What Lifting Ancient Stones Can Teach You About Being a Man
Episode Stats
Summary
For millennia, stone lifting has been an important part of cultures around the world, and its significance went far beyond feats of strength. Stone lifting was part of weddings and funerals, used as a job interview to assess someone s fitness as a farmhand, and included in rites of passage and all-around manhood. Much of the world s ancient stone lifting culture has been forgotten, and rocks that used to be hoisted regularly in town squares and cemeteries have been sitting untouched for hundreds of years. David Keown, an Irish world champion kettlebell lifter turned amateur folklorist, has set out to change that. In the last couple of years, David has been on the hunt for Ireland s legendary lifting stones, and uses oral and written history to learn their stories, and then hoist them himself.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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For millennia, stone lifting was an important part of cultures around the world, and its
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significance went far beyond feats of strength. Stone lifting was part of weddings and funerals,
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used as a job interview to assess someone's fitness as a farmhand, and included in rites
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of passage and test of all-around manhood. Much of the world's ancient stone lifting culture
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has been forgotten, and rocks that used to be hoisted regularly in town squares and cemeteries
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have been sitting untouched for hundreds of years. David Keown, an Irish world champion
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kettlebell lifter turned amateur folklorist, has set out to change that. In the last couple
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of years, David has been on the hunt for Ireland's legendary lifting stones. He uses oral and written
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history to search them out and learn their stories, and then hoist them himself, once
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again putting wind under stones that haven't been picked up for centuries. Today on the
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show, David shares the significance of stone lifting around the world, and specifically
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in Irish culture, the practicalities of lifting a 400-pound stone off the ground, and what stone
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lifting has taught him about being a man. After the show's over, check out our show notes
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at aom.is slash stone lifting. David Keown, welcome to the show.
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Thank you so much for having me, Brett. Really appreciate it, man.
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So you are a world champion kettlebell lifter, who has also become an expert archaeologist
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and folklorist specializing in discovering lost Irish lifting stones. And we're going
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to talk about your work with lifting stones here on the show. But before we do, let's
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talk about your fitness and health journey. You got into the strength training game late
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in your life. What was your life like before you discovered kettlebells, and what got you
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started with swinging? Yeah, good question. Good question. So Brett, when I started off, like
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I said, I only got into any fitness or strength or training of any kind at the age of 31, you
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know. Before that, I was mainly into music and art. I met my wife in art college. So
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playing in bands, you know, party scene and going out in the night times and, you know,
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having great crack that way, you know, all the way through my late teens and 20s was party
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life and drinking and all the rest that goes with it. But then, you know, when you hit your
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30s, your body kind of says, hold on a second, kid, you got to start looking after yourself
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now, you know. So I got to 31 and I was just in a really bad place kind of mentally and
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physically, just not in a good place, not happy with how my body was responding, you
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know. At that stage, I had young kids. I couldn't run around after them. So I went to a doctor
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and the doctor was pretty much saying, look, we're going to have to put you on X, Y, and
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Z medication from now on, you know, heart medication, blood pressure, asthmatic inhalers,
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all that kind of stuff. So I went out with a doctor's nose to get all this medication.
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And I decided, how about if I get fit for us, just to myself, you know, let's see if I can
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get fit and if that will help. If it doesn't help, I'll take the medication anyway. I have
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nothing else to lose. So I started running and I remember the first time I went running,
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I couldn't run a hundred yards. I remember trying to run up to the top of my estate and
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having to go home really badly defeated, you know, lungs falling out, thought I was going
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to die, you know, just in a really, really bad place. But I went out the next morning,
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I was going out in the morning, so no one would see that, the kind of heavy guy running,
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you know, was up around a hundred kgs, maybe over it, which for my height, I'm only five
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foot nine. So that's, it's not a healthy place to be, but I started going out every morning
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running and I was running. And after about four to six weeks, I was hitting 5k. My breathing,
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my respiratory problems, which I was diagnosed as asthmatic, that was gone. My blood pressure
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was coming down. I was eating healthier. I was just feeling better. You know, I never
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really understood what feeling healthy felt like because I never done any training in my life
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or sports the whole way through. I was on a totally different path. But then I started
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feeling what feeling healthy felt like. I was like, this feels great. So I just kept
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the running going. And with about six months later, I ran my first marathon, which kind
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of was the light bulb moment for me. It was like an epiphany moment. It was like, you've
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done something difficult that not a lot of people in the world do. Kind of what else can
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you do? And from there I got into kettlebell training and like just hit classes and just
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training in a gym with light kettlebells, 12s, 16s, 20 kgs. But the gym I was in just so
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happened to have the only kettlebell sport team in Munster, which is the province I live
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in in Ireland. And just got into kettlebell training then and got into the sport end of
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it. Because I was told like your body will suit it. You've got long arms, you've got a
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sharp torso, so you'll find it easy to rest in like rack position and stuff. So just got
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into this crazy Russian endurance strength sport in 2012 and just had some fantastic years
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No, I set myself goals, Brett, at the very start of my kettlebell career. Because I remember
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watching, going down to 2013 and watching the European champions were held just about 15
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minutes down the road from me. And seeing these guys lifting two 32 kilo kettlebells for 10 minutes
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straight, clean and jerk, you know, and just being amazed, amazed that a human body could
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do that. Because I was lifting two 16s at that stage and that was difficult, you know, to get
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to 10 minutes. But watching these guys was like, okay, I want to do this. I want to get up to
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the 32s. So I trained like a demon for the next couple of years. And I got onto the amateur
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Irish kettlebells sport team in 2014, lifting two 24s. And believe me, two 24s for distance
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is difficult to go out and pick up a pair of 24 kilo kettlebells and clean and jerk them even 10
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times in a row and tell me how you feel. So we were doing that for between 62 to 100 reps in
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sessions. 78 reps actually won me the world title in 2015. So like 78 times in a row without putting
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them down. So you can imagine how attritional that is on your, you know, on your cardio. So it took a lot
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of technique training and a lot of work. But I set myself up with my goals. Like I said, I won my
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world championships. I won my European championships, nationals, set a world record, competed on 32s,
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got my master of sports, hit everything I wanted to hit. And I bowed out gracefully at the end of 2019.
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Well, this is interesting. I don't know much about the sport aspect of kettlebell. So it's not just a
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strength component. It's actually an endurance event. It's more an endurance. I call it strength
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endurance. The close thing it reminds me of, Brad, is Olympic rowing.
