Even when close to it, it is hard to appreciate the scale of this site. Only when I put a person in the picture could I get an idea of how big that capstone really was. It is a big rock! They reckon that it weighs between 100 -150 tonnes. It sits on two upright stones which would have acted as an entrance (the portal) and as such they are similar to court-tombs in that respect. This site also has a blocking stone between the door and this too is common enough in portal tombs. It would also have probably had side stones aswell and it looks like they would have collapsed over time. The capstone, like others, balances on low stones at the back and it ascends upwards to sit on the front uprights. How they managed to put them there is a good question. Monuments like this appear to have been built earlier than passage tombs and again, there is evidence of burial activity, but there is no way of knowing how long the stones were there before the burial took place. Like passage tombs, these monuments were originally covered by a cairn so all you would have seen was the entrance and the mound.
We have no idea why portal tombs follow this fashion. They come in a range of shapes and sizes. They can be spectacular like this one. They can be small and dumpy or tall and skinny. Some look just like a pile of rocks. Some have double capstones balanced on top. Others appear to be like modern sculptures, almost animal-like. Most sites have definitely been used and reused for burials over time, from at least the Neolithic times. Not all of them have burial evidence though, so there is the possibility that they were territorial markers. Some of them also have an alignment with the sun. This particular monument has never been excavated so its mystery remains, but if its size was anything to go by, it marks something or someone important.
Like most prehistoric monuments in Ireland, there is a lot of folklore associated with them. In historical times they were known as the Beds of Diarmuid and Grainne. Some of them have fortune-telling customs connected to them while others were used as dance spots. While these enigmatic monuments attract visitors from all over the world, Ireland is not the only country to have them. They appear in mainland Europe at the same time, along with Russia and India.
However, if you really want to go somewhere with a lot of these monuments, skip Carlow and head to Korea. There you will find the greatest concentration of them in the world.
