"An rud is annamh is iontach." What is strange is wonderful.

"An rud is annamh is iontach." This "spoonful of Irish" appeared on the packet of brown sugar I added to my cappuccino today. A bit of serendipity.
Sligo is home to two flat-topped mountains, Benbulben and Knocknarea, that dominate the landscape, which is dotted with prehistoric sites, strange but wonderful stone circles, dolmens, and passage tombs. We drove to the Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery this morning and wandered through a large field with nearly sixty examples of these rock piles in varying degrees of preservation. There is a wonderful legend explaining their existence that claims the Goddess Beara flew over the area on her way home towards Knocknarea, carrying in her apron stones she intended to use to build enclosures for her animals. Along the way, she had some sort of accident, causing her to spill many of the stones from her apron, which landed below in the configurations of cairns, dolmens, and circles. I'm happy to rely on legends to make sense of the world when I can't puzzle it out for myself, when things are strange, but wonderful.


From Carrowmore we drove a bit further to climb Knocknarea to see the limestone cairn that sits atop its summit. The walk to the top is about thirty minutes and the cairn there is a huge passage tomb that supposedly entombs Queen Maeve, an Irish Iron-Age warrior queen who is said to be buried in full armor standing tall to face her enemies. She certainly would be able to see them coming while waiting for passage to the next life or whatever lies beyond, as the summit of Knocknarea provides vast views of the landscape in every direction well beyond Sligo county. Some people take a stone to place upon her cairn when they get to the top, and we could see a few small offerings of flowers and notes.
Queen Maeve was also reputed to have had some shady dealings involving cows, having been jealous of her husband's white bull. Apparently she wanted to best him and therefore stole a brown bull from Ulster (using military force when the bull's owners refused to give it up). There is, of course, more to the story, but I found it wonderful that as I walked up the mountain, these gentle creatures stood witness.
The walk down is a challenge to the knees and the loose scree makes it hard to keep your footing on the steepest part of the descent, but it was well worth it; strange but wonderful.