Party. A fascinating individual but an incredible writer. He wrote novels, he wrote some non-fiction but in my opinion his best work was his short stories and he's considered one of the best short story writers to ever come out of Ireland and his work exemplifies the Irish short story tradition I only started getting into Liam O'Flaherty in the past two years

and I read one of his short stories called The Sniper and it broke my fucking heart it made me very upset because I remembered it from school. And as you know, I didn't have a very good experience in school. I wasn't very engaged with my schoolwork.

And I was just so disappointed that I was learning Liam O'Flaherty in school and having the opportunity to study his short stories when I was 14. And I wasn't present in class so it was just it was sickening to to read something and be like wow this is incredible I can't believe this is what we were learning in school and I was acting the bollocks instead but I want to read you one of Liam O'Flaherty's short stories this week, because this story is incredibly relevant to the guest who I'm going to have on. Unfortunately, Liam O'Flaherty is now out of print,

which is baffling. I mean, he is considered one of Ireland's greatest writers, and you can't really buy his short stories. If you go online, you can get one of his short story collections as a free pdf and there's another one on the website archive.org but if you go and try and buy liamo flaherty books they're all out of print older editions and they're very very expensive i managed to find one collection and it was like i think it was was 50 euro, which isn't too bad.

Some of them were 300, 400 euro. This one was 50 euro, really tattered. It's from the 1970s. So I got myself a copy of that, which is a collection of his short stories. I've been reading a lot of Liam O'Flaherty over the past two years. His stories have been massively Massively helpful to me. In my latest collection that I'm writing. Topographia Hibernicat.

That's coming out this November. The way that Liam O'Flaherty writes about. Animals and nature in particular. He's able to write in third person. As the chaotic. Uncaring voice of nature. And sometimes the tone. Is so sterile

that it can force the reader to just project meaning into the text because we can't handle the anxiety of the chaos that he presents in his universe. So I'm going to read this story now. This is by Liam O'Flaherty. It was written in 1937. And this story is. This is by Liam O'Flaherty. It was written in 1937 and this story is called The Stone. On a summer afternoon an old man was walking along the narrow stony road that led from

his village to the sea. One hand supported his hip, in the other he gripped a stick upon which he leaned heavily. His laboured breath made a singing sound. At every third or fourth step he halted, straightened himself slowly, grasped his stick with both hands and looked around him. With the brooding, melancholy expression of an aged man on his withered face. His body had shrunk. His clothes hung loose upon him. They were covered with patches. He wore only garments that had been discarded as useless by the young men of the house, for he had become useless and a burden. Although it was hot, he wore numbers of garments. Yet he did not perspire, and he was buttoned tightly.

There was no heat in his blood. His face was yellow. His eyes were colourless. They were bloody around the rims. They had no lashes. His toothless mouth had sunk into his face. His cheekbones stuck out beneath the tart skin, like the hip bones of an old horse.

On his twisted hands the skin was transparent, showing a web of sickly veins beneath. A thin white beard grew on his neck beneath the chin. Although it was dead calm, his tattered black hat was secured with a card tied around his neck, after the manner of a fisherman at sea. When he walked, his ferold stick made a queer plaintive sound on the polished limestone flags of the road and on the loose stones that lay there. His feet fell heavily, unsteadily,

slipping and crunching like the hooves of a heavily laden horse, stumbling at night through a rocky mountain pass. There was no sound anywhere, everything was still. The sea was so calm that its marmor did not reach him, even though it lay but five hundred yards away, glassy and white in the sunlight. On either side of the path, there were little green gardens of oats and potatoes.

He often leaned over their stone fences and blessed the growing crops and looked for labourers and was glad when he saw none for it was unlucky for a fisherman to meet people on his way to the sea. The old man was doting. He had the mirage of returned youth in his brain. He thought he was going out to sea as of yore. He reached the end of the patch and crawled through a stile that led into a wide, craggy stretch of wasteland above the shore. Now he could smell the odour of the brine and a faint thrill of joy passed through his body. He stood erect, shielded his eyes and looked ahead. He saw the vast expanse of level glittering water stretching to the confines of the sky before him. He saw the long mound of boulders on the shore. He saw the upturned caracals on the flags among the boulders

of the shore, their tarred bottoms gleaming in the sunlight. He saw the cliffs rising on either side of the rocky cove and the silent sea swelling up and falling down around the black rocks. He saw the cocks of dried seaweed and patches of sea moss being bleached white, spread out, gathered that morning by the village women. And all the joyous memories of boyhood came to him in a wild shower that sent his remaining blood coursing passionately through his veins. He went forward, moving his lips, trembling, now almost moving quickly and vigorously, for the mirage had become so vivid

that he thought himself waking from a long sleep and entering the land of youth, and he was going forth to fish. As he came near the mound of boulders, he heard the ponderous lapping of the waves, tumbling slowly without form about the rocks, and the smell of the sea became so strong that it was like food entering his lungs. He took his hand from his hip and swung it unsteadily by his side. His stick struck the path fiercely. His eyes gleamed.

Overcome by this joy, he rested on a stone bench by the side of the path. This stone bench had been built there ages ago by the fishermen for resting their baskets of fish on their way from the shore to the village. Resting there also brought wonderful memories to his mind and he thought of his first great catch of fish as a young man when there was soft down on his unshaven face. He remembered resting his full basket there and looking at the soft dead fish with their slime hardened into jelly. How wonderful that was. And then suddenly he remembered the stone and as he remembered it he stopped breathing and slowly turned about and leaned his chest

against the bench and examined the rocky ground looking for it. He saw it and started eagerly. Like a hunting dog catching sight of its prey it was a round block of granite. It sparkled as the sunshine shone on the particles of mica in its surface. It lay on the ground on a clear space between the rocks. All round it there were bruised stones, bruised to a powder, and where it lay there was a little hollow. The stone had lain in that place as long as the oldest traditions in the village could remember, and from time immemorial it had been the custom of the young men of the village to test their strength by lifting it.

It was a great day in each young man's life when he raised the stone from the ground and gave it wind as they said and if he raised it to his knees he was a champion, the equal of the best and if he raised it to his chest he was a hero, a phenomenon of strength, and men talked of him. Whereas he who failed to lift it from the ground became the butt of everyone's scorn. It had always been so from the time of the most remote ancestors of the people. The old man, looking at it, became very fierce, as he remembered the first time he had lifted it. He was barely 17 and he had came secretly after nightfall and tussled with it until every muscle in his body ached but he had lifted it just an

inch no more and little by little he had raised it higher until he began to be spoken of with respect by the young men and old who came there on Sundays during the trials of strength. Then he recalled the great triumph of his life and his bleary eyes filled with tears so that he could not see the stone at which he peered but he saw it in his mind vividly in the grey dawn slippery with dew. There had been a wedding in the village. The youths of the district were gathered, numbering among them many men who were famous for their strength and beauty. All night they made merry, and then when daylight was streaming through the open door of the crowded house, somebody challenged them in a loud voice to put their boasting to the test and to go over to the shore and see who would lift the granite stone highest on his body.

Shouting and laughing they set forth, followed by many women. And there they stripped themselves and rubbed their muscles and seized upon the stone. But he alone, of all those strong men, raised it to his throat and kissed it with his lips three times before he dropped it between his widespread legs on its bed of powdered stones. And the shout that was raised that day, before sunrise, by the people of his village, now rang as loudly in his ears as if it still floated in the air. Mumbling, he left the beach and throwing away his stick, he went stooping to the stone. He staggered heavily without his stick but he was unaware of what he was doing. His eyes were fixed and they gleamed with the light of

madness. He reached the stone, steadied himself and stood erect, looking down upon it. Then he raised his hands to his mouth, spat into his palms and rubbed them together. He blew out a great breath and shook himself. Then he began to scratch the ground with his feet, getting a foothold. He set his legs wide apart, slightly bending forward at the knees. His body was trembling violently, but he did not notice it. Then he stooped over the stone. First he placed his hands upon it and then paused, breathing slowly. His breath whistled with asthma and it came out irregularly, in gulps.

Then he began to move his palms over the stone slowly seeking a grip. Its surface was so round that it was impossible to get a grip anywhere except by encircling its bulk with the arms. So he bent lower and reached down with his hands but his body had become so shrunken with old age that his arms could not cover sufficient of its bulk to enable him to get a grip and he twisted about growling and pawing at it enraged at the impotence of his arms his knees bent more and more he began to groan then he knelt before it and stooped until he was touching it with his chest he spread out his arms all over it. His hands touched the ground. Then he could at last grip the stone. He pressed and became still. The effort had exhausted his

lungs. His tongue was sticking out. He panted for breath. His eyes became covered with a glaze. Then he began to feel the stone against his body. It had become hot under the blazing sun. It had an exciting, maddening effect on him. A big red blotch came before his eyes. His body stiffened and a lump, like a knot, came into his throat. His blood rushed to his head. The veins on his forehead became big. He sucked in his lips, groaned, drew in a great breath with a rattling sound and heaved at the stone. It remained absolutely motionless. He fell over it loosely with his arms thrown out limply. His chin struck the stone. His back shivered. Then he stiffened, shook violently from head to foot and rolled off the stone falling on his left side.

His legs shot out. He tried to raise his head but it dropped back over his left shoulder and remained that way. His face staring at the sky. His lower jaw dropped. A little yellow wisp of moisture oozed out of his lip. For a few moments his body shuddered and then he became terribly still,

with his eyes wide open and his lower jaw hanging. Flies began to buzz about him. Presently, one settled on the yellow stream that was oozing from his mouth. Another came and the two flies quarreled about his mouth, buzzing violently. He lay thus for a long time, motionless. There was dead silence except for the buzzing of the flies. Then human voices broke the stillness. People appeared, coming from the village, calling and shielding their eyes, as they looked about, searching. They entered the craggy field where he lay and came on without seeing him until they were within 10 yards of his body. Then they shouted and came running to him. When they stooped over him the two men took off their caps and crossed themselves and the women uttered a loud

wail. The old man was dead. A middle-aged man with grey hair who was kneeling beside the corpse said in a loud voice, we couldn't keep him indoors this last week. He kept stealing out, see? Trying to lift that stone he was, it broke his heart. He was the dead man's son. The other man, a neighbour, said reverently, there was a day then when he could lift it high, praise be God. There's nothing in all creation that isn't more lasting than man. They raised the corpse and carried it away on their clasped hands. A woman spat upon the stone and crossed herself. It's the devil of pride, she said, that brought sin first into the world.

Then they went away, talking loudly and lamenting. Later, when evening came, people came to look at the stone out of curiosity, to see where the old man had died. And they talked of his youth, and of his strength, and of the wedding night, when he kissed the stone three times, holding it level with his throat and then

youths who were there challenged one another to a test of strength. They stripped themselves and began to tussle with the stone. So that story is that's The Stone by Liam O'Flaherty written in 1937 and when I first read that.

I was just fucking bowled away at the beauty of it. Because it's. That's the minimalism of O'Flaherty's writing. It's just about a story. It's just a man. And a large stone. On a beach. And it's an elderly man.

