Banner: Knocknarea sunset
The large mound or barrow on the summit of Shee Reevagh
The large mound or barrow on the summit of Shee Reevagh, a drumlin to the north of the Bricklieve Mountains. Carrowkeel cairns K, E and B are all visible to the right of the photo.

Shee Reevagh mound

Shee Reevagh, the Dappled Fairy Mound tops a drumlin just behing Ballyrush Church near Castlebaldwin. The mound may be a cairn, and would fit into the Lough Arrow and Bricklieve Mountain group of Monuments. Or it could be a barrow, an outlier of the two spreads of barrows nearby, one on the Plains of Boyle, the other to the north of Ballymote. Indeed, the barrow known as the Mound of the Laughing Fairy near Ballymote turned out to date from the neolithic. There are several small round boulders in a line, which could be kerbstones.

A barrow at Fairymount in north Sligo.
A barrow at Fairymount in north Sligo, with a fine view of Benbulben.

The mound at Shee Reevagh is very wild and covered with scrub, as you can see from the image above, a real fairy mound. There are five ringforts spread out around the hill.

The view to the east from Shee Reevagh.
The view to the east from Shee Reevagh. Heapstown cairn is just left of the white bungalow, partly obscured by pine trees. The river Uinshin passes between these two sites.

The great cairn of Heapstown lies just east of here, across the River Uinshin. There is a fine view of the sites in the Bricklieve Mountains, which includes the Carrowkeel monuments from Shee Reevagh. Cairn K is due south of the Shee Revagh mound. I recently noted that Nephin, the highest mountain in Mayo, peeps over a drumlin north west of Shee Reevagh, and looks like another monument.

The large barrow on the summit of Rathdooney Beg
The large barrow on the summit of Rathdooney Beg, a drumlin to the north of Ballymote. The mound was excavated in 1992 and turned out to be of neolithic origin. The view is towards Doomore, Croghaun and Knocknarea.