Drumlackagh · Glen · Co. Donegal
Thirteen tonnes of glacial granite, resting where the ice left it. Push it with the stick. It moves. Not much. But it moves.
The stone is at rest. As it has been.
Push Up: the purist’s method. Stick under the eastern lip, steady upward pressure.
For the serious pilgrim. Full instrumentation. Conditions are read as found and are not adjusted in your favour.
The Monument
It was placed here by a glacier, which did not ask permission and has not returned to collect it. Thirteen tonnes of coarse Donegal granite came to rest on the moorland between Lackagh Bridge and the village of Glen, settled onto a single unhurried point of contact, and has stayed there ever since through every storm the North Atlantic has been able to arrange. It is older than the road. It is older than the language used to describe it. It is, by some margin, the least impressed object in the county.
What distinguishes it from the ten thousand other boulders the ice left across this parish is simple and, once witnessed, difficult to forget: it moves. A stone the weight of a laden lorry, balanced so precisely that a person of ordinary strength, applying ordinary effort in more or less the right place, can persuade it to rock gently back and forth. Locally this is called a shuggle. There is no better word and no reason to look for one.
The first written account belongs to Lieutenant Lancey of the Ordnance Survey, who came through in 1834 with instructions to measure Ireland and found himself, briefly, measuring this instead. He recorded that the stone could be rocked with a single finger. Nobody has managed it with a single finger since, and the shortfall is generally understood to be a failure of the modern person rather than a lapse in Lancey’s arithmetic.
The stone is known to some as Clochnabogaddy. It has never confirmed this.
What Pilgrims Say
Arrived at twenty past six in the morning specifically to beat the crowds. There were no crowds. I waited a while in case a crowd arrived. It did not. I had the entire stone to myself for one hour and forty minutes and at no point was I asked to move along. Compare and contrast with the Giant’s Causeway.
Unable to rate the staff as they were not in the office. Unable to locate the office. The gift shop, likewise, could not be found, which I am told is the correct experience and not a criticism. Facilities: none, and proudly so. Five stars, a genuinely rare thing these days.
There used to be a sign explaining how to do it. The sign is gone. The post the sign was on is still there, and I stood at that post for some time, as one stands at a grave. We are the first generation to approach this stone without instructions. We are learning it again from nothing. Honestly it adds something.
Pushed the stick up from underneath: nothing. Levered down: nothing. Pushed, pulled, shoved, leaned, reasoned with it: nothing. Sat down on the grass in a state of some despair. My eleven-year-old then touched it with one hand while looking at her phone and the thing rocked like a cradle. I have not spoken about it since. Outstanding attraction.
Cycled from Belfast. Four days, two punctures, one argument. The last mile is a bog and the track is genuinely difficult to find, which I now understand is deliberate and correct — the stone should not be easy, or everyone would have one. It shuggles. It definitely shuggles. Only a bit. But it shuggles.
Worked at it for forty minutes with both hands and the stick and got what I would honestly describe as a tremor. My dog then put her front paws on it, once, briefly, apparently by accident, and got twice the movement I did. She has been insufferable in the car. Wonderful day out.
Docking no marks, but I will note for the benefit of future visitors that there were no sheep present. I had been led to expect sheep, and specifically to expect a sheep to observe my technique and indicate, in whatever way a sheep indicates such things, where I was going wrong. I had to work it out alone. I got there. But it took longer.
A word about the stick. The stick is old. The stick is tired. The stick is, if we are being truthful with one another, an ex-fence post, and it is not really up to it any more. It is also the only stick, it is the correct stick, and it is sacred. Use it gently and put it back exactly where you found it, leaning the way it was leaning. Someone will come after you.
My husband said it hadn’t moved. I filmed it. Slow motion, phone braced against the fence post, forty seconds. At 0:26 the shadow on the left-hand side unmistakably changes. Played it back to him in the car. He has accepted it. The stone rewards patience and a reasonably modern handset.
It’s just a big stone and a stick in a field.
Community note: this reviewer did not find the correct technique. He has been contacted. The stone bears him no ill will.
The Method
The original instructional sign is missing. What follows has been assembled from the testimony of those who have succeeded, and is believed to be complete.
Grip it near the middle. The stick is provided and no other stick will do.
Most successful shugglers report that the stick is best used as a measure of confidence and applied only after the stone has begun to move under the hands.
Steady, patient upward pressure. Do not jab. The stone can tell.
Upward pressure lifts the stone off its balance point and defeats the entire principle. Lever downward from above, using the stick as a pry.
Downward levering is widely understood to be how the sign came to be missing. Rest the flat of your palm against the granite and simply wait until it agrees.
Some pilgrims feel the movement only through the soles of the feet. Stand square, shift your weight, and mind yourself getting down.
You will feel nothing up there but the wind, and you will look, from the road, like a person standing on a rock.
This step is the only one that is definitely true. The stone has a rhythm of its own. Find it, wait for it to come back toward you, and add to it. Push against it and you will stop it dead, and you will have to start again from nothing.
You may not see the movement with the naked eye. This is normal and is not a reflection on you or on the stone. The movement is there. The camera is simply more patient than we are.
Exactly as you found it, leaning at the angle it was leaning. This step is not optional.
If in doubt, ask a sheep.
Before You Travel
On the moorland road between Lackagh Bridge and the village of Glen, north-west Donegal, in the townland of Drumlackagh. Roughly ten minutes from Dunfanaghy by car and a good deal longer than you expect on foot.
The track in is hard to find. This is on purpose. Everyone who has found it agrees that being made to look for it is part of the thing, and no one who has found it will tell you exactly where it is.
Open 24 hours
The stick must be returned to its resting place. Not near it. Not propped against the stone at a jaunty angle of your own devising. Its place, at its angle, the way it was when you came up the track. The stick has been here longer than any of us and it is not really up to it any more, and the next pilgrim is already on their way.