Poem by George Barnett
Around by Blackrock in the County Tyrone, Are numbers of circles and big standing stones, At Michael McMahon’s they stand by the score, About his wee farm, around by Beaghmore.
The stones were set up before any peat grew, And just have a look and you’ll find it is true, The most of them’s neatly set up on their end, And some people say, by the bold ‘Beaker-Men!.
There’s a man they call ‘May’ who comes down from Coleraine, If he’s hunting for treasure, I fear it’s in vein, He digs with a spade, and much time he does spend, To look for a trace of the bold ‘Beaker-Men!.
Ceremonial occasions they often had there, They knew every day, aye, and week in the year, For fifty-two weeks they had stones in a ring, Thirteen in a line for the time the call Spring.
The same for Summer, that time of great joy, Twenty-six for the Autumn and Winter stands nigh, Four stones that are bigger stand up in a line, For midsummer sunrise and midwinter time.
One stone by the circle’s a day it appears, Another convenient makes out the leap years, You can soon make them out, if you look the place o’er, Twixt the eastern circle and mighty big four.
There’s many more stones which are buried in peat, Which can’t be made out ’till the diggings complete, I’m thinking — although it may be but a craze, That some are for months. the remainder for days.
But one thing I’ll say, and it isn’t to mock, The set up their time by the very best clock, It’s all sorted out by the sun or the moon, And it can’t go astray to the last crack of doom.