Sionnaigh Tine

Sionnaigh Tine/Carrickville was a village in Donegal, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (modern day Republic of Ireland), it was destroyed in 1825 due to English-speaking neighbors from a village telling the police about them after speaking Irish was made illegal.

It was a Irish-speaking village, It also used to be an area of republicans, pagans and seperatists, English was barely spoken there and Christianity was not very common.

Owning a cross or a Christian bible were so hated by the pagan population of Sionnaigh Tine that anyone caught practicing them would be marked with a mark of shame on their forehead then exiled that would prevent anyone from the village interacting with them when they went outside

On May 16th 1825, armed policemen, soldiers and settlers ransacked the village, shooting peasants, rounding them up and shooting them.

Everyone who lived in the village was killed and buried under shallow graves and the village set ablaze to cover up the massacre, but, there was one survivor among Sionnaigh Tine’s population, a 10-year old Michael McNamara.

Michael’s grandfather, 58-year old Padraig, who lived in the village but was not in the village at the time of the massacre, found the 14-year old Michael, who was now a lowly thief.

According to Michael, the sacrificed villagers went to Hell and as a ghost, he sometimes hears their cries for him to avenge against Britain.

Today in Donegal, the village remains destroyed and abandoned.

In the Ghost World, the ruins are Michael’s home, he sleeps on the ground and tends to use the spirits to get things for him like food, books, fresh water and CDs and a portable CD player, implying that Michael is learning how to read English and seems to like music.

Trivia.

 * According to Michael, he said the village was once a place of 1798 activity, It was also once a place of thieves and assassins in the 17th-18th century, It was also a place for pagan activity.
 * The name translated from Irish means Foxes’ Fire, which fits the motif of foxes being associated with Michael’s descendants.