Lost Rock Art at Coumbeg, Portroe, Co. Tipperary

Back in 2022 I received a newspaper cutting from a friend of mine, Joe Ryan Cooper about a bit of lost rock art in the Arra area. He said along the lines of, you probably already know about this one but just sending it on anyway! I didn't and I hadn't heard of it!

From Tipperary Vindicator / Limerick Reporter 1877 (not in copyright)

The newspaper was the Nenagh Guardian and it referred to an article by Maurice Lenihan in the Tipperary Vindicator / Limerick Reporter.

I wrote a detailed article about it in the Annals of Arra Vol. 5 under the title "Alleged Megalith in Coumbeg".

I have since knocked on doors and walked a lot of the townland looking for this possible rock art, to no avail.

Recently AI has been able to generate images from sketches and I thought it might be interesting to see what the sketch of it would look like in "real" life.

Here is it -

Created using Google Gemini

Hopefully some day this stone will turn up again sometime. As of now, my hunch is that it may be covered over.

If you want to purchase the journal, the Annals of Arra and support Arra Historical & Archaeological Society - follow this link

Arra Historical & Archaeological Society: Buy Journal

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...

The Tara Prince, the Egyptian Princess and other alleged links between Ireland and Egypt in ancient times

I think most of us have heard the stories that originate in the Lebor Gabala Erenn linking Scota or Scotia with Ireland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scota It is a great story but the problem is when it used as fact. I few years back I first heard of the claim relating to the Tara Prince and the faience beads that are claimed to originate in Egypt. "The Tara Prince" aka Tara Boy An excavation of the Mound of the Hostages in 1955 by Sean O'Riordain uncovered a number of items within the mound (which turned out to be a passage tomb). One was a set of faience beads now on display in the National Museum of Ireland. They were associated with a skeleton that in pseudoarchaeology has been dubbed "The Tara Prince". Copyright National Museum of Ireland When I read about the claim linking him back to Egypt curiosity got to the better of me and I had to see if there was any basis in it. You can see where the claim arose in O'Riordain's paper ...

The Tipperary Antiquarian

Search This Blog