¹Wood-Martin, W. G. “The Rude Stone Monuments of Ireland (Continued).” The Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland 8, no. 71/72 (1887): 122-23.

²William Wakeman, an illustrator and antiquarian who taught at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, was visiting Wood-Martin at Cleveragh and accompanied him on his visits to the Sligo area monuments.

³Archaeologists have differing theories regarding the age of the boulder circles of Sligo’s Cüil Irra peninsula. These will be discussed in some detail below.

⁴It is interesting that "dolmen," a term from the early 19th century, is now having a resurgence: Cummings, Vicki, and Colin Richards. Monuments in the Making: Raising the Great Dolmens in Early Neolithic Northern Europe. Windgather Press for Oxbow Books, 2021.

⁵Moore, Sam. Abbeyquarter North Passage Tomb, Co. Sligo Sl014-266 A Landscape Analysis (unpublished essay).

⁶Bergh, Stefan. Landscape of the Monuments: A Study of the Passage Tombs in the Cuil Irra Region. Riksantikvarieämbetet, 1995. 35-6.
While these monuments are certainly of a more "primitive" construction, archaeologists long debated whether they were an earlier, or a later (degenerate) period of monument building.

⁷Bergh. Landscape of the Monuments. 75.
As Sligo archaeologist Sam Moore explained, Abbeyquarter and other "boulder circles" are considered to be passage tombs because of other contextual evidence: "Some have Carrowkeelware, pins, pendants, stone balls, cremations, inhumations, animal bones, and some similar Carrowmore ones do have rudimentary passages. Hence, their grave goods resemble passage tomb type assemblages." (email, July 28, 2022).

⁸Bergh. Landscape of the Monuments. 219.
Some boulders were removed;a few were moved. There are possibly others beneath the surface. According to Bergh, the average size, l-w in cm is 110 x 80. The average height in cm: 70.

⁹Bergh. Landscape of the Monuments. 69.
Bergh considers these stones to be remnants of a second passage “running north.” Archaeologist Sam Moore concurs in this analysis. (Abbeyquarter North Passage Tomb, Co. Sligo Sl014-266 A Landscape Analysis (unpublished essay).

¹⁰Martin Byrne is intimately familiar with the passage tombs of Co. Sligo. He spent years living near the Carrowkeel tombs in the Bricklieve Mountains.
http://www.carrowkeel.com/files/passagegraves.html

¹¹Wood-Martin. “Rude Stone Monuments.” 122-23.
Of the likely burial chamber, Stefan Burgh wrote, "The boulder in the centre is probably the only remaining orthostat of a chamber construction above ground. Possibly it could have been a dolmen, but a more elaborate construction as e.g. a cruciform chamber, can not be excluded." (Bergh, Stefan. Landscape of the Monuments: A Study of the Passage Tombs in the Cuil Irra Region. Riksantikvarieämbetet, 1995. 219.)

¹²Bergh. Landscape of the Monuments. 12.

¹³Listoghil (Carrowmore 51) is the only passage tomb in the Cüil Irra peninsula known to have had a covering mound of stone. According to Stefan Bergh, "The opinion that the boulder circles at Carrowmore originally were covered by caims does not withstand source critical assesment..." (Bergh, Stefan. Landscape of the Monuments: A Study of the Passage Tombs in the Cuil Irra Region. Riksantikvarieämbetet, 1995. 79-80.)

¹⁴Burenhult, Göran. “Cromlechs, Chronology and Chromosomes: New Light on Sligo 's Megaliths.” Sligo Field Club Journal, vol. 5, 2019, p. 5.

¹⁵Graeber, David, and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Penguin Books Ltd, 202,. p. 147.
The authors noted a number of occasions in which Neolithic subsistence communities tried, and then abandoned cultivation., only to take it up again at a later stage.
The 2013 study re-examining Burrenhult's dating methods and his interpretations is: Bergh, Stefan, and Robert Hensey. “Unpicking the Chronology of Carrowmore.” Oxford Journal of Archaeology, vol. 32, no. 4, 2013, pp. 343–366.
There is additional dating information from the causewayed enclosure at Magheraboy, not far from the Abbeyquarter tomb.

¹⁶Bergh. Landscape of the Monuments. 35-6.
Archaeologist Estyn Evans notably dissented (1966) from the prevailing theory that the Sligo tombs represented a later, degeneerate, stage of tomb construction.

¹⁷Bergh, Stefan, and Robert Hensey. “Unpicking the Chronology of Carrowmore.” Oxford Journal of Archaeology, vol. 32, no. 4, 2013, pp. 59-60.

¹⁸Letter to Larcom, 11th August 1837, https://www.askaboutireland.ie/aai-files/assets/ebooks/OSI-Letters/SLIGO_14%20F%2014.pdf
Destruction of some of the Carrowmore monuments ontinued with quarrying operations even after Petrie's report. (Bergh, Stefan. Landscape of the Monuments: A Study of the Passage Tombs in the Cuil Irra Region. Riksantikvarieämbetet, 1995. 31.)

