Standing stone, Baile An Bhúlaeraigh Theas, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Stone Monuments
On the gentle southern slopes of Knockmoylemore on the Dingle Peninsula, there is a standing stone that no longer stands, and possibly never did, at least not within living memory.
The site exists chiefly as a word on a map: the second edition of the Ordnance Survey marks the placename 'Gallaun' at this location, without any accompanying symbol to indicate a monument. A gallaun is the Hiberno-English and Irish term for a standing stone, typically a single upright megalith whose original purpose might have been territorial, ceremonial, or funerary. Here, however, no stone is visible in the field, and nobody locally appears to recall one ever being there.
The entry derives from J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, a substantial fieldwork project covering the Dingle Peninsula that catalogued monuments ranging from the well-preserved to the entirely vanished. This particular entry falls into the latter category. Whether the stone was removed, buried, broken up for building material, or simply misidentified by whoever named the spot on the nineteenth-century map is unknown. The placename itself is the only surviving evidence that something, at some point, may have been considered worth recording here.