What is recorded here

Darby's Bed marks a forgotten human boundary because two plain stones still stand at right angles beside a Donegal stream. The tall slab rises like a bed post while the lower stone lies across its foot, shaping a chamber small enough for one person to remember. Whatever life built that chamber has vanished, but the angle remains clear enough to suggest someone wanted the dead, the sleeping or the sacred kept separate from the flowing water.

This feature, named 'Darby's Bed' on the original edition of the OS 6-inch map (1834), is shown but not named on the revised 6-inch map of 1848. It stands at the western edge of a stream and consists of two stones at right angles to each other. The larger one, an upright slab, lies ENE-WSW and is 1.07m long, 0.2m thick and 1m high. The smaller stone is just S of the eastern end of the larger. This is a low stone, 1m long, 0.5m thick and 0.3m high. The nature of this artificial feature is unclear. Borlase 1897, 229, Inishowen East no. 7; Lacy 1983, 88, no. 501; Ó Nualláin 1983a, 49, no. 184 (the description here arose from a misidentification of the site); SMR 1987, 10:20; RMP 1995, 10:20. 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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