There’s a straight line of dark comedy between the neglect of Ireland’s ancient monuments and the reverence official Ireland holds for Saint Patrick. The Boheh stone is of great antiquity, likely more than 6,000 years old, but it’s been sadly neglected to the extent that someone built and later abandoned a house next to it, and another person built a shed practically on top of it. There’s a plaque on the road marking the site, which is accessed today through the rusty front gate of the abandoned house. From above, the stone could be the original version of the Killamanagh slab cross.
In the 1980s, the National Monuments service began to re-catalogue the thousands of cairns and forts throughout the country, including the Boheh stone. It hasn’t got much to say about it, apart from noting that it has lots of cup and ring motifs. Once it came back to light, new stories began to attach to the stone, which in its place along the Tóchar Phádraig was known as Saint Patrick’s Chair. In the late 1980s, a local historian observed that on April 18 and August 24, the sun appeared to roll down the side of the mountain as it set, giving rise to a new myth that the rock is a rolling sun phenomenon. That’s true, but it’s the least part of it. The state archaeologist Christiaan Corlett wrote that the Boheh stone was the sole example of rock art in the west of Ireland.
It’s worth making up your own mind. It’s a perfect place to visit on a rainy afternoon, when the art on the rock stands out. It’s one of the great pieces of ancient art in the west of Ireland. Ahead, through the trees you can see the great trail up the side of the mountain. When I first visited here, I was struck first by the resonance with Loughcrew, a feeling that also hit previous writers. And at first sight, it appeared to me as a great map of the area, and its many great cairns and portals. The carvings have charged the rock in a manner that it remains alive.
From Spain to Australian, ancient peoples used these rings to illustrate underground water flows. There’s something unique about these spots where they meet one of the magnetic lines flowing across the landscape, and as marked by the Lankill stone. The water cross creates a magnetic field of its own, forcing the magnetic line to split and flow in a circle around the spot. On these point, our ancestors built temples, setting the patterns in stone for us, as a helpful reminder. It’s the Boheh map stone.