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Tully Mountain Cairn A is a small unopened grass-covered cairn, 3 meters high and 14 meters in diameter, located in the townland of Tully to the south-west of Carrowkeel. It is somewhat isolated from the main group, and perhaps belongs more to the Kesh and Sheecor group of cairns west of Carrowkeel. Cairn A is visible as a small green bump straight ahead on a spur of the mountain before taking the left turn into Carrowkeel on the way up from Castlebaldwin. When he examined this monument in 1911, Macalister considered this cairn too small to contain a chamber and possibly considered it unworthy of excavation. Cairns without chambers, or where they could not find the chamber, were considered to be cenotaphs - monuments to people buried elsewhere - by the antiquarians.
Cairn A and Tully Hill, the 'thumb' of thehand-shaped Carrowkeel Mountain complex. Whatever else it was designed for, Cairn A has a fine view out through the Bricklieves and across the Plain of Sligo, and serves as a platform to watch the sun set at the summer solstice. As the sun descends, it drops into a valley or notch between Cairnaweeleen and Kesh Corran. This alignment has been photographed by local researcher Leo Regan (illustrated above and below). This use of the mounds as platforms to observe the movements of the heavens is a much over-looked aspect of the monuments. They are special places to stand and observe solar, lunar and stellar rising and setting positions at particular times in their cycles. As you will gather from these pages, the builders of the Bricklieve monuments and other ancient sites were quite conversant with the celestial cycles. |
The
sun appears to roll down the hill towards the notch at midsummer when
viewed from Cairn A. Pictures by Leo Regan. |
Solstice sunsets over the Cairnanweeleen notch. By Leo Regan.