Who's. Alzheimer's or whatever and he's looking at this stone that he used to be able to lift up when he was a young fella and the story contains everything life and death and the uncaring chaos of nature and it's one of my favorite short stories the thing is when i initially read that story i I just assumed it was a mad idea that Liam O'Flaherty had that there would just happen to be this old man on this one beach and this one stone and this is a thing that people did in that community or maybe it never happened and O'Flaherty made it up just to make a good story that's how I felt about it and only very recently did I find out that lifting heavy stones as a trial of strength is actually an Irish tradition that goes back possibly thousands of years and a tradition

that's completely lost on this island it's not practiced anymore at all stone lifting is practiced in iceland parts of scotland but in ireland it's it's dead and gone so the guest who i'm going to speak to today is a fella called david keown who he's an ireland kettlebell champion so he used to lift kettlebells and over the pandemic he became interested in this ancient Irish tradition of lifting stones and what David Keown is doing is that he's using

old folklore stories mainly from that website duchas.ie d-u-c-h-a-s dot i-e he's going into the Irish National Archive of Folklore for evidence of Irish lifting stones

in communities that are completely forgotten about and then he's going and finding them and lifting them and this guest literally found the actual stone that is in that story I just read out

Liam O'Flaher is in that story. I just read out. Liam O'Flaherty. Wrote that story. Not just about a practice. That would happen. In the Aran Islands. Or the west coast of Ireland. He wrote about an actual. Literal stone.

And my guest. Found it this year. He's an incredibly fascinating. And passionate person. And. I'm going to interview him now. After the ocarina pause. Because I don't want to interrupt it.

Because we had such a cracking chat. So let's have the ocarina pause now. Before I get into the interview with David Keown. About lifting stones. I've got my Puerto Rican guero. I'm going to play this. Sometimes people are wondering. Why do I have an ocarina or an instrument.

Every time an advert comes on because sometimes the adverts are at a very different volume to my podcast and I don't have control over that so I don't want ye to be nice and relaxed there listening to me reading a short story and then all of a sudden there's a loud advert for tyres so I'm going to play an instrument in this case a Puerto Rican guiro, so that you have a pre-warning if a big loud advert comes on and someone with a Dublin Four voice. Here we go. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever?

Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help

CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th, when the Toronto Rock

hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rock city at torontorock.com beautiful instrument thank you to that person in the bronx who sent me that puerto rican guero support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. If this podcast brings you entertainment, distraction, joy, solace, whatever, whatever reason it is that you listen to this podcast,

please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing because this podcast is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. This is how I rent out my office. It's how I feed myself. It's how I pay my bills. I adore this work, but it is only possible because the podcast is listener funded. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen to the podcast for free because someone else is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast, I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful arrangement based on kindness and soundness. Patreon.com forward slash The Blind Boy Podcast. I have a new book of short stories coming out in November.

If you'd like to pre-order that book anywhere around the world, go to my Instagram, Blind Boy Book Club on Instagram and I have my pinned stories at the top of my profile contains links where you can pre-order my brand new book Topographia Hibernica which I'm very proud of and can't wait to show you right let's plug some gigs let's plug some gigs on August the 26th I'm in the Cork Opera House for the Cork Podcast Festival. That's going to be unbelievable, Crack. Check out the Cork Podcast Festival in general, not just my gig.

Corkpodcastfestival.ie You've loads of acts doing live podcasts all over Cork. You've myself. Fucking the two Norries. I'm Grandmam. The Creep Dive, Crittershed Collie Ennis with his Crittershed there's loads

Cork Cork Podcast Cork Podcast Festival.ie, that's hard to pronounce, then on the 28th I'm up in Vicar Street in Dublin, it's gonna be unbelievable crack that's a Monday, Monday night gigs in Vicar Street ladsth I'm up in Vicar Street in Dublin it's going to be unbelievable crack that's a Monday, Monday night gigs

in Vicar Street lads I'm telling you I'm telling you you're thinking going to a gig on a Monday night I don't want to do that, yes you do when it's my podcast because it's going to be a nice relaxing engaging enema enema

the fuck did I say that for i meant to say it's like going to the cinema but i just said it's like an enema come up to dublin we'll all have an enema on a monday night the point i'm trying to make is come Come to my gig in Vicar Street. The live podcast. On. The 28th of August. Which is a Monday night. Because.

It's a relaxing evening. It's like going to the cinema. Or going to the theatre. You can come to my gig. Right. You won't be having any fucking pints. Because it's a Monday night. You'll have an engaging evening. Then you're off to fucking bed

and up in time the next morning for work no hassle there's no fear of getting rat arsed is what I'm trying to say usually with a Monday night gig you're like ah fuck I wouldn't mind having a few pints but I can't do that on a Monday I don't want you to have pints at my gig I don't want because you'll ruin it we've heard what happened. Do you remember that gig over in Canada there with the fella singing horse outside? I don't want that at my gigs. Right, what else have we got? Dun Laoghaire on the 9th of September

in the Pavilion. Alright, that's going to be great, crack. Good old Dun Laoghaire. Good old Dun Laoghaire. And then... I'm doing the Patrick Cavanaugh Festival, am I? Am I doing that? Where's that? And then. I'm doing the Patrick Cavanagh Festival. Am I? Am I doing that?

Where's that? Monaghan. I'm looking forward to that. Oh. I have a good fucking guest for that. I have a cracker. I don't know when I tell you yet. I have a beautiful guest.

For. So I'm at the Patrick Cavanagh weekend. In Monaghan. On the 30th of September. And's a Saturday that's going to be great and I have a cracking guest and then Belfast on the oh I can't read numbers lads I'm so sorry

18 11 23 which means it's the it's the 11th is the the 18th of November 23 I'm'm in belfast at the waterfront that'll be good crack too i can't read numbers so i need to ask my my fucking agent to just go when i'm doing a gig just write it down in letters i don't need to be reading dates because i can't fucking do that so just write it down in letters november the 18th you're gigging in belfast just write it down for me don't be asking me to fucking it says 18 11 23 so i have to i have to work that out like it's maths

all right look i have a cracker of a guess for you. His name is David Kuhn. And the work that he's doing is... He's the only person doing it. So he's the only person doing this work. He's been doing it for the past year. And he's unearthing traditions and history on this island. That could be thousands of years old that have disappeared and i'm talking about the tradition of lifting stones big heavy monolithic stones that exist in in villages up and down ireland where the people used to lift them as a test of

their strength and this was a big deal. And my guest is finding these fucking stones and lifting them himself. And he's using folklore resources like the Ducas.ie, the National Archive of Folklore. He's using these archives to find the stones and then speaking to local people. In particular, quite elderly people who have information that's going to die with them so he can find these fucking stones. He's not funded. He's not a professional. He's someone who's doing this purely driven by passion. I was trying to get him to set up a Patreon for himself, but I would like you to follow him on Instagram. On Instagram, he is indiana stones and i'm gonna link his poll or his page

on my instagram when i post this episode so here's the the wonderful enjoyable chat that i had with the incredibly fascinating and passionate david kyon about lifting stones all right so david kyon thank you so much for coming on to the blind Boy podcast. So my listeners, my listeners, first of all, are from all around the world. And they won't have a clue. What I've done before I'm chatting to you here is I read Liam O'Flaherty's story, The Stunt. Oh, what a story. Which is incredible. And I read that to people and they're going to hear that before they listen to your interview but i mean if i can synopsize what you're doing and you can

correct me if i'm wrong you're somebody who had an interest in fitness exactly and you started finding out about this irish tradition of lifting heavy stones, which is something I hadn't a fucking clue about. Yeah. And now you're actually trying to find these stones. Like, when I read that Liam O'Flaherty story, and I only read it this year, I just thought, wow, this sounds like it's on Mars.

I just thought this is an isolated story about some mad old man who has a relationship with a stone. That's what I believed. Yes. Then someone pointed me in the direction of your work. And then I went, oh my God,

this is not an isolated story. This is a tradition of stone lifting in Ireland. And then I find out it's happening in Iceland, it's happening in Scotland, they have it in Japan, parts of Europe. And we've forgotten our history of lifting heavy stones. That's exactly what happened. So how do you...

You tell me what you do. Okay, so I've been researching through the the Ducas archives and I was. At Ducas, that's our folklore collection. Exactly. So you go to Ducas, you go to the National Folklore Collection and try and search for evidence of a stone. That's exactly it. Well, I was kind of, my inspiration came from Scotland, you know. There was Rogue Fitness made this documentary about

maybe eight years ago now, oh shit it was fantastic called Stone Land. And it was all about traditional lifting stones in Scotland and it just blew me away that there was, these stones were not just like lifting stones, they had cultural value, you know what I mean? They had cultural value. They were like a rite of

passage from like a boyhood to manhood or to become a warrior you had to be strong enough to lift this stone so it was the history of these zones that just grabbed me like so what we're talking about is is a village or a townland in in parts of scotland or in parts of iceland there tends to be a very large stone that has been there for a long time hundreds of years and the local people usually men i'm assuming but i don't know it's seen as a rite of passage for someone to be able to lift this stone that's exactly it as liam o'flaherty says in his story which is a beautiful description is if a man

could lift it to his shins fair play to you if he he could lift it to his chest, amazing. But if he could hold it up high above his head, he was a legend. A legend for all time and to be spoken about with honour for his life and for lifetimes afterwards, you know. So it was just this whole, you got this whole massive social status. You gained a lot of social clout

by being able to lift this testing stone of the village, you know. The ones in Scotland tend to be like, they tend to be like, like I said, the rites of passage. So they are a little bit lighter, you know, they're like, say, around between 100 to like 120 to 130 kilos for these rites of passage stones. Then they have like big, large feats of strength stones on the islands that we used. Now that's pretty fucking heavy.

It's still heavy. I mean, there's some fucking difference in lifting a stone of 110 kilos and lifting a barbell of 110 kilos. A barbell is made to be lifted. It's got knurling. It's meant to be lifted. Like a stone is quite happy where it is. You know, it doesn't want to be lifted and has its own center of gravity.

It's awkward. The grip becomes a thing. You're usually lifting it on sand or on grass or in mud, you know. So it's a real feat of strength. You know, everybody in the world knows a stone is heavy. It's hard to pick it up, you know, so it's a real feat of strength. You know, everybody in the world knows a stone is heavy, it's hard to pick it up, like, you know. So you as well, you're into kettlebells, aren't you? That's right, I was for many

years. I got to represent my country, which was just an absolute... Fuck off! Honest to Christ, yeah. So you were serious, serious kettlebells. Yeah, like kettlebell sport, which is like this mad Russian endurance weightlifting sport that I somehow fell into back in 2012. How do you win a kettlebell competition?

So what you're doing is you're cleaning and jerking two kettlebells, like one in each arm, to rack position, which is like to your waist, and then you're bumping them up overhead. And you're doing that as many times as you possibly can in 10 minutes without putting them down. So it's a real strength endurance sport. It's a real grid sport, just as a real great sport you

know so just a quick question about kettlebells because like i've used them but just i've seen them at the gym and picked them up if you know what i mean i don't know what i'm doing and when i use kettlebells like i'm picking up we'll say 30 kg yeah but i also i know how to pick up a 30 kg dumbbell yes when i pick up the kettlebell i'm like be careful here you don't knock yourself out because with a dumbbell i have control and there's a predictability but with a kettlebell if my wrist and my hands aren't strong enough this thing starts swinging in all directions and it can get dangerous or it could even throw me onto the ground the question is do you find a similarity between kettlebell negotiation and lifting these stones?

That's a really good question. And I'd never thought of that before, but yeah, I really do find a similarity between both because like you said, you have to negotiate with a kettlebell. Yeah. It has its own path it wants to travel in. You have to move around that almost like a balletic dance around the bell. And the stone has its own center of gravity that it wants to be lifted in. And you have to negotiate that that as well so i suppose it's more of a thinking person's lift than just like you know just grab something heavy and pick it up there's a lot of forethought goes into it a lot of feeling out what to do and especially with the stone lifting and what i find fascinating about that as well david is my so my experience of stones is mainly through art right you know i

like i go to the gym and i enjoy the gym but i'm not really that serious about it but i love art yes same as and i've always studied take someone like um your man michelangelo he he was uh he was a sculptor and he worked with stone and he worked with marble and all was the best sculptures with stone what made stone very different to painting we'll say is the stone decides how it's going to be made the artist has to work with the grain of that stone and if the artist doesn't work with that particular stone they can't make the piece of art to the point that some artists felt that the sculpture was already there in the stone. The artist's job was just to find it.

