The Timoney Stones forum 2 room
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goosebal wrote:
Does anyone know much about these? I recently visited them in Ireland and was very impressed but have read snippets about them not being too genuine. So now not sure.
Ya its a tricky one. I think the main argument for them not being genuine is that there is no folklore in the locality attached to them such as legends of pipers or links to gods and such. However this could be explained perhaps by the famine of the 1840s hitting this area particulary badly.
I seem to remember from the North Tipp Arch inventory that the only folklore they had on them was that the local landlord & his agents used to race his horses around them.
So the jury is out I guess. I dont live too far away from them and have visited them a few times. Its very hard to get your head around what is going on. They dont seem to form any particular patterns but possibly that is because some of them have been missing.
Another canidate for a bit of geophysics. It would probably reveal any missing stones or patterns under the surface.

If they are fakes, they are good ones. Whoever built them knew a thing or two.

There are rows that terminate in a perpendicular flag - a configuration not found elsewhere in Ireland, but common on the moors of southeast England.

There are a few four-poster arrangements in the northern part, which have the correct arrangement of stone heights.

There is the huge circle - but this is on a steep slope.

It's an odd old place, alright.

The famine and land clearances certianly could account for the lack of lore. Remember, noone living around Tara recalled any of its folklore in 1837. It was O'Donovan that realised it was actually the Tara from the Annals when he did the Ordnance Survey work in that year by matching the monuments to the written record, not through recounted stories.

If you can lose the lore for Tara from local knowledge, you can lose anything!