Slieve Donard, the highest peak in the Mournes at about 850 metres, is crowned by two prehistoric cairns, the Great Cairn, a Neolithic passage tomb, and the Lesser Cairn of the Early Bronze Age. Two mythological names attach to it: Beann Boirche, the peak of Boirche, a supernatural cowherd-king, and Sliabh Slangha, the mountain of Slangha, son of Partholon and called the first physician in Ireland.
The Great Cairn was regarded as the tomb or home of mythical figures and an entrance to the Otherworld. According to tradition, Saint Donard (Domhanghart), a fifth-century follower of St Patrick who founded a monastery nearby, took over the mountain for Christianity, turning the Great Cairn into a hermit's cell and the Lesser Cairn into an oratory. A folk belief says that a cave runs from the seashore to the cairn on the summit and that Donard, or Boirche, lives in it. Until the 1830s people made a pilgrimage to the top in late July each year, probably the descendant of a Lughnasa harvest custom.
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