To see it and to bring it out. Whereas with a canvas, you do what you like. And I find it so fascinating there that stone is like, no, this is going to have to be on my terms, buddy. Exactly. It has to be. It has its own way it wants to be lifted. And there's no other way. There's only one way to do it so like i said there's a lot of feeling out and moving the stone around and finding different planes of movement and centers of gravity you know and then just getting the grip on it but yeah it's it's such a fantastic feat of strength and it just looks so cool as well you know what i mean yeah it looks great i mean it's it's it's such a fun way to train and i mean when you're

doing it you're pretty much getting a deadlift, a row and a front squat in one when you're lifting those things up to your chest, you know. So it's pretty much a good full body workout as well, you know. What I found mad when I was doing my research is like the stones in Iceland and in Scotland, some of these stones have their own Wikipedia pages. That's right.

They're very famous. Very, very famous. Very famous. Those ones in Iceland. I mean, like the Húsavál stone stone is used in the World's Strongest Man. You know? And you mentioned there about... So what makes a stone legendary isn't necessarily just how heavy it is.

It can be the shape of it. Yes. But also... The story. But what about, like, you said that even the ground under the stone. So you could have one stone, I'm guessing, that's on a on a beach. And because it's a beach, it might be easier. But if this stone is down in the middle of a muddy bog, you could be fucked. Exactly. And it mightn't even be that heavy.

like there's one I found over on the island of Inis Torc which I never even knew about up to six months ago an island, like a tiny island with only like 52 people living on it like off the coast of Colobay or Mayo, I can't remember which one it's off now but there was a stone up at the men used to lift it at the local place, the drinking water

lock on the island and like it was in, like you said, it was in a fucking muddy bog, like it was in a bog, you know there was a large stone underneath this stone to stop you from kind of sinking into the bog as you were lifting it. And the valid lift was just to break the ground with it. And the stone weighs like 207 kilos, which is absolutely insane weight. You know what I mean? Absolutely amazing.

I mean, when you put it into context, like the Husserfell Stone is 187 and they use it in the world's strongest man competitions. And this stone is 20 fucking kilos heavier. like the Husserfell Stone is 187 and they use it in the world's strongest man competitions. You know? And this stone is 20 fucking kilos heavier. And these mad lads on Inis Turk are picking this thing up off the ground, you know? Just to show you how strong those people were back in the day. And they gave me the names of the men who, and I met the son of the man who lifted it and stuff.

So the people had this as local knowledge. The people in Inis Turk had local knowledge. They're all local knowledge. That's what I find fascinating. Everybody, when you get to the place, there's always somebody who knows about it. You know, it's this oral history that we've always had. And they've passed down word of mouth, you know,

and whether I got it in Ducas or whether I'm meeting people like local folklorists or archaeologists or historians, there's always somebody who knows about it, you know, but it's just literally that local area, know about it, and that's it. So what I've been doing is going to these places and just saying these stories are absolutely incredible, the stones are beautiful

let's celebrate them, let's celebrate this kind of lost part of our strength culture that was gone, was in about two generations from being lost altogether because these people are getting older, they're passing away and we need to protect this kind of stuff because it's just fascinating you know

Here's a question so this is just my theory it's just fascinating, you know? Here's a question. So this is just my theory. Now, this is, I know, fuck all. It's just a little, I have an interest in history. Like, okay, they managed to hang on to it in Scotland. They managed to hang on to it in Iceland. And then in Ireland, it's like, this is actually gone, lads.

And you are someone who's trying to find this old tradition. I'm assuming, like, if we go back 400 years 300 years however long these stones have been lifted if you have a community who are going to lift a stone that sounds to me like a community who are happy and well-fed yes happy and well-fed otherwise a stone isn't very high up on the agenda exactly lifting the stone is something you do when your other needs are met and i can't help but wonder did the fucking famine fuck all this up i think you're 100 right because i've been talking to all these local people and it seems to be that 1840 to 1850 was the cutoff point everything stopped after that you know i'm not lifting anything if I haven't it in a week.

Exactly. You can barely lift yourself up off the ground, not to mention pick something up heavy. So that whole culture died off between emigration and whatever. I think you hit the nail on the head with that one, definitely. I think that's the reason it stopped, you know? And then because of the emigration and because of, you know, the civil war and like, you know, fight for independence and all that,

this all just got lost and people who knew about it maybe emigrated or moved to the cities and forgot about it, you know fight for independence and all that this all just got lost and people who knew about it maybe emigrated or moved to the cities and forgot about it you know so it was lost through probably no fault of our own really and it's just wonderful to be part of the renewal and the resurgence and like the the reimagining of this you know it's just incredible and the story that i'm speaking about as well the liam of flaherty story you found that fucking stone bananas i mean you found the stone i found this stone of the story the stone you know tell us about the stone tell us about liam of flaherty's actual stone i can't believe the cunt wrote about a real stone i can't believe it either because it was the very first

one i was trying to find how did that happen did you how did you come across liam of flaherty's story and then decide I'm finding that? So, like I said, I watched all his documentaries in Scotland. Then I went to Scotland and lifted about 16 stones over there. There was one of the stones called the Fianna stone. So, like, the Fianna warriors, part of their test to become a Fianna warrior was

to lift this fucking stone in Glen Lyon in Scotland. Do you mean Fianna like the Fianna, like Fionn MacCool's? I mean like Fionn MacCool and the Fianna. Wow! Fionn MacCool, the Scottish version. So, like, the Fianna like the Fianna like Fionn MacCool's? I mean like Fionn MacCool and the Fianna. Wow. Fionn MacCool, the Scottish version. So like the Fianna stone is still there. You can go to that field in Glenline and pick up that stone

and see who's as strong as a Fianna warrior. That could be thousands of years of lifting. It is thousands of years of lifting. Oh my fucking God, are you serious? I fucking am. I mean, that's what started my journey. Oh, that is unbelievable. There's a fucking stone

that Fionn MacCool might have lifted up exactly I mean it's like saying to a lad in Norbury like Tar's hammer sitting out in the field in Trondheim

go fucking give it a go it's amazing so I mean when I saw that and I picked that stone up and it was probably one of the most amazing things

things I've ever kind of had done you know it was just it was incredible and a friend of mine is an artist he's a sculptor and he made me

a sculpture of it he said that was just one really cool cultural moment you know friend of mine is long, he's an artist, he's a sculptor, and he made me a sculpture of it. He said, that was just one really cool cultural moment, you know? So then I was like, right, there's stones in Scotland, there's stones in Iceland, we're in the middle and the island is bare. There's no stones or heritage of stone lifting here that's written anyway. So I'm going to start looking. So what you do- So did you get a suspicion? Oh, I got it. I got it. I was like, no, there has to be, it'd be actually more unusual if there wasn't stone lifting here because we're in that area.

So I looked up, what do you do? You go onto Google. I typed in lifting stones in Ireland and I got Dr. Conor Heffernan, who's a professor up in Ulster University. And he's a huge history for Irish stone lifting and strength culture. So he was saying that there's a story by Limo Flaherty called The Stone, which I'd never heard of it, but he had all these snippets of it on a piece he wrote online.

So I read, like, doing a piece, it was a round block of granite and it sparkled as the sunshine shone upon a particle of mica in its surface. The sparkling and the mica. What a line.

I read that and I'm like, what type of stone is this? Exactly. So it's like mica, I was thinking, okay, that's probably granite, you know? So it was like,

it's a granite stone. So you're thinking about geology now as well. Yeah, exactly. You're thinking, if this stone is sparkling, that's probably granite, you know? So it was like, it's a granite stone. So you're thinking about geology now as well. Yeah, exactly. You're thinking if this stone is sparkling, that's probably granite. And then you're thinking, where is the granite? It's probably then a glacial erratic because where's the granite?

So I was like, right, what I'm going to do is I'm going to see, can I go over to Inishmore to find this? But before that, I was looking through, there's a guy called Peter Martin who brought back the resurgence of Scottish stone pretty much single-handedly about 12 years ago. He went on a journey of his own and re-found

pretty much the whole culture in Scotland himself. He found 30 stones and he wrote in his 13th chapter in his book, which is available to read online, he said there's a stone called the Inishmore Stone. And for people who don't know, Inishmore, these are the Aran Islands, so these are islands that are off the coast of Galway on the west coast of Ireland. There's people who don't know, Inishmore, these are the Aran Islands. So these are islands that are off the coast of Galway

on the west coast of Ireland. There's a woman living on the island called Fiona. God bless her, whoever she is. And Fiona said, hi, there's a boulder on a rough pathway

down towards Port Vale and Doon in Curtin-a-Cople. The locals used to lift it and it's the boulder Limo Flattery rode about and I'm pretty sure it's still there. You know what I mean?

What's the feeling you get when you, like, because you're very passionate about what you do and and what's the i mean you're doing something very important there you're really finding something that's been forgotten about and lost except for these few people left on on innishmore exactly i mean my mind was blown i mean because like the story is is incredible you know and i was like i can't believe that this thing could be a reality so like i'll over and have a look, you know. So myself and my two mates went over in a camper van, parked up, got onto the ferry on probably the worst day in Irish fucking history, going over to the Aran Islands, lashing rain, waves. We cycled in the 25 minutes to this place called Port Vale on Doon, which is a village kind of just on the east side of the island.

And we get to this rough boulder stream pathway right now. Anyone hasn't been to the aran islands aran islands is just stone it's just rock the ground is scraped clean it's glacial karis landscape it's fucking just it's just rocks there's boulders everywhere so you're looking for a rock in it in an island full of rocks exactly for a needle in a needle stack but i had this little piece with me and i said you know about the mica i'm thinking that's probably granite so i'm walking down where she said it for a needle in a needle stack. But I had this little piece with me and I said, you know, about the mica, and I was thinking, that's probably granite.

So I'm walking down where she said it might be down this, and I have the video, because I can actually still fucking see it in my head doing it. I was walking down

and in a little patch of grass, which are at a premium on the Aranoyans, because it's fuck all grass, in this little patch of grass with blue stones all around it was this large, rose pink,

granite boulder. All the other rocks are grey. It's pink. It's pink. It's fucking rose pink granite boulder all the other rocks are gray it's pink it's fucking rose pink it's a glacial erratic and it's it's sitting there the one rose pink stone in a field of gray why is it the only pink stone did humans put it there or is that just a fluke of nature it could be just a fluke because i mean on other parts of the island we were passing you see like pink granite boulders as well you know but in this particular place this was the only one so it's like I was saying to myself that has to be it you know I didn't know then that was it but it was like do you know we can almost feel the fucking energy off of something I was like yeah this is it there's

no two fucking ways about it so I tried a couple of lifts on it and it's massive I kind of broke the ground with it barely like an envelope's width the first time. And I came back about a month later with a friend of mine from Scotland called Jamie Garian, who's lifted all the Scottish lifting stones. He'd been all over the world. He was like, I can't believe that story's true. He said, I'm coming over to lift that stone.

So we go back. Of course. We go lift the stone. He gets an incredible lift up to his chest, which was probably the first time that's done in maybe 150 years, you know, which is incredible to see it. I got a better lift on it this time.

And there was a man giving a walk into it, an old man giving a walk into it, an old man, giving a walk into it with a couple of yanks. And he was like, I went over and said, excuse me, he said, look, I'm sorry to interrupt. Do you know anything about that lifting stone down there? Oh, sure, he said, yeah, the Mouline Port Vale on Dune, he said. I said, what? He said, yeah, the name.

