This tree/stone struck a chord, Lough Gur to be precise - mythography forum quote;
Michael Dames -Sacred Ireland.. This is the Tree of Trees rooted in the bed of Lough Gur (very sacred prehistoric place). Every seven years the lake would dry out and this tree would appear, Dames in HIS legend-making equates the tree with Eogabal (Aine's treetrunk father). Eogabal has united with his brother Uainide, now this is where Dame's storytelling unfolds. Both men traveled from the central Uisnech (central sacred hill) to confirm the mountain named after the goddess Aine as Munster's centre. So the Tree of trees drew several layers of reality together, Eogabal + Uainide = axis mundi = World Tree. to quote "the mythic synthesising vegetable, which brings the world of the gods and humanity together. It stands like the Christian cross at the centre of many European cosmologies".
There is a standing stone named Cloch a bhile(Stone of the Tree). This stone stand south west of the henge monument, and is an extraordinary dramatic stone. So in this celtic world of many layers the phantom tree beneath the lough, the ideal tree would be seen again. Equally the stone tree was also an outpost of the sacred, where treetrunk and Aine's female trunk merged into one effigy, a cosmological axis...
Not sure where Michael Dames got his information from, turning stones into trees, or if this is all a bit of folktale similar to 'thrown devil stones' in England. ;)
