h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Irish Stone Circles - A980255
Author: Gnomon - time to move on - U151503

While I'm no longer really writing for the Guide, this one was being worked on for the last two years, so I thought I'd finish it off. Finally visited Beaghmore on Wednesday, so this is now complete.

Thank you for this - very useful indeed as I find stone circles fascinating, but they are not often possible for me to get to so I enjoyed reading the Entry.

I had just a few comments as I read through:

In the Axial Stone Circles section "These are known as portal stones" - the portal stones are the ones opposite the recumbent? Maybe the mention of Scottish Recumbent Stone Circles is too early, as we haven't learned what Irish Recumbent Stone Circles are by that point.

The brief directions sound useful, but I wonder how future-proof they are when they include navigating via pubs etc...

In the Beaghmore section "The cairns are burial mounds " - should it be 'The burial mounds are cairns', or should 'dozen burial mounds' in the first paragraph of the section be 'dozen cairns'?

I see the Glossary section includes terms that are not related to the Irish Stone Circles topic specifically - as the Entry is 'very lengthy' at nearly 4,000 words I wonder if it would be better to split the Glossary out into a new general Entry and link it with this and the other Entries about stone circles.

Some good point there, Sasha.

I'll move the mention of Scottish Recumbent circles to the end of the description of the Irish ones, to avoid confusion.

I'll remove the Glossary. Anything that is unclear can be explained in a footnote.

"The cairns are burial mounds" - a cairn is a pile of stones, so the cairns are in fact the remains of burial mounds, which would have been piles of stones covered in soil and planted with grass. I'll reword it.

I see no problem with giving directions using pubs - they are a very permanent feature of the Irish landscape. Their names may change but the buildings tend to survive for decades if not centuries.

Changes made

This is a very interesting Entry!

I can't speak for this specific case but when you talk about the Irish and Scottish Recumbent Stone Circles would it be possible that they are not directly related to each other at all? You imply that they are related and the only proof seems to be that they are similar in shape. I can only speak from what I know about different structures, but it is very often the case that similar structures which are far apart from each other are in fact not related but just built in a similar way because it makes sense. So if it is not clear how they are related then maybe they are not and you should not imply that they are?

Kealkil, Ballylickey, County Cork:
'An unusual feature of it is that you can still see flat slabs set into the rubble that radiate outwards from the centre.'
I'm not quite sure how to interpret the flat slabs. What were they?

Great pictures by the way!

I don't really want to say too much in the entry about Scottish recumbent stone circles, but they are very similar to Irish ones:

Irish:

Odd number of stones
Stone at NE extremity of circle is recumbent
Entrance to circle opposite recumbent
Other stones in pairs, increasing in height as you move away from recumbent

Scottish:

Odd number of stones
Stone at NE extremity of circle is recumbent
Entrance to circle opposite recumbent
Other stones in pairs, decreasing in height as you move away from recumbent
Stones on either side of recumbent often touch it

It is clear that they are related, but it is not clear how this connection has happened historically since the two locations are geographically separated.

Flat slabs - I've reworded that sentence as follows. I hope it is easier to understand:

"An unusual feature of it is that among the rubble you can still see flat slabs standing on their edge that radiate outwards from the centre."

Thanks, I can visualize that now.

Excellent updates, thanks

That's good that the pubs are a permanent enough feature - they're not so much around my area these days... If they're not knocked down for housing, then they are reused in such a way that it would be difficult to guess that they had been pubs before (eg one is a supermarket and another couple are car salesrooms...)

This is very elegant. I enjoyed it. Very understandable to those of us who don't see standing stones and don't know anything about them or the landscape they're in. I particularly appreciated the explanation of moss and turf.

I enjoyed reading this entry too and look forward to seeing it with all the photos.

On a not entirely unrelated note, have you seen this news story about a Scottish 'stone circle'?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-46946652

<BB<

Now we know why ancient people built stone circles. They were lawn ornaments.

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