The name is called the Mouline. So it's the Mouline Port Vale on Dune. What does that mean? I don't know. Port Vale on Dune is the actual area. So that means the mouth of the fort and the fort is Dune. What does that mean? I don't know. Port Vale and Dune is the actual area. So that means the mouth of the fort and the fort is Dune Angus. You know? And what's Moline?

I don't know what Moline means. I don't know what that means yet. I'm sure someone will tell me. I'm going to ask Mankon, Maggie. It's M-O-U-I-L-I-F-O-D-A-N. Moline. So it's the Moline Port Vale and Dune

and he said, yeah, that's the lifting stone down there in the patch of grass, he said. So then I got the verification from an islander and that was their very first lifting stone in Ireland and that's the Limo said so then I got the verification from an islander and that was their very first lifting stone

in Ireland found and that's the Limo Flaherty stone and it was just such an amazing find that's fucking astounding it's so beautiful that that's the

first stone that you because that's the like that's so beautiful to find Limo Flaherty stone and for that to be the first one

that you find because it's that's the stone stone and for that to be the first one that you find because it's that's the stone that was written and that was the first one exactly that was the last one the last time probably

a lifting stone was written about maybe back in the 1920s you know and one thing I can't help but notice as you speak about the stones you also have a a knowledge of geology

you're going into the science of geology how important is understanding geology to the work that you're you're going into the science of geology how important is understanding geology to the work that you're doing i suppose it's it's pretty important it is you know i mean i wouldn't have any background in geology i just like i don't have pretty much a background in anything like this you know folklore or anything like that but it's just a passion project you know what i mean it's just something i like because i started doing it because i started getting into it i started looking up the geology of the areas, what stones are prevalent in that area and why is that stone there and why was that stone lifted?

So it is important, you know, I mean, obviously the men lifted that stone because it stood out, you know, it stood out. That's the reason they lifted it, you know? I mean, that's immediately what I think is like, when I'm thinking about this culture too, I'm also thinking about a culture of boredom. Yeah. Like, they didn't have iphones you didn't have anything they had fuck all do you remember when you're a kid you remember being a kid and one of your friends finds a used condom or a dead rat do you know what i mean do you know the way your entire friends group is like i heard there's a there's a condom in that car park and

everyone has to go that's a kick on it. Or a dead rat and everyone revisits it each day to see how it's decomposing. Like that was being a child but back then when you didn't have TV, radio nothing and you're on an island if there's a fucking pink stone everyone wants to find out about this pink stone and then someone says

I bet you can't lift it. That's exactly it and like what I came across with all this as well, there was on theays there was something called the trials of strength which again is something that's been lost but before or after mass on sundays and this is cropping up at all of these stones and i'm about to find in 24 now in ireland which is just absolutely unbelievable in 12 months but um what i'm finding is that it was the trials of strength happen on the sundays so like like that's it you get leisure time because during the week you're probably working off a week

and on the Sunday then you'd go down and the lads would have a few bits. You know, maybe they'd come in off the corks. The one, the limo flarity one

is down by like, it's down by an old kind of wharf, you know. So they'd probably come in from the corks and they'd have a bit of banter and they'd say, look,

who can lift that? And probably the bits would go down. They might have a fine feed on a Sunday too. They might be well fed on a Sunday. That's another good point. Exactly.

I hadn't thought of that, you know, so they're probably feeling a bit fitter and they're a bit more relaxed and so they go down and they try their arm at this, like, you know,

but it's said in the story, like from time immemorial, you know, I mean, time immemorial is just, and when you go into the Aran Islands, you really feel what time immemorial means, you know,

I'm looking up at that fucking fort, the Dunengis is right above this stone, you know. It's like, could it be connected to that? And that thing is like, what, 4,000, 5,000 years old? Oh my God almighty. You know. So it's like, you just don't know how far back it goes.

It could go back thousands and thousands of years, you know. And here's another question I have, and this is another thing that I'm very curious about with these stones. Like, we have forts in this country that are, like, let's just take Newgrange. Yes. Newgrange is older than the pyramids. Yeah.

Someone had to lift those fucking stones. The reason it's still here is because it's made out of stones and stones don't disappear. So somebody had to lift those stones to put it together. And I'd love to know, is the, like like i found i i was doing a bit of reading and in iceland yes the stones had a purpose if if you could lift this stone you were strong enough to be a fisherman exactly they had allowed on a boat and you could then collect big loads of fish exactly is there some connection do think, with our stone walls,

our stone forts? A hundred percent. I can't wait to tell you this one. There's a stone on Inish Man called the Cluck, what's this? Tashdán le Sér Clíche, which means

the stone masons test. Wow. To become a stone mason on Inish Man, you have to be able to lift this stone up onto a wall. And if you're strong enough to lift this massive, again, granite boulder, the exact same color, the exact same shape as the

one on Inish Moor, pink granite boulder. If you could lift that pink granite boulder up onto a wall, you were strong enough to become a stonemason and then you could go start your trade. But that was the job interview. You know what I mean? That's's astounding and what i find interesting about that too like so we gyms are very popular right now like real popular and a lot of people go to gyms and i adore going to gyms and i'm always very clear with people i go to the gym and lift things not because i want to look a certain way but because it genuinely helps my mental health and gives me a sense of purpose and meaning exactly and sometimes i feel you kind of have to explain to people that when you lift heavy things it's not just to look a certain way for other people there's something it's not just about vanity it's not just about identity and with these stones i have to there's a there's a narcissistic 21st

century part of myself that projects a sense that all these lads were going around the iron islands 300 years ago pure buff and they're lifting these stones to look nice and i have to go no maybe it was something more than that maybe it had to do with a profession, with a job. Maybe there was a reason for this beyond that fella has great shoulders. Yeah, exactly. You know, so that one, like specifically an English man, like being the testing stone, you know, that was very, very important. And I remember I met an old man, I was lifting the stone and it was like something from a hundred years ago. You know, as I was lifting the stone, there's men walking over the fields because the world had gone out that i was doing it and

they're watching and they're coming over and they're leaning over the wall and they're having a chat to you and then they're telling you the stories but their granddad lifted a stone and my great-grand uncle lifted that stone back in the 1920s what does that do to you what does that when you get a bunch of men gathering around going i i heard of someone who lifted this in 1890 and you're in the middle of trying to lift the fucking thing it puts a bit of pressure on you know what what's the deal there like i mean it seems i'm assuming as well you from the sounds of things you sometimes you go to a stone you can't lift it and then you go i'm fucking lifting that someday sometimes i go and i can't lift it lift it but I'm training to go back and I'm

specifically training now to go back to the Aran Islands to lift that stone and honestly I'm going back this Thursday I've been training for six. What's your goal do you want to lift it above your head like in the Liam O'Flaherty story? If I can get that up to my lap and if I can maybe stand up with it I'd be delighted because it's a hundred. So how far did you get with the Liam O'Flaherty stone? The first lift

I got it like I said I barely brought ground. I brought the ground with it, which is a valid lift. They call it getting the wind under it. So that's a valid lift. So that's stage one. Stage two is to get it to your knees. Stage three is to get it, is to stand up with it, maybe at your abdomen. And stage four is to get it to your chest, you know, and kiss it three times like the man did in the the story you know but um i'm hoping to get it a hell of a lot better than i did the last time anyway and i've been like i said specifically training for that for for 14 months so it feels like this whole um validation thing that's going to happen here now you know um here's another question that i have for you right yeah

and this is so in irish mythology and irish, we have a tendency towards exaggeration and hyperbole. Yes. Like if you listen to how someone describes Fionn MacCool or describes Cú Chulainn, who are great heroes of mythology, they'll say something like Cú Chulainn had a slingshot and he could take down a full flock of swans with one throw. Yeah. And it's like he didn't. Yeah, exactly. That's not real.

But do you think there's ever a stone like when i read that liam of laherty story and i'm like someone can pick it up and kiss it part of me was wondering could they really or is that just that irish tradition of there was a man so strong he could lift this big stone over his head and it never happened well at what point does modern science like not only modern science, but like you represented Ireland as a kettlebell lifter. Yes.

So you know the crack with how to lift things, how to do it safely. This is your profession. Do you ever look at a stone and go, that's not going above anyone's head? Well, most of the stones in Ireland never went above the head.

Even the Lima Flaherty one, it went to his neck, he said, or his chest, and he could kiss it three times. Now, my friend Jamie Garnian from Scotland did exactly that last year. You know, so it's definitely doable. You know what I mean? It's definitely doable. And I feel like I do that myself. There's lads around the world now who, they're going around.

Okay, so you've seen another person do it, so therefore it can be done. Exactly. You know, now look, we're Irish. You never let the truth get in the way of therefore it can be done exactly you know now look we're Irish we never let the truth get in the way of a good story like you know that's who we are

as a nation exactly but I mean I have gone to places like the one I found in Ducas up in Clonfad where they said

the stone weighed 42 stone weight which I think works out at about 240 kilos so let's work through the process of that right yeah

because you just mentioned there so you go on to Ducas which is the Irish I did a podcast on this about three weeks ago but it's the irish folklore collection where in the 1930s every school children and every school child in ireland yeah had to go to the old people in their village and say tell me a story about something about this area and it was recorded and this is our national folklore collection so from from the start, you're just after finding a stone,

as you mentioned there. How do you begin on Ducas to read something and go, I'm going to find this thing? Right, so I start... To even know if it's bloody there. So what you do is, if you just go into Ducas and type in stone,

you get 12,017 pages on Ducas. That'll just go to show you how important stones are. Wow. You know, that's 12,000 pages and it's probably eight to 10 stories on each page, you know? So anything around 100,000 stories about stones. So I mean, that could be just like a American stone

or like a milestone or a stone bridge or like a giant throwing stone to so many of them, you know, Fionn MacCool fucked this big massive stone off a mountaintop and it's a glacial erratic that's sitting in a field. Even the Rock of Cashel, like the Rock of Cashel, which is not a stone, it's a glacial erratic that's sitting in the field even the rock of cashel like the rock of cashel which is not a stone it's fucking giant but even i know the story about the rock of cashel is

apparently the devil took a bite out of monster and spat it out and it landed and that's the rock of cashel that's brilliant that's fucking brilliant so look i went on the dukes and i typed in stone and i every 100 stories you might get one about a man who lifted a stone, right? So the story about this one was that in County West Mead there was a man called Paddy Langen of Bloomfield and he was the strongest man in the area. And the story goes that he carried this stone from a neighbouring house to the graveyard.

And his line was, men will count themselves good men if they can carry that stone and repeat that feat. The story said it weighed 42 stone weight and no one could move it since, right? So that was the one in Dukes. So it's like, okay, it said it weighed 42 stone weight and no one could move it since right so that's that was the one in dukes it was like okay it said it's in this general area in in westmeath so you go then i go on to westmeath on the google maps and i type in um old cemeteries sure i mean there could be 30 old cemeteries in in westmeath you know so i kind of say right what's around close to this

area so i think it was a place called i I think it was called Tearconnell. So there was about four around Tearconnell. So I took a guess and I was going to head up on the Saturday, right? On the Wednesday, I guess, out of the fucking blue, I get a phone call from a guy called Warren McGeegan, who's an ex-Patriot living in Canada, but he's back on his holidays meeting his family. He said, Dave, I see what you're doing online.

