Standing stone, Derrygorman, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Stone Monuments
On the Ordnance Survey maps, a stone is marked with the Irish word 'Gallaun', the traditional term for a standing stone, a single upright megalith that appears throughout the Irish landscape as a marker whose original purpose, whether ritual, territorial, or funerary, is rarely recoverable.
This particular example was recorded in the townland of Derrygorman on gently sloping ground about a hundred metres east of the Owenascaul river, just west of a field boundary. The problem is that it may no longer be there.
The site was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a meticulous regional inventory that catalogued the extraordinary concentration of prehistoric and early medieval monuments along this Atlantic finger of land. At the time of that survey, the gallaun's position was described precisely in relation to the field boundary and the river. Since then, a track has been laid along the same line as the fence, and the stone may have been shifted or removed entirely to make way for it. The map says it exists; the ground may say otherwise.
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