On your right hand side as you enter the graveyard of the Priory Church in Killadeas are several interesting stones dating from the 7th – 9th centuries, especially interesting for their very obvious overlap of ‘pagan’ and Christian imagery.
Probably the most well known and pictured is the Bishops Stone (pictures above). This stone has clearly been altered and reused several times. On the broad side of the one metre stone is a simple depiction of an elderly ecclesiastic – the bishop – in a short garment, holding a crozier and a bell and wearing pointed slippers – picture one – look carefully. The clearer but more garish pagan figure on the back – picture two (with interlacing now replacing earlier body features) is thus surprisingly not what actually gives the stone its name. The Bishop carving is the later of the two carvings, adding weight to the view that the stone was adopted by the Christians when they took over what had been an earlier pagan site.
Again (in keeping with the theme of recycling!) the 1.5 metre Cross Slab Stone in picture three, while having a Greek cross in a circle with a bifurcated stem on the front, has 10-12 cupped shaped hollows on the back suggesting that at some earlier time it was used as a grinding stone or for some other form of pre-historical ritual use. This is why this stone is also often referred to as the ‘Ballaun Stone’. An early inscription “BENDACHT AR ART U LURCAIN” a blessing upon Art ua Lurcain is not longer visible on the stone.
Nearby, in addition to numerous unmarked stone grave markers of in-determinant age can be seen a small, broken phallic pillar (picture four) and a perforated stone half-embedded in the ground (picture five).
The current 1881 church on this site replaces a earlier one, known as the Yellow Church because of the colour of its stonework. According to legend, the earlier church was first built on the wrong site because of the founder’s incorrect interpretation of a vision; after it had been finished and consecrated, angels are credited with its being ‘in one night taken up and laid where it is now’. Be that as it may.
Location: Priory Church Killadeas Village
Opening times: 24/7
Entry fee: Free
This blog entry is one of a group (loop) of entries based on many trips to Enniskillen. I suggest you continue with my next entry – Tickety Moo and its Obliging Cows – or to start the loop at the beginning go to my introductory entry – “Fare thee well Enniskillen, ………..”
The Rambling Wombat 