The grave of queen Maeve on Knocknarea mountain is an unexcavated passage tomb. It has so many features similar to Newgrange its expected to be aligned in the same way to the Winter solstice.
Maeves cairn had a ring of standing stones around it and the remnants of smaller passage tombs. Another hint to its function is the name of the nearby lake Lough Geal, meaning the bright/shining lake.
Queen Maeve is the Queen of Connacht in the Tain, the antagonist of the story who leads the armies of Ireland against Cu Chulainn. But outside the narrative of the story she was possibly a Sovereignty Queen/A tutelary goddess that personified that type of deities role in the kingship cult and the sacred marriage.
Maeves name means ‘the intoxicating one’ and she is linked to Tara Hill the site of the literary high king cult its possible her name means she is the personification of one part of the polytheist inauguration ritual there. The king accepts the tutelary goddesses favour in a ritualized consuming of mead or ale presented to him in literature by a goddess.
Another interesting feature of Maeves Cairn and the others in the area is theyre on mountains and mists and clouds form around them. The passage tombs are venerated as Bruidne, places where deities live and the Tuatha de Danann are supposed to arrive on a cloud of mist in some stories. Maybe when we see that mist today were sharing an experience with people of the past who thought it was a sign their gods were coming down from the Bruidne in the mists.
via Tumblr http://the-fugitive.tumblr.com/post/103977817794
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