Lunar Stone Alignment at Kildreelig, Ballinskelligs

Location

Head up the lane past Kildreelig village (the thatched cottage artist retreat).  Approx. 200 metres up, you will see a 5-bar gate.  Climb over and climb the hill up to a stone fort.  Behind fort, a wall curves upwards towards a saddle between the hills.  At the saddle, the stone alignment appears to the front right.

Description

The alignment consists of 4 orthostats (pillars of stone) of various heights.  They are actually in 2 pairs – a tall one and a shorter one.   The pairs differ from each other in heights and relative heights. The general orientation is east-west.

Background

The earth rotates on its north-south axis once per day and revolves around the sun once every 365.25 years.  The plane of its rotation’wobbles between 23 degrees north of equator and 23 degrees south.  This leads to the seasons of earth’s calendar.

The Moon completes one orbit around the Earth in 29.5 days.

The plane of the Moon’s orbit around Earth is tilted 5.1 degrees .   This, amongst other factors, like the gravitational pull of the Sun, accounts for the fact that the moon’s angle of altitude in the sky varies by more than the seasonal difference of the sun in our calendar.  But these variations are not fixed.  The outer extremes of the Moon’s monthly range of rising and setting change slightly from year to year with an 18.6 year cycle.

The 18.6 year Lunar Cycle is observed as a modulation in the outer extremes of the Moon’s monthly range of rising and setting – the high moon and the low moon.

The Major Lunar Standstill comes at the maximum monthly difference.

The Minor Lunar Standstill comes 9.3 years later at the minimum monthly range .

At the Major Lunar Standstill, the Moon will have an effective latitude in the sky of +28 degrees and 2 weeks later at -28 degrees.

At the Minor Lunar Standstill, the Moon will have an effective latitude in the sky of +18 degrees and 2 weeks later at -18 degrees.

Significance of Kildreelig Alignment

The stone alignment has not been excavated, but it is thought to be from the Middle Bronze Age (c 1500 B.C.)   During this period, a major trade existed in Irish bronze tools and ornaments, facilitated by the alloying of copper mined at Ross, Island, Killarney and Mount Gabriel near Schull with tin imported from Cornwall.  This export trade brought substantial wealth and influence to the area as well as contact with developed societies and cultures on continental Europe, particularly with western France and northwestern Spain.

For developing societies, with agriculture and marine travel being important activities, a knowledge of the impact of the movement of the heavenly bodies on crops and weather was especially important.   An affluent society could afford to fund research and observations in this area, as well as commanding the necessary labour to construct the means of observing and marking such phenomena.

The two pairs of orthostats on the hillside at Kildreeling may be examined with reference to the relative slopes between them.  Placing wands from the shorter to the longer in each case will give you angles of altitude in the sky.   The difference in the altitude angles of each wand is approx. 56 degrees, which coincides with the difference between the ‘high’ moon and the ‘low’ moon at the Major Lunar Standstill.

There is a significant lunar stone alignment, of greater complexity and sophistication than the Kerry version, at Callanish on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland.   It is possible that matching elements of such an alignment have been lost at the Kerry installation.   A stroll around the landscape there revealed some hidden stone elements which didn’t appear to be naturally occurring.   A more detailed survey of these and of the landscape generally may reveal a far greater installation than just four pillars of stone.  The stone walls and pens on the approach climb to the pillars speak of a more extensive ritualistic utilisation of the site.

Legend has it that two sons of Milesius drowned when their fleet entered the bay in a storm.  Ir is believed to buried on Sceilg Mhicil.  Eanna is thought to be buried at the lunar stone alignment at Kildreelig.

Courtesy of Denis McSweeney

Further Information

 It is the most westerly of the fifteen stone rows on the Iveragh Peninsula. Stone Rows are three or more standing stones set closely together in a straight line. Kildreelig has four stones.

 Archaeology: These are Bronze Age (c.2,200-500 BC) monuments. They probably had a ritualistic purpose, and served as places of assembly for community events (like churches do today). Most examples are aligned on the setting sun at mid-winter, such as Eightercua, but Kilreelig is supposed (by Anne Lynch, a recently retired Senior Archaeologist with the National Monuments Service), to be aligned towards the East on the northern limit of the major lunar standstill.

  A major lunar standstill takes place every 18.6 years.  This means that the position of the moon in the sky at the North reaches a maximum at moonrise and moonset at this time, before beginning to turn to the South again. Presumably in prehistoric times this would have been regarded as a major event, and would have been marked by ceremonies at places like Kildreelig.

 Folklore: said to mark the burial spot of Érannan, one of the Milesian invaders who landed in Ballinskelligs Bay. Carraig Éanna is named after him.  Lebor Gabála Érenn records: ‘Érannan, the youngest of the sons of Mil, climbed into the mast, to see how far it was from them to the land. He fell out, and his limbs were scattered about the rocks of the sea … The Sons of Mil came into Ireland in Inber Scene. And Scene, the wife of Amorgen son of Mil, died there; her grave was dug on the estuary, and the grave of Érannan on the other side. She is one of the seven wives of the Sons of Mil.’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milesians_(Irish)