Recently rediscovered megalithic stone pair in Tipperary

When people say everything that has been discovered, has already been discovered, this stone pair is a case in point that it most certainly hasn't.

This standing stone pair isn't hidden up in some remote valley but by the side of a road, just inside the ditch. It is however in an upland area and would have been relatively remote over the years.

I was chatting to local man, Ger Hickey, about trying to find a stone with rock-art in the Arra Mountain area. We thought we were on the trail of it but it ran cold unfortunately for the time being.

In passing he mentioned these stones and of course like a lot of unrecorded stuff, most people just presume that it is "known" about.

I was able to help record them with the National Monuments Service. The map viewer on archaeology.ie isn't updating currently and I don't know when this will be fixed but they are now officially recorded I'm assured by the archaeologist that I reported them to.

I recently got some old photos from a relative of local historian Mikie Joy and within them were old photos of the pair. Mikie knew about these stones well over 30 years ago but didn't know who to report them to or maybe did but was just ignored. If I hadn't know about them through Ger, I'd be scratching my head trying to figure out where the stones in the photos were!

So Tipperary has another stone pair and they are aligned in a roughly north-east - south-west direction. I didn't measure their height but they are both in the 1m to 1.2m high range tall.

I particularly like the one with the unusual hooked shape top.

As always, they are on private land and permission is required to access the land.

Comments

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 ...

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...

Ryan Family Nicknames

Over 500 individual Ryan Family nicknames - many with townlands associated with them. Click Here

The Tipperary Antiquarian

Search This Blog