Bullaun stone in Castleforbes Demesne

Thirty-seven centimetres of smooth, round-bottomed hollow, carved into an irregular boulder beside the doorway of a late-medieval church in Castleforbes Demesne. A bullaun stone, the kind tied to saints and healing water in local story, sitting where worshippers passed for centuries. Perhaps someone knelt there at dawn, pouring rainwater into the hollow or pressing a hurting limb against its cool edge. The church doorway still stands beside it, though the hands that shaped the stone have long since joined the soil of County Longford.