A cillín (Irish: meaning "little church or burial ground"; plural cillíní), was a historical unconsecrated burial place in Ireland for children unbaptised at the time of death.[1] Suicides, shipwrecked sailors, strangers, urepentant murderers and their victims were also sometimes buried there—they were used for "infants and other ambiguous categories of individual".[2] Some of them are more than 1,000 years old. Ancient pagan burial practices were sometimes later co-opted by Christianity.[2]
The word cillín is a common element in Irish place names, often anglicised as Killeen.[3] An alternative meaning of cillín indicates a small church, from the diminutive form of Irish: cill, meaning church. The word is thought to come from the Latin: cella, meaning little church or oratory.[2]