What is recorded here

Rathosheen is a forty-six-metre earthen ring on a Kilkenny ridge, holding a flat triangular platform and a widened southern gap that may mark its true entrance. Local memory names it Rath Oisin, linking the soil to a bard-hero and warning that greedy diggers removed his grave stones before dying young. The bank still stands above the pasture, preserving the shape of a life that ordinary history forgot.

Just below the end of a N-S ridge in pasture. Land level is slightly higher to the N and drops away in other directions, especially to E. There are good view in all directions, except to N which where the view is limited. A roughly circular area (int. diam. 44m N-S; 46m E-W) enclosed by earthen bank (Wth 5-6m; int. H 1.8m; ext. H c. 2m) with slight traces of external fosse (Wth c. 2.8m; D 0.2-0.3m). The fosse has been infilled in the E and S sectors but is visible elsewhere. The interior slopes from NW to SE, dropping by c. 1.4m. In the SE sector there is a raised triangular platform (dims. 18m x 8m) against the bank. There are modern gaps through the bank in the N and W quadrants. The original entrance may have been in the S quadrant where there is a gap (Wth c. 6m; H above ext. c. 1m) which has been widened. The banks are quite overgrown with trees and scrub. According to the OS Letters (1839), this monument, like that c. 500m to the NNE (KK008-041----), 'is also called Rath Oisin, and is said to have been the burial place of that Hero - Bard. His grave was marked in it by two upright stones (KK008-140----) at several yards distance but the place was dug up several years ago by money dreamers and the stones carried away by some wicked man who had not the fear of Oisinn or the fairies before his eyes, but he died since, tho' not very old! I could wish he had gone before he disturbed my old friends bones. Nothing remains now to mark the grave but a circular hollow in the south western part of the Rath' (O'Flanagan 1930, vol. 1, 118-19 (40)). Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 4 October 2017

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