¹⁹Wood-Martin, W. G. History of Sligo, County and Town: With Illustrations from Original Drawings and Plans. Hodges, Figgis, 1882. p. 122.
In later iterations of the town seal, the stones have turned into oyster shells. It is unclear if that indeed was the original intent for the drawing, which seems to have originally been a logo for a local newspaper.
https://archive.org/details/historyofsligoco00wooduoft/page/122/mode/2up?view=theater

²⁰“Save Irish Fairy Forts, Heritage Conservation Community.” Facebook, https://m.facebook.com/238530429860097/photos/an-unusual-looking-roundabout-in-the-middle-of-a-housing-estate-known-as-the-gar/1140606046319193/.

²¹The interview was broadcast on Ocean FM Podcasts ("Northwest Today") on July 22, 2022. https://www.oceanfm.ie/2022/07/07/the-superstition-surrounding-the-garavogue-fairy-fort-deaths/
A transcription of this interview may be read here.

²²“The Urban Fairy Lore of Ireland's Most Unique Megalithic Site - Abbeyquarter, Sligo.” Beyond Room 313, YouTube, 4 May 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc19KniXN6w.
It seems, from the tone of this telling, that the residents of Garavogue Villas in 1950 were given little choice regarding their funding of the statuary, which some observerrs have described as poorly-executed reproductions.

²³The interview was broadcast on Ocean FM Podcasts ("Northwest Today") on July 22, 2022. https://www.oceanfm.ie/2022/07/07/the-superstition-surrounding-the-garavogue-fairy-fort-deaths/
A transcription of this interview may be read here.
This account was first noted on the Facebook page of Monumental Ireland.
Another account of a fairy tree, also found on Facebook, is from Co. Westmeath: Mike Murphy and the Fairy Tree.

²⁴Moore, Sam. Abbeyquarter Notes, 28 July 2022 (email).
The installation, and later removal, of a stataue of St. Patrick next to the Lia Fáil (Stone of Destiny) on the Hill of Tara was a much more contentious affair, as we described here.

²⁵Graeber, David, and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Penguin Books Ltd, 2022. p. 103
The authors observed that most of the Paleolithic skeletons found, “… bear evidence of striking physical anomalies that could only have marked them out, clearly and dramatically, from their social surroundings.”
Sam Moore writes (personal email 10/13/22) that such is rarely the case for Neolithic burials. "I believe the remains might be people who were important to the group - tool makers, herders, educators,  negotiators etc.”

²⁶Colton, Stephen. “Take on Nature: The Enchanting Garavogue.” The Irish News, 16 July 2022, https://www.irishnews.com/lifestyle/environment/2022/07/16/news/take_on_nature_the_enchanting_garavogue-2770666/.
See also this Wikipedia entry which cites information from the Ordance Survey Letters.

²⁷Burenhult Göran. The Archaeology of Carrowmore: Environmental Archaeology and the Megalithic Tradition at Carrowmore, Co.. Sligo, Ireland. G. Burenhult, Stockholm, 1984.
More recent studies of DNA materials have cast doubt upon Burenhult's suggestion of a shellfish diet at Carrowmore in the Neolithic.

²⁸Moore. Abbeyquarter North Passage Tomb.
The author writes that Abbeyquarter's, "...possible 55 original boulders exceeds the number of any other boulder circle in the region, with Carrowmore 19 having the next largest number of 53 boulders. However, Carrowmore 19 has very large boulders that stand on edge while those of Abbeyquarter North are of smaller, more average size, and are not erected in the same commanding manner."

²⁹Moore. Abbeyquarter North Passage Tomb.
The author noted, in a private email, that "Collin Richards was talking about 'Wrapping' monuments in symbolic 'skins' and Guillaume Robin was calling it 'delimitation of concentric spaces.'"

³⁰Moore, Sam. "Movement and thresholds: Architecture and landscape at the Carrowkeel- Keshcorran passage tomb complex, Co. Sligo, Ireland." In Leary, Jim, and Thomas Kador, editors. Moving on in Neolithic Studies: Understanding Mobile Lives. Oxbow Books, 2016.

³¹Bergh. Landscape of the Monuments.121-22.
The author explains, "Another fact which links the two monuments is that they lie along the routes out from Cüil Irra, and are the last monuments to be passed when leaving the region to the west and north respectively."

³²Not indicated in the illustration are the positions of the Sligo Stones and the Magheraboy enclosure, likely from the same period.

³³Bergh. Landscape of the Monuments. 161.
Bergh writes (p. 151): "The presence of the ancestors guaranteed the right to the land and to its crop. A link could sometimes be suggested between the visibility of the monument and the actual land belonging to each group."

³⁴Bergh. Landscape of the Monuments. 19-21.
Bergh writes (p. 385): "...this linear architecture forms the access path that connects the outer world to the central space of the tumulus. While walking through (or along) the whole tomb, the visitor crosses, both symbolically and gradually, the delimitations that subdivide the tumulus into several concentric spheres or rings. The tomb is actually the only way to penetrate into these parallel spaces and to reach the centre of the tumulus."