Images

Image of Knocklayd (Cairn(s)) by ryaner

Magnificent views all around the top of the cairn – this is east to Fair Head and Carnanmore on East Tor.

Image credit: ryaner
Image of Knocklayd (Cairn(s)) by ryaner

The northern arc is scarped and the kerbstones have been removed.

Image credit: ryaner
Image of Knocklayd (Cairn(s)) by ryaner

Looking east of north, Rathlin in the mist on the right.

Image credit: ryaner
Image of Knocklayd (Cairn(s)) by ryaner

The kerbstones on the south-western arc lie unsocketed, flat on the cairn.

Image credit: ryaner
Image of Knocklayd (Cairn(s)) by crumb

Cairn an Truagh (Cairn of Woes) the very likely unopened mother passage tomb with trig point on the summit of Knocklayd, Co. Antrim

Image credit: Crumb

Articles

Folklore

Knocklayd
Cairn(s)

A walk to the summit of Knocklead, one of the Aura mountains, close to Ballycastle, was not fatiguing in the true sense of the word.
...Seventeen hundred feet higher in the air than when I set out, I felt as if the elastic and buoyant spirit within had risen in the same proportion.
... My seat at this moment was the Cairn of the Three, a tumulus where, according to old tradition, three Danish princesses, after many wanderings and sorrows, found a final resting place.

This mountain is believed by the peasantry to contain in its bosom a reservoir of water, destined one day to rush forth, and inundate the country to the extent of seven miles around.
Such was the prophecy of Sheelah Dubhni Malone, the Black Nun of Bona Margy, who formerly resided in the Franciscan abbey of that name, and enjoyed a high reputation for her knowledge of futurity.

From ‘Ireland Picturesque and Romantic’ by L Ritchie (1838).

The NI Sites and Monuments record mentions that the cairn, ‘Carn An Truagh’, is at the junction of 10 townlands, that it is a whopping 7m high, and that it uses lots of white quartz. The enclosing kerb is visible on the south west side. They suggest it could actually be a passage tomb.

Sites within 20km of Knocklayd