Bullaun stone (present location), Lickeen, Co. Wicklow

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Bullaun stone (present location), Lickeen, Co. Wicklow

A granite boulder sitting at Lickeen in County Wicklow holds something worth stopping for: three cup-shaped depressions, or basins, worked into its surface, clustered along one edge rather than spread across the flat top of the stone.

This arrangement is unusual in itself, and the fact that the boulder is no longer in its original location adds another layer of quiet mystery to an already enigmatic type of monument.

Bullaun stones are boulders, most often found near early Christian sites, that bear one or more deliberately hollowed basins ground into the rock surface. Their precise purpose is debated; they have been associated with cursing rituals, with the collection of rainwater believed to have curative properties, and with the grinding of substances in a more mundane, practical sense. This particular stone, one of two bullauns recorded in the immediate area, is a substantial piece of granite measuring roughly 1.65 metres by 1.1 metres and standing about 75 centimetres high. The three basins are set at one edge: the largest measures 33 by 30 centimetres and is between 12 and 20 centimetres deep; immediately beside it sits a smaller basin, 18 by 24 centimetres and 9 centimetres deep, with one side open at the edge of the stone itself; the third basin, set slightly to the back, is 20 by 30 centimetres and reaches 25 centimetres in depth. Where exactly the stone originally stood is not known, and a separate record exists for that unknown original location, which gives some sense of how carefully these monuments are tracked even when the full story cannot be recovered.

The concentration of three basins along a single edge, leaving the broad flat top of the boulder entirely unmarked, is the detail that lingers. Whether that placement was deliberate or simply reflects where the stone happened to offer a suitable surface for working is one of those questions that bullaun stones, as a category, tend not to answer cleanly.

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