That the whole arrangement has persisted for what are likely several thousand years gives the detail an odd, quiet comedy.

The stone stands at the northern edge of a small stream in a field boundary in Ballintruer More, County Wicklow, oriented along a NNE-SSW axis. It is a substantial presence: 2.1 metres high, 1.69 metres wide, and 1.1 metres thick, a slab of local granite that would have required considerable effort to raise and position. Standing stones of this kind are generally associated with the Bronze Age, though firm dating is rarely possible without excavation, and their original purposes remain genuinely uncertain, with theories ranging from boundary markers and ceremonial monuments to memorials for individuals or events long since unrecorded. What makes Ballintruer More slightly unusual is not its scale, which is impressive but not exceptional, but the visible pragmatism of its installation. Someone, at some point, decided the stone needed a little help staying vertical and tucked a smaller granite fragment beneath it. Whether that intervention is ancient or more recent is unknown, but it is hard to look at the arrangement and not feel a certain sympathy with whoever did it.