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Okay. So it's, it's just to be able to put in max effort for a short, in short bursts for a long
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distance. You know, so I mean, you think about you're lifting two 32s and you're lifting them
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for, for 10 minutes straight. So I mean, I was doing about between four to six RPM with that.
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So you have to be able to relax yourself in certain positions. You can't stand there braced with a
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couple of 32s for 10 minutes. Your body just won't be able to do it, you know? So it was all about
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technique and using your body as efficiently as possible. It's actually a really cool sport.
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So you did the kettlebell training. How did you discover stone lifting?
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Yeah. Like I said, I'd hit all these goals and I'm just so proud to say that I could do that,
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you know, especially when things like, like world records and stuff, which still stands,
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thank God. But I just done this really cool thing in my life. You know, I finished that in 2019.
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I'm just kind of, what am I going to do now? You know, what's next? And then COVID struck.
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So like they took COVID very, very seriously. Like the very stringent lockdowns over here.
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You know, we were in a 5k lockdown. We couldn't leave. There was Gardaà on the streets. It was
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just crazy couple of years. So I had no access to a gym and I only had like maybe just two kettlebells
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in the shed. Cause I don't know my training in the gym. Like everybody does. You go to the gym,
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I was in the gym three or four days a week and all the training equipment was there. I didn't need to
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buy anything, but all of a sudden that was taken away from me. So all I had at the back, like I said,
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I met my wife in art college. I had this large stone carving that my wife done in art college,
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beautiful stone carving on a plinth. And I weighed that on the kitchen scales over COVID because
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we were in this like really tight lockdown. It weighed 61 kilos. I was like, that's an
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interesting weight, you know? So I started picking that up and I started really enjoying the feel or
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the primal aspect of stone lifting. It kind of flicked a switch inside me. You know what I mean?
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So I was doing that just as a bored human being over COVID, just needing to lift something.
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I was lifting that stone. And then I saw that Rogue Fitness. I don't know if you've seen them.
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And if you haven't, you're really sure that the Rogue Fitness documentaries on stone lifting,
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one in Scotland, one in Iceland, and one in the Basque region of Spain. And they were just
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speaking so passionately about what stone lifting meant, the history, the heritage, the culture,
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what it meant to their nation to be lifting stone. And it just, I was enamored. I just fell in love
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with it. I loved the history aspect of the stone lifting. And that kind of led me down the rabbit
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hole then of looking for Irish ones, you know? Well, let's talk about stone lifting in general as a
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cultural practice. I think people have likely seen stone lifting in strongman competitions.
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Exactly. I think even in CrossFit, there's the Atlas stone. They'll do that. But this isn't just
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some sort of made up sport for the modern age. As you said, there's a rich and ancient tradition
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of heavy stone lifting found around the world. So you mentioned Scotland. They have it in Iceland,
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they have it in Spain. Before we get into Irish stone lifting specifically, can you talk about
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stone lifting in general? Besides Scotland and Iceland and Spain, where else do we see
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heavy stone lifting? And what was the purpose of stone lifting?
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First of all, I suppose there were so many different purposes to it. And it's in so many
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cultures around the world. I mean, it's the most ancient form of training. I mean, back in ancient
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Rome, you have it in ancient Greece. I mean, there's a stone sitting in a Greek museum and it has carved
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on the side of it. Bybon, son of Fola, lifted this stone over his head. And that stone is, I think it's
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130 kilos. And that carving was done over 2000 years ago. So I mean, there's stone lifting goes all
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the way back. I mean, before gyms, which is a relatively new thing, all you had was, was what was
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in the natural landscape. So heavy stones, heavy tree trunks. It was just that form of training.
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So it's, it goes all the way back, as far back as you can imagine. It's also very, very,
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it's huge in Japan. There's massive amount of stone lifting in Japan, in the, like the Pacific
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Islands, there's massive culture of it there. In Africa, there's an all over, pretty much all over
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Europe. So it goes all the way back, like I said. So the purposes of them, I mean, so like say there's,
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there's three stones in Iceland and they're called the Dridvik stones. And they denoted,
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they were fishermen's testing stones and they denoted how much of the catch you would get
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on a fishing boat. So you had the Amlodi, which was 24 kilos. That's called the weakling stone.
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Then you did the half dreitinger, which was 54 kilos. That's the lightest stone you're allowed
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to get on the boat with. So you'd have to lift that and you only got a quarter of a share of
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the catch. Then you could lift the half Sturker, which is 100 kilos. If you could lift the 100 kilos
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stone, you were half Sturker, you were half strong, which meant you got half a share. And if you could
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lift the 154 kilo full Sturker stone, you got a full share and you could sit in the middle of the boat
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and you were one of the top rowers. So it was a way of earning your keep. It was a way of earning
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your money. Your strength was your worth, how good a husband or provider you were. Also,
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there's very similar in Sweden with farmhand testing stones. You had the half strong or the
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full strong stones. If you were a farmhand, you're going to have to be clearing a lot of land.
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So their test, their job interview was to lift the stone, you know. Then there was all these feet
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of strength stones, you know, just say somebody who wanted to immortalize themselves for all time
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and there's a load of them around Iceland and also quite a few of them around Ireland,
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for somebody to show their great strength lifted a stone and said like a man would consider himself
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a good man if he could repeat that feat, you know, and people would come from all over.
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They were lifted at funeral games as respect for the dead. They were lifted at weddings as respect
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for the living. I mean, their uses go, I mean, there's so many, I could talk about that all day,
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but more than just picking up something heavy, they had cultural value. They all had cultural worth,
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Yeah. Well, speaking of like doing lifting stones at a wedding, isn't there like a scene in Braveheart
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where they're throwing big heavy rocks at a wedding?
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And also you talk about, and what other archaeologists have found, these were like,
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oftentimes these are a rite of passage for men. Like this is how you determined if you were a man.
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Exactly. Very much so in Scotland that they had these rite of passage stones. So to become
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from boyhood to manhood, you had to be able to lift the clan testing stone. And I went over to
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Scotland about three years ago and I'd done that. We lifted 16 clan testing stones in one day,
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went around to all the different glens and every glen had its own testing stone, Brett,
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you know. And every stone was slightly different, like weighed slightly different. But to become
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a man in the clans, you had to be able to lift this stone either to plinth or to chest,
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depending on the glen you're in, you know. So because they were like boyhood testing stones,
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they were all slightly lighter. You're talking anywhere between like 97 kilos up to probably
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about 120. But I mean, that's still pretty heavy for a stone. I mean, you might laugh at it,
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anybody who does deadlifting out there, but you go and pick out a hundred kilo stone,
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120 kilo stone and pick up a 120 kilo barbell or two totally different things.