I think I found the Klon Fadstone of Paddy Langen. I was like, what? I found it, he said. And he sent me on a photograph and he was like, I think that's it. And I was like, how the hell did you find it? Which one of these graveyards is in? I sent him on the forest. He said, none of them. He said, the graveyard is so old, it's not even on Google Maps. So it was just a circle of trees off the side of the road. Where a graveyard once stood. Where a graveyard once stood and there's like a six foot circle of water off the side of the road and a graveyard one stood and there's like a six foot circle of water

and the graves are still in there so I head up to this place forcing on Saturday morning I mean I'm getting up at four or five in the morning I can't sleep the night before I'm so fucking excited right I get up to this place

and you go through like this gap in the hedge and then it's like a secret gate and then you go through the field and you're looking at this ring of trees

that's not even mapped it's so fucking old and you hop over a four stone stile and then you get into the place and it's like stepping back like 300 years, like the graves are there,

they're from the 1600s, 1700s, you know, the church is so ruined, there's only like half a, half a stone wall left and it was a beautiful sunny day and there was these,

There's not even a church there. There's not even a church there now, it's just, it's just, everything's just ruins, you know, but I turned left and it was like something from,

I don't know, from a film, like there was shafts of light coming down through the trees. It was early morning. And this big beam of light had caught this. And the story said that it was an egg shaped stone and the beam of light was just on this fucking egg shaped stone sitting in front of a grave. And I was like, fucking hell, that's the stone. That's it like, you know? And it was like something the fucking start of Indiana Jones or something, you know what I mean?

And I walk over to this thing and it's absolutely massive. Now, they said it was 42 stone weight and there we go back again with a little bit of exaggeration. Like, I said, that's about 230 kilos. But I brought weighing gear

and me self and Warren weighed it and he met me there and it was like 190 kilos, which is still absolutely fucking huge. How do you weigh the stone? It's interesting. You have a little, kind of a hanging crane scale

you know so you wrap the stone in say rope you hang it off the little small little crane scale small little kind of a hanging scale

put a bar through it and kind of deadlift to pick it up between the two of you so you get a hanging weight of it a proper weight of it so we made it

three or four times and it weighed exactly 190 kilos you know so this man this fucking dude Paddy Langen picked this stone up and took it for a stroll,

you know, about 50 yards from the nearest house. Because I was looking at it like, that's probably the house over there. I was like, that's just incredible, you know? That's that story and that's that stone now found. And it's like, because they gave a description of the stone, it was egg-shaped. That was the only stone in the whole place,

massive stone, egg-shaped. I said, that's it, you know? So it's really, it's just been looking up Ducas, finding out the nearest place. Because I mean, sometimes it's in a cemetery, sometimes it's at a crossroads and then driving to the place. And sometimes you get lucky and you find it straight away.

Or sometimes like the one I found up in, one called the Flag of Den, which is just absolutely fucking incredible. Up in County Cavan, I had to hack through an old eight foot fucking weeds cemetery for two and a half hours to find the thing you know but uh it's it's some adventure it's an absolute fucking adventure story so it's been the last five months you know what um so the you're doing this for the laugh you're doing this because you love it right exactly but also what you're doing this for the laugh. You're doing this because you love it, right? Exactly.

But also what you're doing is very important because like we were colonized and part of being colonized is you lose your culture, you lose your language, you lose your traditions. And what you're doing is finding stuff that was taken from us for whatever reason, the famine, whatever. And are you getting support in any way? Are universities getting involved and going, well, David Keown's after finding a stone up here now, what next? Do we write about this? Do we confirm it? Are you getting support in any way? Not particularly.

No, look, I'm getting a lot of help from Conor Heffner up in Ulster University purely because he loves strength history and he loves stone lifting, you know? And he's just been incredible over the past six months, especially, you know? He's like, I mean, like, in fact, I'm talking to you, you know, this is just, it's amazing to me. Like, I work in a shop in Waterford, like, you know, and I'm like, suddenly GQ magazine got onto me there last month and they put me in the American GQ.

Now that's the next month's issue with that. I have to step into an alternate reality or something. I just hope academics are sitting back and going, this is important and this person is doing very important field work. I think some people, like being on the likes of this podcast, and again, I can't thank you enough for having me on, will help. I mean, it'll get the word out there, you know.

And please God, like I said, we will get people like that involved in it. Now I will say Conor is very well respected. He's very well thought of. And I want to let you know, like there's the O'Flaherty Festival on Inishmore. I invited myself and Conor over

this August, the end of August, the 26th and the 27th to do a reading of the story of the stone down by the stone itself. And they get a couple of lifts on it. Brilliant. And Nationwide are coming over doing a piece on it and i've i've um dr paul rouse who'd be ireland's kind of eminent strength historian he got wind of it and he's like um can i come over

and say of course you fucking can that's fantastic connor will do um a reading over there you know or a bit of talk about it and that's going to push it on a bit as well you know and like i said this is something that it is important and like it started off just as an innocent journey you know but along the way it's it's collected this whole kind of cultural meaning and value and to me as well it's kind of connected me more to the land and to who i am as an irish person over the past 12 months more than anything ever else has done in my life you know because the meeting the people the hearing the stories you're you're reaching back into the past and you're grabbing onto these people that were, you know, repressed. And it's just, it's been an adventure and absolutely incredible and an honour to do it. This is what I love about Irish mythology. And this is why I'm so

interested in mythology and folklore is that it's not about some type of nationalistic idea of what Irishness is. It's stories about the land that we call Ireland. And especially, a lot of these come from an oral culture. And what I adore about our oral storytelling is when you don't have, when you can't write, when you don't have a piece of paper or you might not have written language, we told stories about the landscape in such detail that you'd never forget them. Exactly.

You know, so you couldn't just have a river or a pond. The pond had to have a magical fish that could talk. Yeah. You know what I mean? That had all the knowledge of the world. Or you couldn't just have a mountain.

A mountain had to be the breasts of a god. You know what I mean? Exactly. You know, it stood out and it stood out in your mind. You never forget it because of those reasons. Exactly. The other thing is, so we, like, stones are important in Irish mythology in general, not just as lifting stones.

Like, do you ever come across, like, I know there's a type of stone called a balan stone, which is a stone that has a little depression in it. Exactly. And people didn't lift them, but they believed that these stones might have been magical in some way. Do you ever come across other stones? I came across a Balan stone that was also a lifting stone. And what do you know about Balan stones?

There's kind of a general kind of a, no one really knows what they are, you know. I like to believe that they're all pagan or druidic offering bowls you know yeah

I mean they look quite altery they do they look they have that natural depression in the middle where rain tends

to collect in a pool exactly and those those waters then had healing properties you know but I like to think

that they were oh so you'd find them near a holy well you might find them near a spring or a well yeah exactly and this one that I found it was over on the island of I'd like to think that they were. Oh, so you'd find them near a holy well. You might find them near a spring or a well. Yeah, exactly. And this one that I found, it was over on the island of Inisboffin.

Which, I mean, the island of Inisboffin is just a magical place. It actually was a magical enchanted island until two sailors came out and lit a fire on it. Which disenchanted it. I heard there was a stone called Clucknor Aetigig which is called a ram stone

and Johnny Dillon from the National Folklore Collection who I'd done a podcast with him as well and that was fantastic because he's so knowledgeable he's an archivist

up in the National Folklore Collection and he sent me on a story about the ram stone in Inishboffin and it was written in Irish but he translated it for me to English and

it was about that these men went fishing off of Connemara and they got becalmed and they went on to Inishbaffan. They heard there was a lifting stone. So they went over and one of the men lifted the stone. And they went to all these houses then kind of, you know, saying, oh great, you know, what a fantastic feat it was.

And there was an old woman there and she was like. So they went and told everybody afterwards. They went and told people afterwards. It was more kind of boastful because they were, I suppose, they weren't from the island, you know. They're saying, you know, we're strong men and we've done that. But there's the old woman there where she was like whizzing with old age

and she was blind and she said, let the man put his hand forward that lifted that stone. So all the men went over and she said, no, it wasn't you, it wasn't you.

And she knew by the feel of the man's hands that he lifted that stone and she kissed his hand and said, that's the man that lifted the stone today. You know, so.

By the feel of his hands and the calluses and the strength. Exactly. She could feel the hands, you know, so I said, what an and the calluses and the strength exactly she could feel the hands you know so I said what an absolutely beautiful story

and that's also a Ballon stone that's a Ballon so I got in contact with him I friended up like Inish Boffin Facebook group and I started asking questions and you know

you get nothing back I'd ask again the next week then all of a sudden a man called Tommy Bork got in contact with me and Tommy's the last man to lift that stone on the island Tommy would be in his 60s now

so he said Jesus he said come up come up and I'll show you it to lift that stone on the island Tommy being in his 60s now so he said Jesus he said come up come up and I'll show you it's an incredible stone he said in a beautiful place so I go over on the ferry over to Inishboffin

and there's no one on the ferry only me and I get off and there's Tommy Bork a giant man six foot four massive big hands on him

come down he said hop into the car we go down to this place it was an old monastery from the 8th or 9th century and in front of this stone altar, right? So like the lift was, you lifted this fucking ballon stone,

which is a pagan druidic offering board, onto the Catholic altar. And that was the valid lift to the island. Oh, that's fucking amazing. So they're lifting a pagan stone on a Catholic altar. Onto a Catholic altar. And you're standing there, right? And there's only one gable left in this whole,

of this whole church or monastery. And you're looking back through the gable at Cro-Patrick. And I'm like, this is fucking unbelievable. You know what I mean? And the stone itself is huge. It's absolutely massive. It's about 180 kilos.

But there's a hole going the whole way through the middle. So what you do, you kind of have to grab it in the middle and kind of leverage, kind of lean back and lift it up onto the altar. You know, so I managed to do that. And then Tommy,

against doctor's orders, because he's suffering a bit of an illness, he fucking went and done it again. He said, I haven't done that in 35 years. And he's like, I can't believe I done it. And I thought I'd never do it again in my life. And thank you so much for coming over. And I was like, this place is just fucking magic. The stone is a ballon stone which is like a conduit to deities maybe for fucking two thousand years or more lifted onto a catholic altar in a monastery looking at fucking crow patrick well that that tells us so much about the age of the tradition because like what we definitely know is when Ireland became Christian, like people like St. Patrick, Patrick was really, really good at going to the local people and their pagan practices

and then incorporating these pagan practices into Christianity so that there was a compromise between the two and the people didn't feel that their culture was being erased so if if you can identify a pagan balan stone being lifted onto a catholic altar then you can guess that this is at least sixth seventh century and then you go well how long before sixth seventh century were they lifting this stone already exactly and stones don't go anywhere. Like, when we think of fairy forts in Ireland, you know, you have a mound

and it's like, I don't know why this mound is there. It's a mound. Like, chances are the reason the mound is there is at one point

there was a wooden structure and all that's left is the earth. Yes. So wood disappears. Stones don't. That's it. That's why Newgrange

is still there. That's it. And like those, how long is that sitting there? How why newgrange is still there that's it and like those how long is that sitting there how many people have come and gone that's what i find fascinating about this you know how many people have laid hands on this how many no one's gonna rob it no sure you'll be doing fucking well yeah you know there's no one going to take it because there's still a veneration and a respect for them especially the further west you go and what i find fascinating as well is i haven't found a lifting stone past the middle of Ireland going east. Everything is west. I'm very fascinated by the westernness

of all this, yeah. It's all west. You think it's landscape based? It could be landscape based, it could be... And also as well, the stone walls. I mean, the first thing you notice when you go to the west of Ireland is Jesus, there's a lot of stone walls around here and you don't tend to see them in the east. Yes. That's it. Is there a relationship, do you think?

Oh, there is. There is, definitely. There is definitely with that. So the profession of masonry and wall building. It's definitely a part of it, you know. And whether there's more respect for them and maybe there's more kind of Gaeilteacht areas going that direction as well.

