Sliabh na Caillí 
I visited Newgrange earlier this year & quite a few of the other noted Pagan sites around the Boyne valley. While impressed with Newgrange in it's magnitude it was very disappointing to have to queue & wait to enter the chamber along with another 13 or so people. 
A much more interesting & atmospheric passage tomb is that of  "Sliabh na Caillí" (Hill of the Witch/Hag). 
Here on a lonely hilltop there were NO tourists, the view was spectacular & I was able to obtain the key to the tomb, from "the oul lady down the road"... 
I sat in the central tomb, that of Ollamh Fodhla, the poet-king who instituted the triennial feis at Tara in 1335 BC. I sat there alone in the near darkness for over an hour & absorbed! 
Unlike Newgrange, this tomb faces east, so that the rising sun at the Spring and Autumnal Equinoxes shines through the passage to illuminate sun symbols on a stone at the back of the chamber. 
The beam of sunlight is shaped by the upright and the sill stones in the passageway so that a bright rectangle moves diagonally across the stone as the sun rises, illuminating each of a series of sun symbols in turn. 
It is agreed that these tombs were not intended as burial chambers, but the resting places of the burnt remains of persons unknown. It is thought that in the case of Newgrange that the spirits of those whose remains were interred would be freed by the retreating sunlight after it had illuminated the central chambers at the Winter Solistice. 

Slainté 
Seumas 
One of our visitors dropped me a line, saying that some of Seamus's information was either out-of-date or wrong.
Archaeologist Thaddeus C. Breen was kind enough to address this.
Thank you, Mr. Breen! We appreciate the information!
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