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But they're sort of said to you, the boyhood testing stones, and then you had the warrior
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stones. So to become a warrior, then these were heavier stones. So to become like a bodyguard
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for the Fief Lord or to become a warrior in the ranks of maybe the FINA, you had to lift a certain
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stone. So, I mean, the one that really struck me was there's a FINA testing stone. I don't know
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if you've ever heard of the FINA, but the FINA were a very famous Irish and Celtic warrior band
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who were mainly in Ireland, but also in Scotland and part of their initiation to become, and like
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these guys were the best of the best. They were like the SAS of 2000 years ago, you know? So to
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become the FINA, one of the FINA warriors, one of the tests was to lift the FINA stone and the
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FINA stone was 127 kilos of dollarite. And you had to be able to pick that up the chest and walk with
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it. So, like I said, it's these rites of passage. And that really drew me in because it's something
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that we don't have anymore, you know? And I feel it's something that we're kind of sorely missing,
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you know? I mean, because it really brings a culture together. It brings, you know, a clan
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together. You know, everybody used to gather around and watch these rites of passage. And
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then like, you know, you became a man, you know, you were a man because you done something
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difficult. You know, I just, I find that wonderful. Yeah. The clan stones, I know there's a Mackay
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clan stone in Scotland somewhere. It's been on my bucket list to go like make a pilgrimage.
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Seriously? And go lift it. Yeah, man, you gotta go. If you can, if you, if you go, you'll just
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absolutely fall in love with it. I mean, I went to Scotland and driving around the highlands
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it's, it was just magical is all I can call it. You know, it's really the growl, what
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we call the growl, the love for stone lifting was cemented in driving around Scotland and
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meeting all these people because it's not just the lifting the stone. It's the actual
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area it's in, you know, it's the meeting of the people. It's the hearing the stories
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and the history. That's, that's what I draw you in.
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Oh, well, let's talk about Irish stone lifting specifically. That's what you're an expert
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in. And something you point out is that unlike these other stone lifting cultures, we know
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a lot about them, like in Scotland, in Spain, in Iceland, et cetera. The Irish stone lifting
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culture kind of got lost to history. When and why did that happen? Why did it disappear?
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Right. Okay. There's a lot involved in that. Um, I suppose a lot of it would have to do with
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our relationship with, with England, you know, with imperialism and colonialism. We were a colonized
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nation up until just under 100 years ago. So a lot of our ancient rites of passage and our strength
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was kind of taken away from us along with our culture and our language, you know, um, I'm not
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going to get too nationalist about this, but, um, a lot of that was taken from us, which then culminated
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in the great famine or genocide, whatever you want to look at it in the 1840s, where the Irish people
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were literally just living on potatoes because that's all they could afford. And then there was
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a massive potato blight in the forties, which killed half the nation, half the nation died or
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emigrated between 1845 to 1848. So you can imagine a lot of stones, a lot of stories, and a lot of
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people from these areas where the stones were lifted either died or moved to America or, you know,
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moved to Britain or moved there to Europe. So it was this huge, huge cultural rift that happened,
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you know? So, and you can imagine, I mean, if people are dying from starvation, the last thing
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you want to do is lift something heavy off the ground. You can barely lift yourself up off the
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ground. So that would probably be the main reason for this stop because all these historians and all
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these people I'm meeting in these areas and all these old books that I'm finding, the cutoff point
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was pretty much 1845. So a lot of the culture was just lost. It was just dead, probably like,
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you know, through no fault of our own. And all these stories were lost. You know, some of them,
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thankfully, some of them were written down, but like us, the Irish people, our culture is an oral
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culture. You know, we're a storytelling people. You know, I think we're kind of renowned for it
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worldwide. And the stories stayed, you know, father to son and mother to daughter, the stories of the
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stones remained and they were carried on down through the years. And I'm still finding, Brett,
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when I go to these places, there's always someone who will know about it. You know,
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there's always somebody who still knows the story that was passed down from his father and his great
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grandfather and all the way back. It's only a couple of people, you know, you were probably
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within maybe two generations of this being lost altogether. But that's why I'm just so happy to
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be able to bring, to be part of the resurgence and the kind of the re-emergence of Irish strength
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culture, but also Irish strength. You know what I mean? We were beaten down for so long
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from, like I said, colonialism and from other things as well, you know, but to be part of this,
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there's this whole cultural wave coming back, even in the last, they can feel it in the last five
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years. People are so proud now to be Irish and their culture is coming back, the language is coming
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back and our strength is now coming back. And I'm just, it's such an honor to be a part of that.
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What role did stone lifting play in Irish culture?
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Yeah. I mean, like, so all these stories are so cool because there was every Sunday, there was
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what they call the trials of strength. So, because I mean, people had nothing, you know,
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it was probably a culture of boredom as well. So, I mean, people used to meet up on Sundays at the
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local crossroads or in places of cultural merit, you know? So like say at wharfs or like harbors.
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So all the men would meet up before or after mass and they would lift these stones on the Sundays,
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you know? And you got great social status for being able to lift some of these stones. I mean,
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who could lift them the highest? You know, the men spoke them with honor and, you know,
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the women might find you more attractive. And, you know, that was the, to try the strength on
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the Sundays. And also they were very important at funeral games. Like you were saying with the
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Scottish ones, there was a lot of these graveyards and like probably about 70% of the stones I'm
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finding are in graveyards. And these were the testing stones of the funeral games. And like
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funerals pre-1840s used to last maybe two or three days. So they would have a whole day of funeral
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games, like almost like a celebration of life, you know? So they have like collar and elbow
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wrestling, they'd have running, they'd have leaping and they'd have stone lifting. So
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they were part of, of the culture, you know, they were deeply ingrained in who we are as
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a people. And it's great to see them coming back now.
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Okay. Let's walk us through about how you find these stones, because you had to become
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like, you weren't an archeologist or a folklorist before you found these stones, but you had to
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become one to discover them. Where does your research start?
