Bullaun stone, Oughtihery, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Holy Sites & Wells
A large flat stone lying on its side at a roadside verge might easily be dismissed as agricultural debris, but the subrectangular slab at Oughtihery in Co. Cork carries four deliberate hollows on what was once its upper face, and a ritual history that stretches back well before anyone thought to record it.
This is a bullaun stone, a type of early medieval or prehistoric carved rock found across Ireland, typically featuring one or more cup-shaped depressions whose precise original function remains debated but which were frequently absorbed into Christian devotional practice at holy wells and sacred enclosures.
Locally the stone is known as the Cloch-Beannachadh, meaning the Stone of Blessing or Benediction, and it originally stood near an associated holy well. Writing in 1879, the antiquarian R.R. Brash described the devotional practice in some detail: a person seeking relief from rheumatic pains or other ailments would kneel, placing each knee into one of the smaller hollows, repeat a prescribed number of prayers, and then drop a small offering into the largest hollow. This was performed in conjunction with rounds and ritual washings at the nearby well. The stone has four hollows in total, two at each end of the upper surface. The largest, measuring roughly 25cm by 16cm and about 12cm deep, is now incomplete, the edge having broken or worn away at that point. The others are more modest and roughly circular, each around 14cm across. At some point before 1851, when the antiquarian John Windele recorded seeing it, the stone had been removed from its original position beside the well and built into a roadside fence. By 1871 it had fallen from the fence and come to rest by the verge, where it essentially remains today, tipped onto its side. A possible early ecclesiastical enclosure lies roughly 500 metres to the north-east, which may point to a wider sacred landscape in the area that once gave the stone and well their context.