Qualla: Magh Adhair https://qualla.com/magh-adhair en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Magh Adhair https://qualla.com/magh-adhair Magh Adhair: Introduction https://qualla.com/magh-adhair/ In the year 981, Maelseachlainn mac Domhnaill - the High King of Ireland - rode into Dál gCais territory in what is now east Clare and committed what the annalists recorded as the most calculated act of violence in his campaign. He did not burn a town. He did not seize cattle. He prostrated the Bile of Magh Adhair, the sacred tree of the inauguration mound, digging its roots out of the ground. The Annals of the Four Masters record the act with brevity that speaks for itself. Seventy years later, in 1051, Hugh O'Conor came back and prostrated the tree again. A Bile - an Irish tree of religious significance - was the link between earth, sky, and the legitimacy of kings. To fell one was to attack the legitimacy itself.

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/3/s/magh-adhair-wp/gc3s-magh-adhair-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Magh Adhair: Adair's Plain https://qualla.com/magh-adhair/ Magh Adhair - "Adair's plain" - sits near the village of Quin in County Clare, in what was once the heartland of the kingdom of Thomond. The site has not been excavated, so its earliest date is speculation. The mound is likely to have been built sometime between the Bronze Age an...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/3/s/magh-adhair-wp/gc3s-magh-adhair-adairs-plain.mp3 0:06 2 full Magh Adhair: The Mound, the Tree, the Stone https://qualla.com/magh-adhair/ The central monument is a low, ovular mound surrounded by a fosse, with a bridging point on the west side leading to a flat platform on top. A smaller satellite cairn sits to the west. North of the main mound is a bullaun stone - a flat block carrying two carved depressions that ...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/3/s/magh-adhair-wp/gc3s-magh-adhair-the-mound-the-tree-the-stone.mp3 0:06 3 full Magh Adhair: The Kings They Made Here https://qualla.com/magh-adhair/ From around 100 AD - the suggested date for the Gaelic Milesian colonisation of Clare - until the medieval period, Magh Adhair was the inauguration site of the Kings of Thomond, the North Munster polity of the Dál gCais. The most famous of those kings was Brian Boru, whose dynast...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/3/s/magh-adhair-wp/gc3s-magh-adhair-the-kings-they-made-here.mp3 0:06 4 full Magh Adhair: Fir Bolg and Tuatha Dé Danann https://qualla.com/magh-adhair/ The pre-Christian mythology attached to the mound runs deeper still. According to Frost's History and Topography of the County of Clare and the 1839 Ordnance Survey letters of O'Donovan and O'Curry, Magh Adhair was named for a chieftain of the Fir Bolg called Adhair (or Aed), the...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/3/s/magh-adhair-wp/gc3s-magh-adhair-fir-bolg-and-tuatha-d-danann.mp3 0:06 5 full Magh Adhair: The Last Fair, 1838 https://qualla.com/magh-adhair/ Inauguration ceremonies at Magh Adhair ended during the Anglo-Norman wars and the gradual collapse of Gaelic political institutions in the late medieval period. But fair gatherings - irachts - continued at the site for centuries after, as late as the 19th century. The last docume...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/3/s/magh-adhair-wp/gc3s-magh-adhair-the-last-fair-1838.mp3 0:06 6 full