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Yeah. So the research, it used to start because when I started this, like there was no one
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that had any interest in this, only me, you know, and it was just me going off on this
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kind of innocent journey by myself. So my first stone that I found was, it was just such an
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awesome story. Cause like I went on to Google, Brett, and I just typed in Irish lifting stones
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and you know, nothing came up. But after a little bit of research, I found it was a man called
00:19:33.560
Dr. Conor Heffernan, who is a professor actually up in Ulster University. And he had a piece
00:19:37.860
written about the possibility of Irish lifting stones. He's a professor of like sociology and
00:19:43.000
strength history. So I was reading his piece and he'd mentioned a man called Limo Flaherty.
00:19:48.140
Limo Flaherty is a very famous Irish writer, essayist, and short story writer. And he'd written
00:19:54.060
a story called The Stone. So like Limo Flaherty's out of print now, but so I ordered his book and then
00:20:00.240
I got this book called The Stone. And like, it's only about a nine page short story, but the way
00:20:07.380
he described the stone in this story was so vivid. I was like, that has to be a real thing. You know,
00:20:13.400
unless he's the best writer I've ever read, the way he describes the stone, the area it's in,
00:20:18.460
the way it made him feel when he lifted it. I'm like, this guy had lifted this stone. I mean,
00:20:21.940
there's one piece in particular, I'll read it to you if you don't mind. So this is an excerpt from
00:20:26.240
Limo Flaherty's story called The Stone. It was a round block of granite and it sparkled as the
00:20:31.400
sunshine shone on the particles of mica in its surface. It lay on the ground on a clear space
00:20:35.880
between the rocks. All around it, there were bruised stones bruised to a powder and where it
00:20:39.920
lay, there was a little hollow. That stone had lain in that place as long as the oldest traditions in
00:20:44.160
the village could remember. And from time immemorial, it had been the custom of the young men of the
00:20:48.240
village to test their strength by lifting it. I was like, that's such a cool line. That grabbed me
00:20:52.540
straight away. And this is on Inishmore, which is a small island off the
00:20:56.180
west coast of Galway. So I was like enamored with this story. So I just started researching
00:21:01.900
the Aran Islands. And I found that there was a woman online who was speaking on a Reddit thread
00:21:07.060
about 10 years ago called Fiona. And she was speaking to the great Peter Martin, who was the
00:21:10.860
stone finder over in Scotland. And she was like, yeah, the story that Liam O'Flaherty wrote about
00:21:15.080
is true. She said, it's a real thing. The stone is a real stone. It's down on this pathway in
00:21:19.840
Gortna Koppel. And I think it's still there. She's always written out and read it. I was like,
00:21:25.300
are you serious? So straight away, I jumped into a camper van. My friends, we drove like
00:21:30.080
four and a half hours over to Galway. I got on the ferry and walked down, sorry, cycled
00:21:34.220
down to this place. It's a 25 minute cycle. And we got to this rough Bola Stream pathway
00:21:37.700
in Gortna Koppel. And I was just looking around and like, the Aran Islands is just stone. It's
00:21:43.520
like walking on the surface of the moon. It's just rocks. It's this glacial karist landscape.
00:21:47.100
It's just rocks everywhere, you know? So like, how am I going to know which rock is the rock?
00:21:51.040
You know, there's tens of thousands of them here, but I was walking down and I had this
00:21:55.080
book in front of me and I was reading it and it said it lay in the ground in clear space
00:21:59.860
between the rocks. And I was walking down this pathway and I could see this pink stone in
00:22:04.080
a field of gray, just this pink stone standing out like a beacon. And I walked down and there
00:22:09.700
it was with these bruised stones all around it. And I was like, that has to be it. Do you
00:22:14.300
know when something calls you? Like that has to be it, you know? So it just so happened that
00:22:18.240
there was a guy giving a walking tour with a couple of Americans. And I went up and accosted
00:22:22.840
him and said, look, excuse me. I said, I have to ask you, sorry for interrupting. Do you know
00:22:26.360
about the lifting stone? Oh yeah, that's it down there. He said, and I was like the pink
00:22:29.000
one. He said, yeah, the pink one there on the patch of grass. He said, yeah, we call
00:22:31.160
it the Moulin. The Moulin Port Féland-Dune. He had a name for it as well, you know? So that
00:22:36.360
was it. That was our first lifting stone found in Ireland. And it came from a story, a book
00:22:40.840
written back in 1927. And I'd say no one had probably lifted it since 1927 because no one
00:22:46.320
in living memory had lifted on the island because I asked a lot of the old islanders.
00:22:49.960
So that was the very first one, which is kind of almost fell into my lap. The next two or
00:22:53.480
three was the same. And then I went on to the Irish government. One of the best things
00:22:57.500
they ever done back in 1927, they put folklore on the school curriculum. So they said to the
00:23:03.540
school kids, like 12 year old kids, go back to your mom and dad and granddads and ask them
00:23:09.100
about your local traditions or folklore in your local area. So for three years, folklore was
00:23:15.420
on the school curriculum and all the children and all the schools in all of Ireland collected
00:23:20.260
tens of thousands of stories about, you know, anything that happened, whether it be battles
00:23:25.440
or old mythologies, but also there was folk heroes and local heroes and strong men and
00:23:31.460
strong women. Dina Kallula, they call them. And that's all collated and it's up in a library
00:23:36.460
up in Dublin. So I just started reading that. They actually have it all digitized now online
00:23:40.160
as well. It's called Dukas, Dukas.ie. And I started scanning through Dukas and looking
00:23:44.160
for stories of stones. And I found about eight or 10 from those old stories. But I mean,
00:23:48.360
it's amazing because like you said, you feel like Indiana Jones because you're reading through
00:23:52.180
these old stories that are a hundred years old and then you're driving to these places
00:23:55.820
and some of them are so old, they're not even on Google Maps. And then you're just asking
00:23:59.160
locals and they're, you know, some people might know, but then they point you to a guy who
00:24:02.180
does know and he's like, yeah, it's just over there or across that field. And then you walk into
00:24:06.000
this field and it might be this old room church and beside the church will be this totally
00:24:09.420
out of place stone, which is the lifting stone of the area. You know, it's, it's just been
00:24:13.300
incredible. It's been an absolute adventure story over the past couple of years, you know.
