On an east-west rocky ridge at Glansallagh in County Cork, largely obscured by gorse, there was said to be a standing stone visible from the adjacent road. A standing stone, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a single upright megalith, usually prehistoric, erected for purposes that remain debated but which often relate to ritual, boundary-marking, or astronomical alignment. Thousands survive across Ireland. This one, apparently, does not.

The story of the Glansallagh stone is essentially a story of negative evidence. Local information pointed to the ridge as the location of a possible standing stone, and the claim was specific enough to be recorded formally in the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork, Volume 5, published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in 2009. But an extensive inspection of the area found only natural features. No stone. The gorse is thick along such ridges, and the rocky outcrops of a Cork hillside can, under the right light or at the right angle, suggest shapes that memory or wishful reading might nudge toward the monumental. Whether what people saw was a particularly upright natural rock, or whether a genuine standing stone once stood here and has since been removed, toppled, or swallowed by vegetation, the record cannot say.