The Irish National Monuments Service confirmed it had begun an investigation of a west Cork farmer who reinstated a fallen Bronze Age standing stone with the help of two druids. The majority of archaeological monuments in Ireland - including standing stones - are protected under the National Monuments Acts, and anyone wishing to carry out work on one must give two months' written notice to the Minister for Heritage.
     The stone had been pushed over by a bull in 2009 and had lain on the ground since then. The farmer wondered if a spate of bad fortune on his farm was related to it being knocked over, and decided to see if he could re-instate it: "When you look back to 2009, things seemed to be very good but we have had every sort of problem, particularly over the last few years when animals got sick. In August, we had this really bad flooding and we lost 18 acres of maize when the field was flooded to a depth of nearly five feet. At times you would laugh it off but I decided to make inquiries so I contacted some folklore experts and they told me it would be okay to re-stand the stone. One of them put me in contact with these druids in Kerry so they came down and performed a ceremony when we re-stood the stone."
     Two members of a local branch of the worldwide Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids performed a ceremony as the stone was re-instated with the help of a bulldozer. The farmer said he was surprised nobody from the National Monuments Service had contacted him previously, as the stone had been lying on its side in the field less than 50 metres from the roadway ever since his bull had knocked it over: "All we did was put it back up and cleaned around it. It looked nothing at all lying on the ground but it's impressive enough now it's standing up again."

Edited from The Irish Times (12 November 2020)