It takes a careful eye to read it now, but the shape is still there, pressed into the slope.

This is a rath, the earthen form of the ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built across Ireland roughly between the third and tenth centuries. Thousands of them survive in various states of preservation, but many, like this one, have been worn down by centuries of agricultural use and the steady encroachment of grazing land. The Kylebeg example is oval in plan, measuring approximately 45 metres on its east-north-east to west-south-west axis and around 35 metres across the narrower north-north-west to south-south-east span. What survives of the enclosure is defined partly by an earthen bank running from the north, around the east, and on to the west-south-west, and partly by a scarp, a natural or cut slope in the ground, continuing the circuit back around to the north. A scarp in place of a built bank often suggests that the original construction made use of the hillside itself, cutting into the slope on one side rather than raising a full earthwork all the way round.