And because it's an old Irish tradition, it was kept, because I was talking to a man up by a call, Seán O'Costalva up in County Galloway. And he's like a shanachí and a folklorist and a poet. And he's just an amazing man tradition. It was kept, because I was talking to a man up by a call, Sean O'Koshtalva, up in County Galloway. And he's like a Shanakie and a folklorist and a poet. And he's just an amazing man. And he was saying,

yeah, he said, I think it's the fact that they're in these Irish areas, he was saying, you know, and we still have respect for them. You know, and I went up to lift this stone a couple of weeks ago,

called Cloughdarkene, which is the stone of the cove. And where the men used to come in from collecting seaweed or fishing and used to come in and lift this stone. But even when I went up there, there's a whole load of weeds and kind of flowers all the way along this stone wall.

But where that stone was, it was all chopped away and cleared. So there was still a veneration. That stone was looked after. The place, they didn't let the weeds grow over, you know. It's still there. Maybe not. And I went up and I met the man, the last man who lifted it. And he was well into his 70s, you know. and he was so happy i came up to lift this stone he said look i keep this area

clear he said and keep it clean because i remember lifting the stone how good it felt and the respect i got back in the day and i went up then and again the water got out and people just started even from all over the place you know the women came out came out, the children came out, the dogs came out. There's a man here who could attempt to lift a stone. So I did. I got the wind under it,

which is the valid lift. And they were all delighted. They were like, Mahan far, Mahan bukal. So you got it, you just got it above the ground. Just got it above the ground. It weighs,

he said it weighed about 190 kilos and I wouldn't, I definitely insist around that. It's just to get what's called the kwe fu, to get the wind under it

is the lift, you know? So I got that and they were just so happy that I'd made the journey. Because it's a five and a half hour journey from fucking Waterford to get there, you know? West Galway, I'm fucking right out in the teddy bear's arm, right out on the coast. And they were just so happy that I was showing interest

in their local traditions, you know? Do you ever come across any superstitions about stones, like fairy superstitions or something supernatural where people have a respect for this object, not just because human beings lift it, but a belief around it that it's magical? Definitely. And there's a stone called the Flag of Den.

So it's a flagstone up in Den in County Cabin. What's a flagstone? So a flagstone is like a large kind of a rectangular stone, you know? Okay, like that would go on the top of a tomb. That's exactly it. And it's like, it's about maybe eight to 10 inches deep. And there's a lovely big rectangular shape. But the stories around the stone, I urge anybody, go on to Ducas and type in Den, D-E-N-N, the Ducas.

I'm waiting to see the stories you get about the stone. and type in den, D-E-N-N, the Dukas. I'm waiting to see the stories you get about the stone. There's stories about, like there was a ghost story, but there was a coach was drawn by four horses without heads and he used to travel down to Den Church. There was like a giant was meant to have thrown that stone from Shleved Lake, which is two miles away. Wow.

It used to be a coursing stone. Did you ever hear of the coursing stones? No. So just coursing stones are over Ireland as well. well so a coursing stone was if you lifted a stone a specific stone a specific way you turned anti-clockwise or you flipped it over and you you could lay a course against your neighbors if you if they done something bad to you you could course them by lifting the stone take like fucking voodoo for all the world you know so you could use this so if you had the ability to do this like voodoo so

if you could lift this stone in a certain way you could bring bad luck on people you could bring if you wanted it you could curse somebody here's a question here's something that i'm fascinated about this is often you find with indigenous folklore and knowledge when you investigate it it tends to have real world applications and what i'd love to know there is like human beings are human beings yes and you know if i went and tried to lift one of these stones i i could really damage myself like bruce lee ended up in in hospital for two years because he went at a barbell the wrong way yeah yeah like i could really fuck myself up if i tried to lift one of these stones with zero knowledge whatsoever

like what i'm asking is is what did people know about that back then i think it's a hard question to answer you know um i'm not sure like there's a way that you lift and you know how to lift with safety do you know what as what I was thinking because this has come up a couple of times and people asking me something similar to that. And what I was thinking was these people were so fucking strong because all they did all day was work. You're thinking like a stonemason, a farmer, a fisherman. There was no such thing as machinery.

You're out in the fields. You're out in the sea pulling robots. You're building walls. You're cutting hay. You're feeding animals. You're working all day. You're probably as the fields. You're out in the sea pulling robots. You're building walls. You're cutting hay. You're feeding animals. You're working all day. You're probably as strong as fuck. You know what I mean?

And it's an all-body workout too. It's a full-body workout all day long. So they're squatting, deadlifting, they're doing everything. Exactly. They're picking big stones out of fields. They know how to lift. They probably know better than we know how to lift because they're doing it all day, every day.

Because one of the things I, and this is an interesting thing I found out about the human body was, like I said, I go to the gym, but I'm not very good at it. And over the pandemic, when the gyms closed. Yeah, how would you define that? For me, it was bloody awful. Yeah. But one thing happened to me was I'd go to the gym three times a week and then i'd run 10 kilometers three times a week so i'd be exercising six times six times a week yeah when the pandemic started and i could no longer go to the gym and i went about two months without

lifting anything i did myself some serious tendon and nerve injuries from running away and when i went to my physio the physio was like here's what happened you kept doing your 10k run which you were your heart and lungs were fit enough for yes but because you were no longer going to the gym you didn't have stabilizing muscles and then you got seriously injured and the reason was is when i go to the gym injured and the reason was is when i go to the gym i'm i'm like i'm i'm not looking after my entire body i'm not as responsible as i should be i'm not doing full body movements i'm focusing on the chest and the shoulder and maybe a bit of the legs but i'm not doing full body conditioning that kept my body safe and then running fucked me up it's's amazing. And I'd imagine with, what's the word they use?

Is it functional lifting? Functional strength. Functional strength. This is why I was told kettlebells are so good. They are. They're fantastic for it, you know. Kettlebells are good because the movements that you're doing

replicate actual real movements as opposed to just being on a machine and working your shoulders. Yes. If I pick a kettlebell up from the ground, I'm doing a deadlift, I'm doing a squat, my shoulders are engaged, my lower back is engaged. I'm working all the muscles in my body to keep them all healthy rather than just focusing on one and neglecting others. Exactly. Compound movements, they call them.

I mean, you can't beat them. Compound movements, yeah. Compound movements. You can't beat it. I mean, you can't beat it, like I said, for full body functional strength, but just day-to-day strength. And I tell you what, I mean, the fact that I'm out there

doing the kettlebells and lifting those stones and I'm training three days a week and I don't train in a gym anymore. I train at my back garden or I train on the beach. With kettlebells? Mainly with stones,

but also with kettlebells. So you've moved from kettlebells, so you've stones out your back garden now? Oh, stop it. Some fucking cracker. Because lockdown again, like, you know, like you, exact same thing

I went to the gym Monday Wednesday Friday for 10 years lifting kettlebells so then all that got fucking taken away and I was like what am I going to do now

I only had a couple maybe two or three kettlebells at the back but my wife had a lovely stone cavern I met my wife in art college we both went to Crawford she had a beautiful

stone cavern on a plinth out the back so I weighed it on kitchen scales. It weighed 60 kilos. So I started picking up that stone and, you know, chucking it around the back garden for COVID to keep me sane. Wow. So that's how my interest in stone lifting started.

Was this because as well you saw that documentary about the stone lifting? That documentary came afterwards. This was just literally, I needed to pick fucking something up. So you as a bored human being decided the world's gone mad there's a stone on the back exactly it's so i started lifting the stone and then i friends of mine see me online putting a few posts up and they're like i'm digging a water i'm digging out the back garden i found a big boulder so there's lads rocking up in vans and fucking boulders into the back garden so the back gardens so you naturally found this practice before you knew it was a tradition around the world.

It just happened. You know, it just happened that it was a beautiful thing. It was a progression. And then I went from there and because I was lifting stones, I saw these stone documentaries, which I'd recommend anybody to watch.

But what brought you to this? What curiosity then? What made you... Like, I understand lockdown and everything and time on our hands. What made you go, fuck the kettlebells. There's something about that

big rock do you know what i mean i'm very very lucky to say this i set out a load of goals when i was doing kettlebell sport right i set out goals myself at the start i wanted to win a world championship i wanted to win a european championship i wanted to get what they call a master of sports which is the top rank you can get almost like a black belt. And I wanted to set a world record. And I'd done all that. And I'm very, very proud to say I'd done all that. Wow. And at 2018, 2019, I was just after finishing everything

with Kelber Sword. I've done it all. I've had a fantastic time. I do a bit of coaching with it now. I help people out. And then COVID struck, you know? So I was like, I just finished this huge thing.

And then I kind of didn't know where to go or what to do. And just through necessity of having a fucking, me poor wife stone carving at the back and picking that up, it led me on that journey. And now all I've been doing really is stones, you know, is lifting stones, is picking them up, it's researching them. And then I got into the ones, like I said, I went to Scotland

and I got into that whole history vibe of it, the Fianna, and then over here finding them. And now it's's just I just made this natural progression from just like strength endurance sport where you do like 100 or 500 lifts in a session to like this just pick something up once you know it's been it's been quite a journey um from from that you know it's been the totally opposite of what I was doing for years before that. Do you see anything, so when I look at, we'll say Iceland, Scotland, Ireland, is there anything about the history of geology there? Like the first thing I think of is glacier.

Like giant big ice glaciers, they go through the landscape and when they do this, they pick up rocks and scatter them. Is there a history or tradition there of glaciers or something and areas where people pick up stones

because there's just loads of them? Again, like I said, I wouldn't be the biggest, have the load of knowledge on that, but I think you're right because like a lot of the stones in Scotland were glacial erratics as well,

you know. The ones in Iceland are a little bit different because I think they're more basalt. I think they're more volcanic stones. Yeah, they're more volcanicalt, I think they're more volcanic stones, yeah they're more volcanic but I think the ones around here

because they stood out were to do with maybe glaciers a couple of million years ago you know, I'd love to have somebody tell me more about it and you know, I'd love to have someone say look this, yeah that's the reason, that'd be great like you know because like I said I wouldn't be 100% up on it. And then

just a question about you might know the answer to this and you might not but when we're thinking of we'll say the west of ireland and the tradition of all the stone walls the stone buildings even i'm thinking of the likes of skellig mickle and the little beehive houses up there you know them that are made out of stone clock arms or clocking yeah like i arms, yeah. Like, I'm assuming you just had this landscape full of stones and then workers

had to go out into this landscape of stones, be able to pick them up, find the best ones and put them in a pile and say, this,

we're building a house out of this. It's amazing, isn't it? I mean, I think that's how it happened. I mean, it's such a desolate landscape, isn't it,

when you go west? I mean, because I mean, I never went really like I went to Galway City but I'd never gone out into the countryside of Galway before I'd never had any call to

you know that's why I'm loving this like I'm going around Mayo and Sligo and West Galway and West Clare but you just see how rough the landscape is

you know just like being on the fucking moon like the Burren is just incredible but then you can go past Spidlin it's the exact same landscape baron i want to know are there any stones in the baron what did i know of yes i'd love to find one i'd love it because again and if anybody has any information please contact me you know contact me through to um i'm

down as indiana stones on online on on I'm going to put all your socials and everything on the podcast so people will follow you yeah you know anybody with any information please let me know because

like 24 found in a year like in about 14 months has just been a revelation you know it's been a revelation are there any any stones that are related to the the beach

we'll say beach stones that get battered around by the ocean or anything would you believe it that's where I train I train out in a place called Ben Vai Beach which is in the UNESCO the beach, we'll say, beach stones that get battered around by the ocean or anything. Would you believe it? That's where I train. I train out in a place called Ben Vai Beach,

which is in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Copper Coast, right? There's only three UNESCO... Oh, in Waterford. In Waterford. I heard something special about that, yeah. It's fucking just beautiful out there. And it's just this hidden gem that nobody knows about.

