At Moskeagh in County Cork, a prehistoric standing stone sits in open pasture on a south-west-facing slope, and there is, by all accounts, nothing to see. No upright silhouette against the sky, no arrangement of weathered granite breaking the grass line. Whatever once marked this spot has either fallen and been absorbed into the ground or was never quite what the word "standing" implies.

The antiquarian Seán P. Ó Ríordáin, writing in 1931, described the monument simply as "a large boulder", which suggests that even nine decades ago the site had already lost whatever commanding presence it might once have had. Standing stones, which were erected throughout Ireland during the Bronze Age and sometimes earlier, served purposes that are still debated, whether as territorial markers, points of ceremonial significance, or elements within a wider ritual landscape. A large recumbent boulder in a Cork pasture fits awkwardly into that story, caught somewhere between monument and geological accident. Whether it was toppled deliberately, fell of its own accord over the millennia, or was perhaps always a more modest feature than the category implies, is impossible to say from what survives.