The Hill of Slane in County Meath, overlooking the Boyne Valley, is famed as the place where St. Patrick is said to have lit the first Paschal Fire in Ireland, announcing a new religion in Ireland. Far more ancient, though, and much less known, is the motte beyond the Christian ruins at the summit of the hill which is said, in folklore, to be the burial place of the mythical king Sláine, who was a leader of the Fir Bolg.

Nestled among the trees, and pretty much invisible in this photograph, the motte/moat is given away by the circular ditch which surrounds it. Believed by archaeologists to be a motte fashioned by the Normans, the mound at Slane is probably very ancient, and may well be contemporary with the great passage-mounds of the Bend of the Boyne, which are visible from up here. In our book, Island of the Setting Sun, we say the following: "From here, a sweep of the land from horizon to horizon finds ancient remains and eminent places of old in almost every direction ... [St. Patrick] would have unwittingly found himself at the centre, the metaphorical crossroads, of an ancient system of astronomical alignments laid down almost four millennia previously."

Slane shares equinox alignments with the Millmount in Drogheda, burial place of the Milesian astronomer poet Amergin, and Cairn T at Loughcrew. From Millmount, the sun around the time of the equinoxes sets over Slane. From inside the chamber of Cairn T, the sunrise on equinox comes up over Slane. There is also a significant astronomical alignment with Tara which may explain the symbolism involved in the story of how Patrick defied King Laoghaire, but you'll have to get the book to learn more about that!