00:24:19.180
We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
00:24:23.740
And now back to the show. And as your work has gotten more publicity, are people coming
00:24:30.780
Oh man. Yeah. The difference now, you know, because it, like I said, it started off with me just
00:24:34.920
like with a billhook in my car, just driving around Ireland, you know, and hacking through
00:24:39.260
hedges and sometimes find them, sometimes not. But now, because I just can't, I can't believe
00:24:44.980
the publicity it's been getting, you know, it's been kind of jarring a little bit, but
00:24:49.220
like in a good way, because now it's something I wasn't expecting. I was going to be doing
00:24:53.080
this anyway, but people have lashed onto it. Like I said, it's this whole cultural resurgence
00:24:56.900
that's happening over Ireland. There's this wave of national pride that's there now,
00:25:00.860
you know, and people are, have just fallen in love with this journey. So there's people
00:25:05.560
coming, like I said, coming out of the woodwork. There's literally, I'm just back from like
00:25:09.220
Saturday, three days ago. I'm back with another find down in, in County Cork, you know, that
00:25:13.820
a man said, I was just talking to a local woman asking for directions. And she said, yeah,
00:25:17.840
it's just down there past the lifting stone on the right hand side. You know, he's like,
00:25:20.500
what, what do you mean? Yeah. She had the lifting stone down there on the crossroads.
00:25:24.060
And like, so I said, people in the area know, but nobody else knows, you know? So he phoned me
00:25:28.040
straight away. David, you won't believe it. I'm just after this stone, I just have to fall
00:25:31.360
into my lap. And we went down and we got to lifting that stone on Saturday. And it's, they're just,
00:25:35.980
it's, it's nearly on the weekly note that there's people saying there's one here,
00:25:39.300
there's one here, there's stories here. You know, my, my granddad said, my great granddad
00:25:43.160
was talking to me, you know, it's just, it's awesome. People are falling in love with it now,
00:25:46.840
to be honest with you. And you mentioned a lot of these stones are in cemeteries because
00:25:50.460
they were used in funeral games, correct? Yeah, true, true. Yeah. And I think you mentioned,
00:25:55.140
I think in an interview, the cemeteries also served as a, you're able to do it in secret
00:25:59.280
because at the time, you know, within what you're talking about with the imperialism,
00:26:03.600
there was an attempt to kind of squash these local traditions. And so the Irish would be like,
00:26:08.700
well, we'll go to the cemetery at night and do this. So they don't see us.
00:26:12.640
Exactly. Well, you have like, you get hedge schools, they call them hedge priests who said
00:26:16.740
Catholic mass in graveyards or in ditches, you know, or at mass stones, they call them.
00:26:21.860
So just like at a prominent rock in the area, people would meet and they would say mass there
00:26:26.260
or they would be teaching children Irish because they couldn't teach it in schools. They weren't
00:26:29.960
allowed to. So they were teaching children the Irish language in literally in ditches,
00:26:33.840
you know, to keep, to keep the culture alive. But there's a stone up in County Cavan, up in a place
00:26:38.240
called Aukrim or Den. There's a stone called the Flag of Den. And the Flag of Den back in the 16th and
00:26:44.780
17th centuries was a mass stone. So this is where the Catholic priests would come and say mass
00:26:50.700
on this stone. And there's a big cross carved into the top of it. It's about three and a half foot
00:26:56.180
long, three foot wide. And there's a carved cross in the top of it. And that was used as a mass rock
00:27:00.040
to say Catholic mass in a graveyard with people on the lookout for British soldiers, you know?
00:27:04.820
So the history behind these things is incredible. I mean, that's 16th, 17th century when we were
00:27:08.520
under penal law. But before that, that stone was also used as what they call a pagan cursing stone.
00:27:14.600
So, I mean, Ireland is also full of these cursing stones that if you could flip a stone over or
00:27:18.620
turn it anti-clockwise, you could lay what they call a pishog or a curse on someone who'd done
00:27:23.800
you wrong. So this was a pagan cursing stone pre-Catholicism, which only came to Ireland maybe
00:27:28.540
in the year 700. So, I mean, that stone is, the history behind it is absolutely unbelievable. So
00:27:33.780
pagan cursing stone, then a Catholic altar stone. And then it was also used from the 17th century as
00:27:40.220
a lifting stone. So the men at funerals, all the strong men from the different parishes would see,
00:27:44.480
could they lift that stone to their knees? And if you could lift that massive flagstone to your knees,
00:27:48.620
that was word of you, getting into Ducas or being spoken of with massive respect in your local area.
00:27:53.520
And I'm really, really proud to say that I found that stone. It was really difficult to find
00:27:56.420
because there's no one had cut the graveyard I was in in over 20 years. So like the weeds were eight
00:28:01.520
feet tall. I was there with a billhook for two and a half hours and I managed to find that stone
00:28:05.460
and I managed to get a lift on it up to my knees. So just, yeah, it was just an amazing moment.
00:28:09.520
Like, I mean, the history in that thing is incredible.
00:28:14.900
Right. But including last weekend of 31 with, with, um, another three coming in the next month
00:28:21.140
with leads. So 31 found 31. And then with all these stones, you do attempt to lift them, correct?
00:28:31.320
I've lifted, I've lifted all barrel one. So I'm really, really proud to say that because the
00:28:36.460
airs lifting stones, Brett are massive. They're really, really heavy. I'm talking average
00:28:40.780
about 170 kilos. Wow. So, I mean, the, the, the, the, the Lima Flaherty stone is 171. Like the
00:28:46.320
Flag of Den is, is roughly 220, you know? So I mean, they're, they're absolutely mahoosive.
00:28:51.500
What's the heaviest stone you've lifted and found?
00:28:54.280
The heaviest stone, I think would be the Flag of Den, um, at 220. But I mean, the one,
00:28:57.720
the one last weekend we weighed it at 203. That's not too far off, the one down in Cork. And like
00:29:02.560
a lot of these, it was just, you had to get what they call getting the wind under them,
00:29:05.520
getting the, the Guay Fua, the wind under it. So just to get it off the ground was the valid lift,
00:29:10.260
you know? Okay. Okay. I was going to ask you the valid, so as long as you get it off the ground,
00:29:13.740
you're good. Some of them, yeah. Depend on the area. You know, there's all these different,
00:29:17.520
different rules in the different areas. Some of them, it was literally just to get the Guay Fua,
00:29:21.380
get the wind under it. Some of them, it was to get them to your knees. Some of them was to get
00:29:24.960
them to your, your chest. So it all depended on the area you're in, you know? What's the oldest stone
00:29:29.900
you found? Oh, I mean, there's, there's, there's a good few of them are, are pre-Christian.
