Holy/saint's stone, An Comar, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Holy Sites & Wells
On a south-east-facing slope in the uplands above Lough Nafooey, with the Maumturk mountains visible to the south-west and the Partry Mountains rising to the north-east, there is a small piece of bedrock that local tradition holds bears the impression of St. Patrick's foot.
The stone barely breaks the surface, measuring roughly half a metre by a quarter, and the supposed footprint is a natural, shallow indentation in its upper face, trapezoidal in plan and only two centimetres deep. It is, by any objective measure, a modest thing. Yet at the time of its recording, the hollow was filled with coins, a rosary, a small metal cross, and religious medallions, accumulated there by people who had made the effort to find it.
The site is known locally as Lorg Padraig, meaning the track or trace of Patrick, and it does not appear on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, which suggests it was never officially documented and has persisted instead through oral tradition and quiet, continued veneration. Saint's stones of this kind, sometimes called bullaun stones or impression stones, are scattered across Ireland and typically involve a natural hollow in rock that has been interpreted through a religious or legendary lens, becoming focal points for devotion over generations. What sets Lorg Padraig apart is its setting and the care someone has taken to frame it: a rough drystone enclosure, built without mortar, hugs the outline of the stone in a U-shape and is closed on the east side by a single upright slab. The wall is low and plain, nowhere more than sixty centimetres on the downslope side, but it marks the stone out deliberately, distinguishing it from the surrounding rocky terrain as something that warrants protection and attention.