Or so the story goes. A rath is an early medieval earthwork enclosure, typically circular, built as a farmstead and surrounded by one or more earthen banks. They number in the tens of thousands across Ireland, and for centuries ordinary people have treated them with considerable wariness. This one, sitting inside a churchyard, carries that unease at a particular pitch.

The account comes from the Schools' Collection, a folklore archive assembled between 1937 and 1939, in which schoolchildren across Ireland recorded local stories, customs, and beliefs, often taken down from older relatives and neighbours. The entry from Calary National School is brief and matter-of-fact in the way folklore often is: a man approached the fort with a plough, and the moment he took hold of it, the horse and plough were taken clean out of his hands and never seen again. The man fled. No name is given, no date, no further detail. The fort is referred to simply as a fairy fort, the common Irish term for a rath, reflecting the widespread belief that such enclosures were inhabited by supernatural forces and were dangerous to disturb or destroy. That this particular example sits within a Christian burial ground adds a quietly complicated layer; two kinds of sacred or at least inviolable ground, overlapping.