by Diarmait may, in the light of other allusions, be inferred to have represented the gods honoured there. Thus, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth,[1] Merlin, on being asked to assist with his advice in the matter of building Stonehenge, said that the best thing to do would be to bring to this country the pillar-stones called the Choir of the Giants, that stood on a spot in Ireland described in the Latin text as Killaraus Mons, and to set them up here in the order in which they stood there. With the enchanter's marvellous aid, that was done, and Stonehenge came soon into being. This story proves, among other interesting things, that formerly a circle of stones like that of Stonehenge or like a portion of it, was well known to exist in Ireland; and its site can hardly have been other than the Hill of Usnech, which plays a great rôle in Irish legend. It stood in the parish of Killare,[2] in the barony of Rathconrath, in the county of Westmeath. Giraldus Cambrensis, speaking of the five provinces into which Ireland used to be divided, when Meath was reckoned one of them, uses the following words with regard to the Hill of Usnech: 'Et eam [Hiberniam] vacuam invenientes, in quinque portiones æquales inter se diviserunt: quarum capita in lapide quodam conveniunt apud Mediam juxta castrum de Kilair, qui lapis et umbilicus Hiberniæ dicitur, quasi in medio et meditullio terræ positus.'[3] The stone is described as
- ↑ Sans-Marte's ed. pp. 108-9, 361.
- ↑ Four Masters, A.C. 507, editor's note.
- ↑ Topographia Hiberniæ, Dist. iij. c. 4. Giraldus himself recognized no connection between the stone and the Giants' Choir: in fact, he speaks in another passage, Dist. ij. c. 18, of the latter and the story about Merlin removing it to this country, and states that it was in