Like, the Copper Coast in Waterford is incredible. And I train out in the beach out there and I have three stones that I've named and weighed it's just it's it's so different to going to the gym you know you go out i'm on this little cove it's only about 100 yards long there's never anybody there just me and the seabirds you know and i'm picking up this stone and like i said talk about feeling grounded and being part of nature and you know it's fulfilling like a kind of a spiritual thing for me as well as being for my body you know so like i just come back out of there and i'm a

different person like if i had a bad day and work i go out there for an hour and i come back just happy out you know it's it's a beautiful place and like i said i have those stones there now please god in 100 years time someone will say those were the david keown stones and let's go out and see can we pick up them you know know? So there is, like I said, Limo Flaherty's one is down as well, down by a wharf. There's one called Clough na Archean up in Carna

and there's one called Clough Caliganishca, which is, Caliganishca is like, again, it's like an old wharf where the men used to collect seaweeds in a place called Corner Own, which is called Benda da Seals out in, yeah,

Corner Own in County Galway. And there's three stones then at wharf sites or beach sites in Ireland, you know. But most of them are found in graveyards, which I found another mad thing about it, because they're all at the funeral games, which I never even heard about before until I started doing this. Like the funeral games were at the funerals, like back before, again, before the 1850s, there were like three or four day events. And they used to, the men at the games, there was were like three or four day events and they used that

the men at the games there was these stones in the in the cemetery where they were burying the body and like to pass the time or to just the younger men would go for see could they lift this stone this was the lifting stone of the funeral games and i say about 75 percent of the stones i found are in in in cemeteries you know so um but that was fascinating even when you mentioned there like it's clear that a part of this for you there's a spiritual need there's a and it's your mental health it gives you a sense of meaning you said there it'd be nice to think in the future that someone's going to say that there was the stone that david kyon lifted and something that i'm getting from all of this is like we as humans we're always trying to search for immortality, whether we know it or not.

Even when you someone who creates art, we all can I have some I know that my body is going to die. Can I create something that funerals are associated with this because if you're like you're going finding a stone in the middle of the west of Ireland and some old lad tells you oh I can give you the name of a person in 1820 who lifted that stone so that person has won their little piece of immortality there

exactly you know you're reaching back to the past and you're almost you're grabbing their hand through the stone you know ah that's beautiful you know they're not dead you're putting your fucking hand where their hand was that's it you're reaching their hand through the stone you know oh that's beautiful you know they're they're

not dead they're putting your fucking hand where their hand was you're reaching back to them you know back through the midst of time back through all the oppression and the the famine and everything that went with it you're going past through all that and you're reaching back to these to these people who lifted this stone and it's a beautiful beautiful thing it's it's like it's part ritual you know for me it's part ritual and it's part strength you know it's and it's it's fully emerged in Irish culture. When you go at a stone and you see it and you know the first part is is your mind is trying to figure out what's the best way to do this with these stones is there only really one way to lift a certain stone? Sometimes there is only one way yeah sometimes because the way the stones are shaped and they're all different shapes

you know they're all these beautiful different shapes so sometimes you have to stand a stone up on end they say it was a long stone there's a stone down in faha graveyard in county clare and called clucknafar and there's also a woman's lifting stone which is the first found in the whole world so women are part of this tradition too women are part of the tradition massively so there's there's a man's lifting stone okay let's talk about that because everything I was, like people called these manhood stones. Yes. And I wasn't seeing a lot of women being involved in this tradition.

Oh God, I mean, again, can the Dukas look it up? Women's lifting stones are strong women. You know, they were very, very prevalent in Ireland and got a massive amount of respect. And I said, that's fantastic because it kind of takes away that whole patriarchal view of stone just being a lift and just being a man's foray. Women were involved in this as well. There was a woman's lift in Stone in Clare, in Faha in County Clare. So myself and Conor Heffernan and Aisha Ola, who'd be Ireland's strongest woman five times over, went down with a podcast crew there

about three months ago down to Faha. And she like the first documented lift of this woman's lifting stone, you know, in modern times, which was just fucking brilliant. You know, it was just brilliant to see it. And there's another girl called Kayla Mann. Kayla done the same thing and that was fantastic. I picked up the man's lifting stone. But again, going back to how it's lifted, the man's lifting stone is so wide,

you can't kind of put your legs around it to pick it up. It's so long. So you have to have to stand it up like a loaf of bread on its end and just fucking bear hug it and pick it up, you know so but the man's living stone was 162 kilos and the woman's living stone was 112 but why did they sometimes call all of these stones manhood stones because i'll be honest i wasn't mad about that bit yeah i mean i i don't think they call them manhood stones here i think they were were called manhood stones more so in Scotland. That's coming

again from my limited knowledge of it. But I don't think they were ever called manhood lifting stones here. They were just stones of strength. So gender isn't as heavily connected with it here in Ireland in our tradition? Definitely not. I mean, I found another stone up in Clonall, up again in Westmeath,

where there was a woman called Mrs. Keldy who the men were out lifting the stone up in Clonall Church again in Westmeath where there was a woman called Mrs. Keldee who the men were outlifting the stone up in Clonall Church and Mrs. Keldee was leaning over the wall looking at them and kind of jeering them

because they couldn't pick it up well and they said look if you're so strong why don't you come over and try it and she went over she bet them all for height

you know so and like that story is in Ducas now you know fair fucking play to her brilliant fair fucking play to her what a great thing to do

and I went up and I found that stone up in Clonall and it's like I put that on the brilliant their fucking play-thru what a great thing to do like and I went up and I found that stone up in Clannol and it's like I put that on the map and like strong women are and they're going to come out and hopefully try and do a little event

around it it's just great it's great like you know it's there for it's for everybody you know what I mean and just a question too actually because I didn't ask this

and it's an obvious question are there still communities in Ireland lifting stones? I don't think so to be honest. Wow, it's gone. Fuck. I mean, because all the men I'm meeting who know the stories, they're all old men.

And I mean, even when I was over in Inishmore and I met that man who was doing the walking tour, he's like, ah, it's a shame. He said, there's a man living in that house over there, he said, a couple of hundred yards away. And he knew fucking everything about that stone. He said he died in his 90s. He only died there a couple of months ago.

He could have told you everything about it. But you're only about a generation away from this being gone altogether so the fact that I'm going around and I'm kind of bringing like you know

metaphorically and fucking physically unearthing these things and bringing them back it's just it's absolutely wonderful you know it's a part of our history

that's you know it's important it's a piece of our culture that was lost you know through like I said no fault of our own and it's just great

to be doing it like Do you ever go to an area and you're like I reckon this stone is under the ground um the one in den was some crack because i got up to this graveyard and i was like i got to this graveyard old graveyard and i met this old man and i said look do you know where the old graveyard of den is yes it's down the road there's about a mile down the road but you'll do well to find that in there i said why is that he said it's wicked overgrown there's no one cut that graveyard in 20 years

so I went up and I'm not joking the weeds were fucking the height of the ceiling they were 8 feet tall so I have a billhook in the back of the car so I just took out the billhook

and just hacked me way through the fucking graveyard for two and a half hours looking for this flagstone and you know sweating and blood and fucking mud

and thorns and overgrowth and then eventually after two and a half hours I just get to the left hand side of the graveyard I get this clang noise pull it back

and they say that the then flagstone had a carved cross in the top of it because it was also used as an altar stone so I pull back the fucking oevee

and there's this this carved cross on the bottom of the stone and rip back all the oevee and there it is but that thing was absolutely buried it was never going to be found again. You know?

So that was buried under. So it was buried in the ground. Buried. Totally fucking buried. Because I'm assuming too, if you have a real heavy, massive stone that's 200 kgs

and you just leave it there for 100 years and rain and stuff happens all around it and there's mud, the stone is going to slowly just sink into the ground. Would that be right?

Exactly. Exactly. And the one in Clonfad was half submerged as well. The big 190 kilo one. That was half submerged. all around it and there's mud the stone is going to slowly just sink into the ground would that be right? exactly and the one in Clonfad was half submerged as well the big 190 kilo that was half submerged we had to get big fucking crowbars and iron bars out

and wedge that thing out of the ground because like you said I mean the one up in Clonfad the man who lifted it Paddy Langan that was 150 years ago

and that story was written in 1937 so you go back 150 years 1937 that stone had been sitting there ever since so it was almost gone, the ground had almost

reclaimed it, you know, but yeah that happens a good bit And here's another question, so just for my listeners when we had the penal laws in Ireland which meant practising as a Catholic was really a difficult thing to do

and they had priest hunters. That's right. Like they used to send people over from England to hunt down priests and kill them. So a lot of people had to practice Catholicism secretly and had to go to school secretly in hedge schools. But with Catholicism, some people had to go off somewhere secret

into the countryside and the priest would have mass on what was known as a mass rock. So it's this giant rock that looked like a rock but really it was an altar. Have any mass rocks also been lifting stones or is there a correlation between those two

things? The flag of dinner I was talking about, that was also used as a mass rock. That was a mass rock too? Honest to Christ, yeah. The story behind that thing is incredible but yeah, back under penal law in the 16th to 17th centuries, this was used as a mass rock. That was a mass rock too? Honest to Christ. Yeah, the story behind that thing is incredible. But yeah, we said back under penal law in the 16th to 17th centuries, this was used as an altar stone

for the priests. So its purpose changed. It went from this is something to celebrate to now all of a sudden you can't practice your religion anymore so this isn't a lifting stone, now it's something you have mass on.

Exactly. So it went from being like a pagan cursing stone to being an altar stone you know which is just and then they put the little cross into it i'm assuming to cleanse it of the pagan curse that's probably the fucking reason they don't so i'd imagine so because there was there was just so much superstition around that stuff so if you put a cross in something that was pagan or in any way associated with the fairies it kind of cleansed it but the christ was seen as more powerful than the fairy exactly i hadn't thought of that great fucking point no i'm just some lad in limerick fucking throwing out ideas there so it sounds exactly i mean why else would you fucking do it you know

so yeah so it was used as like a this this pagan stone then it was used as a catholic stone and it was also used as a lifting stone the men used to pick it up and see could they you know who could get it to their knees and this thing is absolutely monstrous I mean I'm talking

probably about 220 kilos you know so whoever picked that thing up was an absolute horse of a man so I'm assuming too that the people who picked this up

it's not just about strength it's about your physical size exactly the span of your legs the span of your arms just big joints of men you know just big joints of men who could do that it was a great show of power and they got massive respect respect for it but yeah that that story that the flag of Dane um it's it has everything you know it has absolutely everything an interesting thing too that correlates with this and again this is just me throwing out ideas but um fin de wire from

the irish history podcast who does a huge amount of research on the famine the potato came into ireland in sometime around the 1500s right when it became our staple food and before there was a famine irish people were known around europe to be very, very large people. And the reason being, like people's diets in general in the 15, 1600s throughout Europe weren't great. But the thing is with a potato, a potato is an entire,

you've got protein, carbohydrates. You can live on just potatoes and be real healthy. It has everything you need. And Irish people were physically large and strong because of our diet of exclusively of potatoes and it was great until a fucking blight came and then we were fucked yeah yeah but i wonder is there an association there with these tall strong people with seriously good diets because a potato gives you everything you need. That's actually a really good point. Yeah, and like,

yeah, I mean, yeah. No, that makes sense. Because people used to eat, Fyndwair has the exact statistics, but the labouring people of Ireland in maybe the 1600s might go through a stone of potatoes a day, because they'd be eating breakfast, lunch and dinner

and whipped buttermilk and just spuds, spuds, spuds. And... Imagine how much calories and carbs and fucking energy you're getting from that huge you know

well if you're like if you're a stonemason in the west of Ireland you need 4000 calories a day that's it because you're just fucking lifting

and pulling and dragging all day long these are human beings so if someone isn't getting enough calories they're not building walls but imagine if you're that's you know

you're eating that much you're lifting that much and you're a big man anyway I mean you're going to be as strong as holy hell aren't you yeah and that's just what that's that's what lads do now on instagram they go to the gym and they make sure they get their four or five thousand calories a day and then a year later they're huge that's it that's it you know but so it's it's that but for very different reasons exactly this was their world this was this was their world this is was their world. This is who they are and this is what they've done for a living.