00:29:35.020
Oh, wow. Um, so, you know, there's one I found on the Island of Inish Boffin,
00:29:38.740
which is an ancient enchanted island, actually off the West coast of Mayo.
00:29:42.840
That's a Boulogne stone. So Boulogne stone was a Druidic offering stone. So like a Druidic
00:29:47.260
offering bowl to the old Celtic gods, like, like Lou or Cromcroach. And like, you're talking
00:29:52.600
two, two and a half thousand, maybe 3000 years old, you know, that that was used as a day,
00:29:57.500
as a, like a conduit to deities well before Christianity came here. So, I mean,
00:30:04.700
I mean, is there an estimate of how many stones there might be in Ireland?
00:30:09.780
I mean, I remember talking to somebody on a podcast like this two years ago, and we just
00:30:14.620
found the first one, you know, we'd found the Lima Flaherty stone. And I remember there's been
00:30:18.760
a huge deal. And I remember getting wicked emotional about it because like, we'd finally
00:30:21.840
gotten on the map. You know, we were back, we had one stone. I was talking to a, um, a famous man
00:30:27.180
called Stevie Shanks, whose dad, Jack Shanks is one of the most prominent dinny stone lifters in the
00:30:32.180
world. And, uh, Stevie's saying, imagine if we got 10 stones, he was there. Imagine if we got 10,
00:30:36.840
but double figures would not be incredible. And I remember thinking, you know, I hope so,
00:30:41.360
but it's doubtful because I didn't know where to even look at that stage. So, I mean, for me to go
00:30:45.600
from one to 31 in just under two years, I mean, I really think this guy's the limit on this because
00:30:51.420
I think this was a nationwide culture. You know, it's not just concentrated in one area. It's a
00:30:56.840
nationwide culture. And I think practically, I would say almost every village in Ireland,
00:31:00.540
every crossroads had a testing stone, you know, whether it was a putting stone or a lifting
00:31:05.240
stone. So I'm thinking there could be hundreds. I think there could be hundreds over here.
00:31:09.720
So you're not just finding these stones and lifting them. You're also cataloging the stories.
00:31:14.600
You've become a folklorist. Are there any stones that have a unique story that you're fond of?
00:31:21.060
Oh, I mean, they're all incredible. I mean, they're all of the stories.
00:31:24.580
All of the stories are just amazing. You know, it's hard to pinpoint one down.
00:31:32.380
Do you think in the likes of maybe something like magical attached to it?
00:31:35.420
Yeah, let's do that. I want like something magical. I want something mythical.
00:31:39.300
So, I mean, the stone, let's just say that the last one I found, you know, it's called
00:31:44.180
Cloak on Kahir Daruk, which means the stone of the red chair. And it's at the red chair cross
00:31:50.720
in Kildorrary in County Cork. So it's called the red chair cross because the ancient high king of
00:31:57.640
Munster, which is the province I live in in Ireland, was a man called Mahan. And he was killed
00:32:02.480
at that cross in the year 976. And then his younger brother, Brian Beru, who was probably one of the
00:32:08.960
most famous figures in Irish history, he became then the next king of Munster. And then he became the
00:32:14.340
high king of Ireland and he drove out the Vikings, the Danes in the Battle of Clontarf. So, I mean,
00:32:19.760
you're talking, the history behind that thing is absolutely incredible. But I mean,
00:32:24.440
the best mythological one I can think of is the Cloak on Dalla up in County Mayo, which is just
00:32:28.520
unbelievable. It's like, there's giants throwing stones all over Ireland, right? So, I mean,
00:32:33.680
every glacial erratic in Ireland, the mythology behind them was there was a giant who threw the
00:32:40.060
stone from a mountaintop, right? So, I mean, they could be anything up to 60, you know, 100,
00:32:46.000
200 tons, massive, massive stones. But there was this giant throwing stone in Aukagower up in County
00:32:52.640
Mayer. And it said all the stones have that the giant put the mark of his hands in the top of the
00:32:57.660
stone where he squeezed it by soft clay. And this giant used to throw the stone around like a pebble.
00:33:03.100
And then the Irish men in the area used to see where they are strong as the giant. So, they would
00:33:06.660
also try and lift the stone. So, I thought that was just the coolest story I'd ever heard. It was like,
00:33:10.660
you're telling me that there's a stone that's related to an Irish giant. You know, the marks
00:33:15.520
of his hands, his fingerprints are on the top of the stone where he picked the stone up and squeezed
00:33:19.000
it. And it's still there. So, I went up to that place and it's a five and a half hour drive from
00:33:23.200
where I am in the bottom of Ireland. And I drove into this village and on the village green, right in
00:33:27.300
the middle of the green was this massive stone with these huge fingerprint marks in the top of the
00:33:33.680
stone, you know, thumbprint, fingerprint marks. And that's the giant's throwing stone of Aukagower.
00:33:39.080
And I got a lift on that, broke the ground with it, weighed it at 182 kilos.
00:33:44.100
But I mean, there's mythology, there's lore. I mean, it's like mythology and reality. And like
00:33:49.040
that stone is the bridge in the middle of the two of them. You know what I mean? It's the bridge
00:33:52.060
between both. And I think that's what stone lifting is, especially in Ireland. It's the intersection of
00:33:56.020
mythology, folklore, and reality. It's just incredible.
00:33:59.140
Are you learning anything about the people and the men who have lifted these stones? Like, I mean,
00:34:03.620
are you sort of learning the genealogy of these stones?
00:34:06.660
Definitely. Definitely. I mean, it's very important. I mean, I don't, it's not a lifting
00:34:10.160
stone unless someone had lifted it before. So there's always a story about a man who'd lifted
00:34:13.680
it. I mean, there's one in Claheen in County Tipperary, where a man called Thomas Lonergan
00:34:18.900
was the only man in the parish who could lift this stone. And up to 200 men would come every
00:34:23.460
Sunday and see if they picked the stone up, but nobody could pick it up, only Thomas Lonergan.
00:34:26.860
So he got massive respect. And it's a wicked awkward stone. I went down and found it's like a
00:34:31.840
rectangular shape. So it's very, very hard to pick up. It weighs 177.5 kilos.
