Man-made underground passage in Oughtagh

Oughtagh, west Mayo, Ireland. In the SW quadrant of a rath (MA071-001----), a linear surface depression (Wth 2-3.7m; D 0.6m) extends for 9m from the rath scarp at SW through the interior to NE. At its SW end a stone slab projects horizontally from the external face of the rath scarp at a depth of c. 1m below the interior surface. These features may indicate a Man-made underground passage. In that dark angle, the rath stops being a mound and becomes a doorway: a chamber built beneath the field, where the boundary between inside and outside is erased. The slab is a handle, the depression a breath of air drawn through the wall. What the builders hid there is no longer visible, but the shape of the hole still points downward, inviting the watcher to follow the line of its making.