Jackie Queally has been exploring the nature of the places where she has lived for some time now. For a while she lived at Roslin, Midlothian, and has not only written two extremely interesting (and highly recommended) books about Rosslyn Chapel, and another about Roslin Glen, the intriguing landscape that lies to the east and south of Rosslyn Chapel. She has also taken many highly appreciative groups to visit both the chapel and, the glen. In her latest book, she turns her attention to the Burren, a tract of land that stretches from North Clare to South Galway in the west of Ireland. Anyone at all familiar with the west of Ireland will no doubt have experienced the particular magic of the various landscapes that it has to offer, and Jackie chooses to make her ‘exploration’ through an appreciation of the five elements of water, wood, fire, earth and metal, finally coming to a synthesis in which all five come together in a chapter called “Spirit of All Elements”.

She takes her readers on a journey on which we meet such groups as the mythical early people of Ireland, the Tuatha Dé Danaan; the elemental beings known in Ireland and Scotland as the Sidhe; and the early Celtic Christians known as the Culdees, or Celi Dé.

Throughout the book, she shows a lively and deeply respectful awareness of the life above, in, around and under the ground where she treads.

The author is also able to supply small nuggets of little known folklore, Perhaps such a world seems rather remote from mundane experience, yet the author guides us into it effortlessly, with a highly developed feeling for the energy and elemental energies of place. I am no expert on the subject of ley lines, but the author is highly sensitized to them, and can not only feel them, even from inside a moving car, but also tell whether they are long established in the nature of the place, or newly created by human activity. This is something that was entirely new to me as a concept, but one that I feel is worthy of further exploration.  This book appears to me to be a useful place to start.

 Her purpose, however, is more than to give us a guidebook to a beautiful part of the world and its history and geology. This is a book concerned with love of place, love of nature and a sense of the healing qualities that nature can bestow, when coupled with an awakened awareness of the needs of the time. I recommend it.

Peter Snow, Edinburgh February 20, 2015