00:34:37.140
And there's no, no one said how high he lifted it. I mean, I got it up myself up to about mid
00:34:41.140
calf, which is a pretty decent lift on an awkward stone. But I had Sean Urquhart, who was probably
00:34:46.400
one of the best natural stone lifters in the world. He came over to me there over the summer
00:34:49.340
and we'd done a stone lifting tour, the very first Irish stone lifting tour. And he picked
00:34:52.860
that stone up to his chest and it was just one of the most amazing things I'd ever seen.
00:34:57.000
It was, it was just incredible. When you're blown away by something, you just, all you can
00:35:00.200
do is laugh. You know, you're like, I can't believe I've seen that, you know, but all of these
00:35:04.780
stones, there's always somebody who had lifted it before. And what you're doing is you're
00:35:08.480
putting your hands with, they put their hands, anything up to a thousand, 2000 years ago.
00:35:12.620
So I just think that's just so cool. You're reaching back to the past and you're grabbing
00:35:17.380
Yeah, that is really cool. Is there a place where you're cataloging this? So people,
00:35:21.180
other people can see and learn about this or contribute? Are you doing this online?
00:35:25.420
Yeah, I'm doing it online. I mean, I'm also writing a book. I'm the process of, I'm nearly
00:35:29.120
finished writing the book. Actually, the book is literally almost like a diary of my grail
00:35:33.700
diary, I suppose you call it, of the finds, the meeting, the people, the stories and the
00:35:38.480
lifting of the stone, how it felt, all that kind of stuff. But if you want to find me online,
00:35:41.280
I'm down as Indiana Stones online, Indiana Stones on Instagram. So if you hit me up on that,
00:35:47.920
you'll just see me lifting a massive pink boulder. You can't miss me. And all of the stories are on
00:35:54.600
On there. Well, let's talk about stone lifting. Let's say someone's listening to this and they're
00:35:58.320
like, I want to lift one of these stones. I want to go, I want to go to Scotland and lift
00:36:01.760
the clan McKay, McKay stone. But here's the thing. If you deadlift 405 pounds, 500 pounds,
00:36:09.620
600 pounds, you might think, well, I'm really strong. Lifting a 400 pound stone, that is really
00:36:15.180
difficult. Like what makes lifting a stone so hard?
00:36:19.240
I mean, like, first of all, your surroundings dictate the lift. You're outside, you know,
00:36:22.780
you're not in a nice, comfortable, warm gym. You're in Scotland, you're in Ireland,
00:36:26.180
mainly in the west of Ireland. It's a lot of the time it's lashing rain. The ground is
00:36:29.940
wet. It's muddy. And your footing is, isn't great. You know, then you've got the texture
00:36:35.180
of the stone. You know, it could be a very, very round stone, especially some of the ones
00:36:38.220
in Scotland. They're very, very rounded. They've been run through rivers for thousands of years.
00:36:42.620
So they're smooth like marble, you know, so your grip becomes an issue. You're also going
00:36:47.140
down lower. You're going down like to grass level. You're going down to the ground. You're
00:36:50.640
not picking up a nice knurled bar with chalk. You're picking up something that's on the
00:36:55.360
ground. And the center of gravity is difficult. You know, it's, it's awkward. It's oddly shaped.
00:37:00.780
A lot of the ones in Ireland are very oddly shaped. So you have to find the center of
00:37:03.940
gravity and then you're pulling from a lower position. So like you're not pulling from
00:37:07.700
a nice upright deadlift position. You're pulling from a much lower position. So like your glutes
00:37:13.640
and your hamstrings and your hips have been very, very strong. You know, it's a totally different
00:37:17.440
thing. I mean, the way I describe it to people is if you watch the Arnolds, you know, I watch
00:37:21.420
the Arnolds strongman events. You've guys over there who deadlifted maybe 450 kilos, well
00:37:25.720
over 400 kilos, but they're lifting the Bill Auden tombstone, they call it, which is 186.
00:37:31.060
And a lot of those guys can't even pick that stone up, you know? So you're talking like
00:37:35.020
they're going well over double that in a deadlift and they can pick it up relatively easily,
00:37:40.740
but some of them can't pick up a 186 kilo stone even inside with tacky towels. So it just
00:37:46.720
goes to show you how difficult it is to pick up an oddly shaped object as opposed to something
00:37:52.580
Is there like a technique you need to use so you don't injure yourself during the lift
00:37:57.240
or is it just trial and error? Because I mean, like with deadlift, right? There's like a specific
00:38:01.100
technique you use, right? You set your back, extend your lower back so your back's not rounded
00:38:05.640
and then you obviously can't do that when you're lifting a stone. So how do you lift a stone
00:38:12.020
I mean, everybody's like, yeah, yeah. Like everybody's biomechanics are different. Everybody's
00:38:16.760
lever lengths are different. I mean, I'm lucky I've got really long arms. So I can get down
00:38:20.520
to a nice neutral position, keep my back straight and use my legs. You know, it's all legs.
00:38:25.600
You know, of course your back has to be strong, but I mean, I'm pretty much, I'm feeling it
00:38:28.840
in my hamstrings and my hips and my glutes and a little bit of lower back then as it comes
00:38:32.880
up a bit higher. But it's pretty much a deadlift feel for me when I'm doing it. But I mean,
00:38:37.540
I've seen guys lift with slightly around the backs, you know, and I know, I know a lot of
00:38:41.840
stonewriters online now and I've seen them and my God, are they some strong people, you
00:38:45.420
know? But again, like you have to be careful, like anything, you have to start light and
00:38:49.340
get your technique right first. So do what feels right for you. If it feels comfortable,
00:38:53.780
start light, you know, start around the 40, 50, 60, 70 kilo mark and just start building
00:38:59.020
reps. And as you get stronger, just keep going with that same technique. And as long as it feels
00:39:04.700
Do you develop programming for stones? Like let's say you discover a stone and it's really
00:39:09.220
heavy. Do you think about what can I do so I prep myself so I can lift that stone? Or
00:39:13.800
do you just go in there? Like, I'm just going to make the attempt. No training required.
00:39:17.540
I'm coming from kettlebell sports, which is strength endurance. I mean, I never lifted heavy,
00:39:21.100
you know, before. I never lifted heavy. So I mean, then I'm coming to some of the heaviest
00:39:24.840
lifting stones in the world, the aerostones. Like they're some of the heaviest in the world.
