Ancient Stone Circles, Ireland

Grange Stone Circle

Interesting factoid: England might have the most famous one (Stonehenge), but Ireland has more ancient stone circles per capita than any other country in the world. Actually, I just made that statistic up, and I have no idea who might sit around and calculate the ratio of ancient stone circles to population…or why. But I’m pretty sure it’s true.

One thing Americans observe whenever they visit Europe is just how old things are here. Many of the cathedrals and castles and casas and villas we wander through on our tours were built in the thirteenth century, give or take half a millenium. In Rome, where “old” is taken to new heights, we can go back a couple of thousand years, give or take. So it seems a bit surprising to find in Ireland–way out here on the periphery of Europe–some of the oldest of the old stuff.

Even a few thousand years before the old stuff in Rome was built, druids in Ireland were building stone circles. A big question is: why? The typical answer historians give us is that they were built for some religious or ceremonial purpose: faith, after all, is a good way to explain what could motivate a people living in a harsh environment to expend so much energy carrying around boulders weighing many tons and arranging them in a circle. Personally, I think they were built as early forerunners to Irish pubs, places were the druid men could get away from their druid women for a few hours and regale each other in goat herding tales of the day.

Grange Stone Circle

Grange Sone Circle

Regardless the purpose, there’s no shortage of them in Ireland. The two we visited–one in the north, one in the south–were the Grange stone circle near Limerick and the Dromberg stone circle near Cork. The Grange circle was larger in diameter, but the Dromberg circle had a little more definition to it with a smaller circle and one giant boulder set like an altar (or bar, depending on what you think they were built for). So far as the setting, the Dromberg circle, with it’s hillside view of the Atlantic Ocean, beat Grange hands-down. It’s no wonder the druids wanted to build a circle here: they could see their wives coming from miles away.