What is recorded here

Grania's Bed is a ghost name on Donegal rock, perhaps a memory of a grave that vanished before maps arrived. Dermot appears only later, as if the landscape needed a lover to complete the shape of Grania. The rock may have served prayer, marker or myth, but human hands have smoothed or buried the evidence. What remains is a bed with no body, inviting imagination to lie down and occupy the absence.

This feature is named 'Grania's Bed' on the original OS 6-inch map (1834) and 'Dermot and Grania's Bed' on the 1848 edition. There is outcropping rock at the point indicated on the OS 6-inch maps but no trace of an artificial feature. An OS Name Book (1834) records that there was an 'ancient grave' here, but no details are provided. According to an entry in a later, 1:2,500 Name Book (1903), the feature was a rock 'used by the ancient Irish for devotional purposes'. There is no reliable evidence that a megalithic tomb ever stood here. OS Name Book, Kilmacrenan parish (1834-5), book 1, 3 (under Cool Upper); Borlase 1897, 232, Kilmacrenan no. 15; OS 1:2, 500 Name Book, sheet 36 (1903), 3; Killanin and Duignan 1962, 373; Killanin and Duignan 1967, 374; Ó Nualláin 1983a, 47, no. 153; SMR 1987, 36:1; RMP 1995, 36:1. The above description was published in the 'Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland. Volume VI, County Donegal.' Compiled by: Eamon Cody (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2002). Date of upload: 22 September 2008

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