This one was easily spotted from the road as it nestles beside the field boundary. It lives up to the expectation as you cross the field.The slipped capstone is huge, held in a near vertical position by the remaining portal and what appears to be a doorstone. The other portal is missing. Both sidetones and the backstone are still there and this would have been a pretty classic Irish dolmen had the capstone not pushed the backstone outward and fallen onto the back of the chamber. Maybe this happened when some fecker robbed the missing portal.
We spent a while at this one, amused and bemused at its incongruity there, stuck in a time-warp in the middle of some fairly prosaic pastureland.
There is a field near my home on Mrs Joe McGlelland's farm in Duffcastle, a large stone standing on four smaller ones. It is supposed to be an ancient druid's altar. It has been told that long ago two men dug under these stones and unearthed one of the smaller pillars in search of gold. When they went back to their home they found that the healthy baby they had left in the cradle was now a sickly child. It seemed to have changed in appearance too. It was said that they had done wrong and the change in the child was their punishment. This child lived for years but never grew any bigger.
In Mr John Magovern's field just at Duffcastle crossroads there is a long stone standing upright.
There are five marks on it supposed to represent the fingermarks of some ancient warrior.
There are some strokes and dots on the bottom of the stone. It is supposed that this is Ogham writing.
There are many forts near my home but there is not much known about them.
Recounted by James Tweedle for the Schools' Collection of Irish folklore in the 1930s. Digitised at Duchas.ie.
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