Bullaun stone, Grillagh, Co. Limerick

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Holy Sites & Wells

Bullaun stone, Grillagh, Co. Limerick

Somewhere in a flood-prone field in County Limerick, a hollow carved into rock sits roughly 56 centimetres deep and 36 centimetres across, shaped, as one early twentieth-century observer put it, like the exterior of an egg shell.

That observer was writing in 1913. More than a century later, aerial surveys taken across three separate platforms, including Google Earth imagery from 2018, failed to locate it at all. What remains visible, possibly, is a small brown patch of worn grass.

A bullaun stone is a boulder or outcrop bearing one or more cup-shaped depressions, ground into the rock by human hands. Their origins are debated, but they appear across Ireland in association with early Christian sites and older ritual landscapes alike, often attracting folk beliefs about healing or cursing waters that collect in the hollow. The Grillagh example was recorded by Lynch in 1913, who described it as sitting at the south-east edge of a drained swamp lying between the townlands of Greallach, Ardnaboula, Knockderk, and Ballydaheen. Lynch noted its close resemblance to another bullaun near Bourchier's Castle, a few miles away. The current Ordnance Survey Ireland six-inch map marks the spot plainly, annotated simply as "Bullaun", which gives the monument a kind of cartographic confidence that the ground itself does not entirely support. Two ring-barrows, low circular earthworks associated with prehistoric burial, lie within 300 metres to the east and west, placing this modest hollow in a landscape that has been marked and remarked by people across a considerable span of time.

The site sits in wet pasture liable to flooding, approximately 85 metres north of the Ballydaheen townland boundary and 90 metres west of the boundary with Kilballyowen. There is no formal access, and the ground conditions alone make any visit a muddy proposition. The OSi six-inch map annotation provides the best navigational guide, though as the aerial survey record makes clear, the stone itself may be beneath grass or water depending on the season. Anyone determined to find it might look for that worn brown patch, but should be prepared for the possibility that one of Limerick's older monuments is, for now at least, keeping its own counsel.

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