00:39:27.760
This is like the boss level now, you know? So it's like you're coming in at some of the
00:39:32.680
the heaviest lifting stones in the world, but without a massive strength background. So
00:39:34.980
I mean, I've had to work really hard over the past two years to be able to lift these
00:39:39.140
stones up. But yeah, what I have done is I'm just using it like say a linear deadlift
00:39:43.020
program, but I'm applying that with stone lifting. So what I have is a load of different kettlebells
00:39:49.020
in weights at the back garden and have a nice flat stone. So I'm just using that flat stone
00:39:53.120
as almost like a base. It weighs 90 kilos of stone and I'm stacking kettlebells on top of
00:39:57.020
that. And using that as almost like a deadlift strength day twice a week. So I've built that
00:40:01.880
up now to where I'm like, I'm, I'm doubling 180 kilos off the ground. So I'm from the 90
00:40:06.680
kilo stone with the 42 and a 48 kilo kettlebell. But I've built that up over, over two years.
00:40:11.320
I mean, I remember going over to the Lima Flaherty stone bread and I couldn't budge it.
00:40:14.240
I couldn't get it an envelope's width off the ground and weighs 171 kilos. So I put in 16 months
00:40:19.460
of training and I went back and I lifted it in front of a crowd about three months ago. And it
00:40:23.100
was just an incredible validation for putting in hard work because like, you're not
00:40:27.000
just going to be able to pick up these things straight away. You have to work at it. You
00:40:30.120
know, to stone state stone is always going to be the same. It's always going to be the same
00:40:32.940
way to stone ways the same from one year to the next. But what do you have to do to get
00:40:36.800
better at lifting it? You have to get stronger. So write your program and off you go, you know.
00:40:41.800
And what's been interesting about, you know, because of your work and the work of other
00:40:45.980
people reviving stone lifting in other countries and other cultures, it's starting to spread.
00:40:50.960
So even if you live in the United States that doesn't have a stone lifting culture,
00:40:54.780
you're actually starting to see stone lifting cultures develop in the United States. I think
00:40:59.100
there's some places and some of the states, yeah, some of the states are developed. Yeah. Utah's got
00:41:05.780
like a lifting culture where there's like lifting stones throughout the state.
00:41:10.840
Yeah. Ohio, Sean Norquhart has his in Ohio as well. You've Utah, you have, then you have the guys in
00:41:15.580
Canada, the Edmonton stones in Canada. So you've guys starting their own culture, which I just think is
00:41:22.200
wonderful. You know what I mean? Because in a hundred years time, that will be a historical
00:41:25.620
stone, you know, even in 50 years time, it will be in 20 years time. It will be, it's like, oh,
00:41:30.100
that's the stone that such and such a guy used to lift. And people will come from all over to lift
00:41:34.080
it. Then, you know, you're starting a culture, which I just think is commended, but it's absolutely
00:41:37.880
fantastic. And that's happening all over America. It's happening all over the world. People are starting
00:41:43.640
their own cultures now. And like I said, in the future, you know, it's like the old man planting an
00:41:48.020
acorn, he'll never see the tree, but they're planting the seeds of these stone lifting cultures
00:41:52.460
that they won't see, but they will have cultural value in the years to come. I just think it's
00:41:57.240
fantastic. Yeah. I think that's interesting that that's universal across cultures. There's something
00:42:01.720
about just picking up a heavy stone that tell it's so visceral. I think that's why people,
00:42:06.860
people are drawn to it. It's primal. You know what I mean? It's primal. It's you,
00:42:11.960
it's the bones of man versus the bones of the earth, you know, and you can feel it in your DNA
00:42:16.660
and it, you know what? It looks awesome. And people respond to it because like everybody knows
00:42:22.340
a stone is heavy and everybody knows, oh my God, look at that. I'd never be able to pick that up,
00:42:26.560
you know? And some of these stones I'm looking at, I started off thinking I'll never be able to pick
00:42:30.320
that up. And now I am, you know? So it's like, it's, it's an awesome, awesome thing. And like I
00:42:35.240
said, it, it, it's deeply rooted, I think in, in who we are as humans. You've been doing this for
00:42:40.680
two years. What has stone lifting taught you about being a man?
00:42:45.880
Well, that's a good question. It's taught me perseverance. It's taught me that if you want
00:42:52.560
something, you have to work for it. Sometimes it's not going to happen straight away. I mean,
00:42:56.620
some people could be very lucky and just be very strong naturally, but it taught me hard work and
00:43:01.740
discipline. And I'm out there in the nighttime and it gets dark at four o'clock in the evening here now.
00:43:07.640
And I'm out in the dark and the cold and the rain, and I'm lifting, training all winter. And then I'm
00:43:12.400
going off and I'm having my day in the sun then when I go lift these stones in the summertime.
00:43:15.960
And it's taught me that perseverance and willingness to put in hard work. I know that
00:43:20.980
it'll take time, but you'll get there eventually. And the same thing with kettlebell sport. It taught
00:43:26.020
me grit. It tempered the steel. You know, you become like a more distilled, more potent version of
00:43:31.320
yourself when you work towards something and then you get it. That feeling is just awesome.
00:43:35.500
Well, you mentioned that people can keep up with you on Instagram at Indiana stones,
00:43:40.540
which I love that Instagram handle. Is there anywhere else people can go to learn more about
00:43:44.720
your work? Check out the GQ article as well. Just type in GQ and my name, David Keown, and that'll
00:43:50.880
come up. And I've done a couple of cool podcasts as well, like the one we're doing now. And I'm just
00:43:56.500
so grateful. Thank you so much for having me on, Brett. So have a read and have a listen and see what
00:44:00.840
you think. And anybody wants to give me some support, I have a Patreon page because it's,
00:44:05.920
it's expensive to be driving around Ireland, but going to all these different places and putting
00:44:09.380
all the work in. So I'd appreciate it. And I'll follow and I'll like as well, if you could.
00:44:12.760
Fantastic. Well, David Keown, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:44:15.320
Thank you so much, Brett. I really appreciate it, man. Slán.
00:44:18.620
My guest there is David Keown. You can find more information about his work at his Instagram page.
00:44:22.480
It's Indiana Stones. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash stone lifting,
00:44:26.780
where you find links to resources, where you delve deeper into this topic.
00:44:30.840
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at
00:44:40.600
artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that
00:44:44.600
we've written over the years about pretty much anything you can think of. And if you haven't
00:44:47.840
done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or
00:44:50.920
Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the
00:44:55.080
show with a friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. As always, thank you for
00:44:58.860
the continued support. And until next time, it's Brett McKay reminding you to not listen to
00:45:02.140
the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.