Stonehenge research a reminder of ancient claim of Uisneach links

While it was revealed recently that the ‘Altar Stone’ at Stonehenge appears to have been originally sourced in Scotland, and transported 750km from there to Salisbury, did you know that ancient mythology claims that the stones of Stonehenge actually originated at the Hill of Uisneach?

Nature magazine on Wednesday August 14 last, published research suggesting that the altar stone at Stonehenge, which is sandstone, and which was previously believed to have a possible Anglo-Welsh origin, showed ‘a remarkable similarity to the Old Red Sandstone of the Orcadian Basin in northeast Scotland’.

If that is the case, it means the rock, which weighs six tonnes, had to be transported at least 750km, and that it is likely the transportation was done by sea.

The Uisneach ‘connection’ is that the historian Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed that the stones of Stonehenge were transported there from ‘Mount Killarus’ in Ireland, which is taken to be the Hill of Uisneach, located in Killare (‘Killarus’?).

Geoffrey of Monmouth in his ‘Historian Regnum Brittaniae’ credited the magician Merlin with coming up with the plot to relocate the Mount Killarus stone circle to England, and with eventually making it happen.

He claimed King Ambrosium Aurelianus, uncle of King Arthur, had sought Merlin’s advice on a suitable memorial for troops in his service who had been killed by the Saxons.

Merlin, he claimed, said: ‘if you want to grace the burial place of these men with some lasting monument, send for the Giant’s Ring which is on Mount Killarus in Ireland.

‘In that place is a stone construction which no man of this period could ever erect, unless he combined great skill and artistry. The stones are enormous and there is no one alive strong enough to move them. If they are placed in position round the site, in the way in which they are erected over there, they will stand forever.’

The account goes on to say that King Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon, came to Ireland with 15,000 men to procure the stones. Despite defeating the Irish forces who fought to retain the stones, however, they were actually unable to move the giant stones and in the end, it fell to Merlin to move them – which, of course, he managed to do by magic.

The story, naturally, has no basis in fact – which is not really a surprise, not just because of the ‘magic’ element, but because the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth as a historian is dismissed as being extremely unreliable and also overly-influenced by his apparently not-inconsiderable imagination, not least because of his promulgation of the tales of Merlin’s ‘magic’.

That said, there is some credence being given to the theory that Stonehenge may previously have stood somewhere else, likely Wales, but definitely not Uisneach.