Skip to main content

An Fear Breaga or the False Man

An Buchaill Breige on Luddenmore hill in Co. Limerick

An Fear Breaga or the "Lieing Man" seems to be a fairly common name applied to monuments particularly standing stones that look a bit like a person or "false man".

There is an interesting bit of folklore relating to the name which attributes a different type of story to the name, this time from the Glen of Aherlow.

"Fear Bréige - the old-time sun dial for the people who lived in the mid-valley (Glen of Aherlow). It stands out like a real Fear Bréige on the mountain sky line above Lough Muskery. When the sun is seen from the valley to be directly overhead it, it is 12 o clock noon. (Many a child weary from haymaking and longing for the dinner hour was told to look up and notice that the sun hadn't yet come overhead "fear bréige")."

https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4922274/4866364/5052610

So this appears to have been a natural "Fear Bréige" or some kind of marker that may have looked like a standing stone on top of the Galtees and one of the mountain tops there is noted as Fear Breaga.

On the old OS maps it is marked as "stones" and looks a bit like a cairn to me.


There is also a great picture of a false man from the National Monuments Service here

https://www.facebook.com/563478597003852/photos/a.578592548825790/1711159485569085/?type=3&theater


Does anyone from the area have a picture of this "Fear Bréige" in the Galtees or know more about it?

Comments

  1. Jimmy Barry6 July 2019 at 22:58

    Fearbreaga is a large cairn that has been made into a shelter over the years. The center stones are now a sheltering wall of stones.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hag Stones, are they an example of authentic Irish folklore or a neo-pagan import?

By Darkone CC BY-SA 2.0 The first time I ever heard of Hag-stones was this year. They are more commonly known as Adder stones and described on wikipedia as follows: " An adder stone is a type of stone, usually glassy, with a naturally occurring hole through it. Such stones have been discovered by archaeologists in both Britain and Egypt ."  In Britain they are also called hag stones , [1] witch stones , serpent's eggs , snake's eggs , or Glain Neidr in Wales , milpreve in Cornwall , adderstanes in the south of Scotland and Gloine nan Druidh ("Druids' glass" in Scottish Gaelic ) in the north. In Germany they are called Hühnergötter ("chicken gods"). In Egypt they are called aggry or aggri . Adder stones were believed to have magical powers such as protection against eye diseases or evil charms, preventing nightmares , curing whooping cough , the ability to see through fairy or witch disguises and traps if looked at ...
3 comments
Read more

The Origins of the surname Ryan

NOTE: This is currently a work in progress and I ask for any feedback on what I have written. Ryan is one of the top ten surnames by population / number of people in Ireland. It would be nice if there was a simple explanation as to the meaning of the surname Ryan, unfortunately to my knowledge there isn't. The most likely explanation is that it goes back to a King or Chief of Idrone circa 900AD named Rian or Rien. It was around this time that the Irish began taking on surnames and it may be that it was after him his descendants began to be called, O or descendent of Rian. We are not sure how or when exactly the O'Mulryan name came about. It is likely that it means "descendent of the followers of Rian". However, this is not certain. We will see further down in this article that the genealogies suggest they are both descended from the same ancestor circa 900AD. Although other evidence does contradict this. Just what Rian means is not known for sure. Explana...
6 comments
Read more

Ryan Family Nicknames

Over 500 individual Ryan Family nicknames - many with townlands associated with them. Click Here
15 comments
Read more