Cross-inscribed stone, Behaghane, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Crosses & Monuments
A small slate slab lying on the ground beside a flat-topped boulder carries a number of lightly incised crosses, easy to miss against the surrounding landscape of south Kerry.
The boulder itself is known locally as a massrock, a term that points to a specific and fraught history: during the Penal Law period, when Catholic worship was suppressed, Mass was celebrated outdoors at such stones, away from the eyes of authorities. That this particular massrock sits within a cluster of much older sacred features gives the site an unusual layering, one form of devotion quietly overlapping with another across centuries.
The broader complex around Behaghane centres on the holy well known as Toberavilla, or Tobar an Bhile in Irish. It lies roughly thirty metres west-northwest of Kilcrohane Medieval church and graveyard, and is covered by a low drystone enclosure. On top of that structure rests a cross-incised slab, modest in size at around forty-four centimetres long and twelve centimetres wide, but significant as a marker of early Christian practice. The well takes the second part of its Irish name, an bhile, from a sacred tree, a category of site with deep roots in pre-Christian and early Christian Ireland. An ash tree, recorded simply as 'Old Tree' on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map, once stood beside the well and was locally reputed to mark the grave of St Crohane, the saint who gives his name to the nearby medieval church. The tree is gone now, but its former presence is preserved in the cartographic record.
The massrock and its inscribed slab sit just twenty-seven metres east of the well, making the entire complex compact enough to take in as a whole. The recumbent slate slab with its incised crosses lies beside rather than on the boulder, and the crosses are described as lightly cut, so patience and good raking light are likely to help in making them out clearly.