Standing stone, Euglaune, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
On a low ridge in the pastureland of Euglaune in north Cork, there may or may not be a standing stone.
That ambiguity is, in its own way, the most interesting thing about this site. Two large slabs lie among a pile of field clearance, and nobody can say with any confidence whether they were ever upright, or whether they simply arrived at their current position as farmers cleared the ground over the centuries.
In 1934, a researcher named Bowman documented two prostrate dallans at this spot, the word dallan referring to a tall, narrow standing stone, typically a simple unworked pillar of local rock. Bowman recorded them lying roughly 2.1 metres apart, partly embedded in the earth. That detail of the spacing is suggestive; paired standing stones are known elsewhere in Ireland, sometimes interpreted as entrance markers or as components of a now-lost ceremonial arrangement. But suggestion is not evidence, and subsequent inspection of the site found the slabs gathered into a field clearance heap, their original orientation impossible to recover. Whether Bowman saw them in situ or already displaced, whether they were ever raised at all, remains an open question.