Friday 13 March 2020

The Danes Bed - Baurnaglanna / Lackabrack


Copyright - OSI
I was looking back over some notes I took about possible archaeological features mentioned in the Irish Schools Manuscripts.

One was a Danes bed in Lackabrack near the Silvermines."There is a Danes bed in one of Kennedy's fields in Lackabrack. A Dane was coming home from selling eggs. She was asked to take the shortest road she could so she jumped into Kennedy's field and she broke her leg in the fall. She died in that spot and was buried there. That is called her bed where she was buried. The previous owners of the field "Coghlans" ploughed around it and immediately they all got sick. The bed consists of two stones at the sides, one at the head and one at the foot."

I wonder could this be a description for the megalithic structure that is just on the townland boundary between Baurnaglanna / Lackabrack. It is described on archaeology.ie as follows

"There is no recognisable ancient feature at the position indicated on the OS 6-inch map which is on the E side of a field-bank at the foot of a S-facing slope just N of the Mulkear River. An OS Name Book (c.1840) records that the name applied to a 'a heap of stones covering about a square perch [c.5 m?] of ground'. An account in a later OS Name Book (1904) claims that the feature in question was a horizontally laid stone. Crawford (1910, 41) noted a large stone buried in a field bank a projecting corner of which rested on a smaller stone. The nature of the feature referred to is uncertain. (De Valera and Ó Nualláin 1982, 97-8, No.5)"

Borlase gives a description as follows

"Borlase, No. 1 (under name of Knockanroe). This is a doubtful specimen, and situated in an unusual place, that is in the side of a glen or ravine. A large flat stone is buried in the bank, with one corner projecting, and this corner rests on a smaller stone ; nothing more can be seen. Bauraglanna is in the valley called Glenculloo, at the foot of the Keeper Mountain, a mile or more south of the village of Silver mines".


I'd say there is a very good chance they are the same.

https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4922152/4856580


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