And that's what I love about these stones. They're all born in the natural landscape and they're born of people's day-to-day work. You know? That's what they're from. And the other thing too is if you have a culture emerging where strength and size becomes a competition,

then it must mean there's a lot of strong, large people around. That's just what it tells me. definitely there had to be there had to be you know but even like going back through the dukes like they're saying that like you know these men were huge men you know six foot this and you know up there close to seven feet and they're all savagely strong lads like you know and sure even when you go up west i mean every time i go anywhere like i'm only five foot nine i'm like a leprechaun standing up these big men up there you know so um but yeah i think it must be just a genetic thing as well you know we're just big of course there's that yeah you know big big big big people you know big strong wide shoulders

you know i mean you look at some of the photographs of some of the men i've met every single one of them is bigger than me even if they're twice my age they're still fucking massive you know what I mean but yeah it's just it's great it's great to be thinking about all this kind of stuff and talking about all this stuff

with someone who has a genuine interest in it because I'm in work I can't talk to anybody about this kind of thing you know what I mean I know it's one of those things where you really want to find

someone who's mad interested because people would think you're nuts everyone thinks I'm fucking nuts anyway I think you know but I love that in a way yes it is fucking nuts but also it you know but I love that in a way

yes it is fucking nuts but also it's not it makes all the sense in the whole world like I'm who I love to have on this podcast anyone who is really passionate about something

that's it and I can tell by this I bet you wake up in the morning thinking about Stone I'm sure the wife is fucking driven cracked that's what I love when you wake up in the morning thinking about Stone, do you? I'm sure the wife is fucking driven cracked. That's what I love. When you wake up in the fucking morning and you're thinking about that thing.

That's what I love. You know, I think about A, either fucking off up the west, you know, leaving the house at four o'clock and buzzing with the excitement for it. Or I'm up fucking scanning through Dukas until all hours of the night trying to find more stories, you know. But what a fucking honour to be doing it. know it gives you meaning it does like I said it's it's you can't fucking wait to find the next one because the buzz you get from finding them is just incredible you know you're driving off in the car in the morning the sun is rising you see the mist coming up off the fucking ground it's like the air is the ground is breathing and you're going off the sun is beautiful you get that lovely sunrise I have some fucking illen pipes on in the car and I know i'm going to find one of these fucking

stones and it's almost like a spiritual experience you know every time here's what i'd love to talk about there so because this is like i i'm uh i'm a writer and you know as well you went to crawford so you you know the crack with art and yes when people ask me why i am an artist right like i i actually don't like the end like i'm writing a book at the moment and it took me two years right the saddest part of that process is going to be when it's published yes when the book gets published it actually reminds me a bit of death i understand that 100 the bit that i like and and this is what i'm always trying to explain to people about art as well, when some people say, oh, artificial intelligence is going to replace the artist,

it will and it's fuck, because a real artist doesn't give a shit about the end result. It's nice to have it there, but a real artist is like, no, this was about the bit in the middle. Exactly. And it was about the pain of it as well as the joy. It's all about the middle. And when I finished this book, I'm going to feel real sad when it's over, but I'm going, let's think about the next one now

because the fun here is in the middle. That's it. The doing. And it's the conflict of doing. How you described the stones there, you didn't mention the finding of the stone. You mentioned the sunrise in the morning the mist that's all very process based it's the process that you're chasing is this

i think you're yeah i mean you're 100 is the process the meaning that's where the meaning is that's where that's you know it's the it's the the fun of of looking up something and finding it you know getting it online see where the graveyard might be and then the process of going to find it, that's where it is and like I said, when you find it, it's like,

oh, you know, it's found, it's great but, you know, I kind of missed the process and I'm on to the next one and that's what it is, you know.

I'm writing a book myself actually and I never thought I'd write one. I'm writing a book on these adventures at the moment. Fair fucking play to you. Because like, I never ever thought I'd write.

I mean, I always, like I'm into music and art and that was always my creative outlet because i think they're more immediate aren't they you know that's it's a more immediate thing but like i never thought i'd write a book but i just so fucking passionate about this i'm chance to me i'm gonna give it a go and um fucking go for it why not fuck it why not life's for living what's the worst that can exactly that's with anything i go what's the worst that can happen and and and the stones too is a beautiful like when i when i what some people ask me how do you write a book right and i always say to people

yeah i don't i the metaphor i use is is it's it's like uh climbing a mountain in that if you're to climb a mountain you never look at the peak and say fuck me how am i supposed to get up there how am i supposed to jump that high yeah you go the peak is up there and i'm not going to think about the peak today because i understand that to climb this mountain is actually a gradual thing i have to have a base camp and then i have to go up to the middle and it's going to be all about what happens along the way. Exactly. And if you think of writing a book that way, you know the peak is there, but you're not worrying about that. It's gradual process. And the fun is in the middle.

Then at the end of it, you go, oh shit, here's a book. But if you start thinking about the peak, it's so terrifying you'll never start. That's what it was for me. That's what it was for me before. I was just terrified of the whole process. How would you sit down and write a fucking book? You know, I was like like how would you do it but like because these stories are just

I mean they're great stories they really are you know they tell themselves like you're journaling along the way it's a journal and that's what it is it's almost like a diary like an adventure story going off to all these and finding the people and writing down their names and the bit of chat we had with them and the way they spoke and their lovely soft accents

they had and it's just's just it's it's almost like a like i said a diary or a journal piece you know can i give you a little a little tip can i give you a little tip that'll really help your process so when you the key to good writing okay and i mean writing that when the person reads it they feel something in their heart like fucking o'flaherty like with that story one of the keys is when you when you first find that stone or when you first meet that old man there's something happens very immediately in the moment that gives you those emotions yes you need to try and get that on the page as soon as

possible yes okay don't wait two days later you don't go two three days later and try and remember what it was like when you picked up that stone you try and write it don't even fucking write it you pick out your fucking phone and you record you get yourself a little half an hour after you've written the stone and you record your emotions in the moment because in the middle of that passion your unconscious mind will find metaphors and ideas and things that are related to how visceral that emotion is at that time and if you can capture that in the fucking moment you have a document of it it's there and then you go back and you listen back and then you distill it down but you don't want to be thinking about the feeling of meeting some old lad or picking up a stone three weeks later because your brain will get in the way.

I love it. I love it. Thanks a million for that. You get the immediacy in the moment. And if you can fucking capture that, the person reading it feels that through empathy. That's wonderful. And O'Flaherty's story is full of it. O'Flaherty is just a man for that, isn't he?

He's just incredible. But both of us picked up on that beautiful passage about the glistening rock and the mica. I mean, it's just, you can see it in your head. Is it sparkling or glistening?

It said sparkling. I think it was sparkling in the sunshine, I think he said. Yeah, sparkling. That stood out to me too. And O'Flaherty, he was looking at a rock or something

when he wrote that. That's what, you know what I mean? There's a reason why his story gets it in the heart as opposed to maybe reading an academic article about a rock. Exactly. It's just so visceral.

And the way he described the man bending down to pick up the stone, that's the exact same way that I set up to pick up a stone, you know? So I was like, I'm like the fucking reader, and I'm the story, you know what I mean? I felt I was both. I felt I was like in the fucking never-ending story, like Bastion Palthazar books. I was like,

I'm the fucking story, and I'm the person reading the story. It was almost like I was affecting the story. It was like, it was just an incredible moment, you know, to read it. And that there, that's the participatory nature of art. That's it. Where art, you know to read it and that there that's the participatory nature of art that's it where art

you're not it's not just here's a piece of art and there's the and I'm the observer you become involved in it you become you become

emotionally invested into the narrative exactly my favourite bit in that story well the bit that really sticks out to me is at the end

when the man dies and two flies have a scrap around his mouth because what that then says to me is at the end when the man dies and two flies have a scrap around his mouth because what that then says to me is he's dead and he did amazing things life goes on the flies don't give a fuck about you buddy they're having a scrap over who gets to eat your tongue who gets to lay their children in his tongue it's pretty fucking gruesome all right it's gruesome but it's beautiful as well because that's what life is. Birth debt renewal

and the maggots are going to fucking eat us, and how do we feel about that? That's it, and like, and that's what these stones are in a constant kind of thing of being, you know, found again, they're being rediscovered again, so they got their own birth debt renewal, you know, they were there, they died, and now they're coming back, and

it's the same fucking thing, you know. But also the cunts are immortal. And they're immortal, yeah. That's often that I wonder are people attracted

to these stones because, like, you're going to old graveyards and the graveyards are forgotten and the bones are gone,

the bones are mud and they've, but the stones remain. They're still there, you know, and those people are still there, those stories

are still there. The stories are still there through the stones, they've gotten the immortality. They're still there. You know, and those people are still there. Those stories are still there. The stories are still there through the stones. They've gotten the immortality. Ah, man, it's fucking beautiful. On the ball. It's fucking incredible. It really isn't. It's really amazing.

You're doing fantastic work. I'm going to leave it at that, right? Because that's an hour and 20 minutes. But thank you so much, man, for giving the time for this chat. And the work you're doing is fascinating. And I definitely, I'd love to chat to you again to see how the work has progressed. Oh, I'd love to. I'm absolutely honoured.

And thank you so much for having me on this. I mean, I've just been so excited all week. I've been a fan of you for a long time. So, and I've seen the colour of people you have on this. So I'm just absolutely blown away, to be honest. But like I said, I think passion kind of shines through and it shows how much you love something that people kind of hopefully kind of respect that

and kind of latch onto that. So thank you so much again for having me on indeed dog bless thank you to david kyon for that wonderful chat follow him on instagram indiana stones and i'll be back next week i don't know what i'll be back with but i will be back that was a long that was that was a long episode i usually don't do them that long but what a what a wonderful fascinating person he was and the conversation needed to be that length because I'm conscious of when I speak to someone who's doing work like that and when they're the only person doing it I become aware that this interview becomes a historical document become aware that this interview becomes a historical document these stones the lifting of these stones might be a couple of thousand years old and whatever shape the world is going

to be in in a hundred years i don't know when people then want to find out about a tradition such as stone lifting in a hundred years which which is fucking nothing compared to the amount of time that this tradition could be they might want to find out about the fella called David Keown who was rediscovering this folklore tradition so they might

listen to this podcast in a hundred fucking years to get some information from it so that's why I put the interview out at that length alright I'll catch you next week genuflect to a swan So that's why I put the interview out at that length. Alright, I'll catch you next week. Genuflect to a swan. Get a worm and take it out of the hot sun and put it somewhere cold.

Do the same for slugs. Dress up the Richard Harris statue as a hawk to frighten off all the birds from Bedford Row. Dog bless. wear that cape be that superhero on saturday march 23rd it's marvel superhero night in rock city you dress up as your favorite superhero and watch the toronto rock drop the hammer on the halifax thunderbirds at 7 p.m at first ontario center in hamilton punch your ticket to marvel superhero night on Saturday, March 23rd at 7pm in Rock City