RAHAN MONASTIC SITE - Offaly County Council

3.0 PHYSICAL EVIDENCE3.3 Artefacts Associated with the SiteSheela-na-Gig (SMR No. OF016-015006)In 1971, gravediggers discovered a sheela-na-gig that may have fallen from thewall of the medieval ruin located in the Catholic cemetery. It may have come froman excavation for a burial north of and immediately adjacent to the northwestangle of the ruin now thought to have been a tower house. This carving, whichappears to have been made at the same time as the building, possibly datingfrom the fifteenth or sixteenth century, is now housed in the Museum of AthloneCastle. 48Plate 43. Rahan sheela-na-gig now housed inAthlone Castle Museum.The Book of RahanAccording to Petrie, in his book the Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland writtenin 1845, there is a poem written by the celebrated Irish poet Rumann concerningRahan. Rumann, has been called, by the Irish writers, the Virgil of Ireland, andhis death is thus entered in the Annals of Tighernach at the year 747: Ruman MacColmain Poeta optimus quievit. This poem refers to the building of the duirtheachmór (great wooden church), or great oratory of Rathain Ua Suanaigh, now Rahan,in the King’s County; and the original, which is preserved in an ancient vellummanuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, is said to have been copied fromthe Book of Rathain Ua Suanaigh. There is no knowledge today of where the Bookof Rahan is located or if it still exists.50