After a battle, Macha, the goddess of
war and one of the forms of the
Morrigan, cloaked in the feathers of a
carrion bird, looked on as the bodies of the
slain were heaped up before her. Those of her chosen side were
interred, with all due obsequies, under the great stones of their
clans. But the
foemen who had fallen were dismembered. Their freshly severed - some with battle cries still frozen on their lips, others with mouths fixed in the
rictus of a fearful grin - were
impaled on stakes and raised up in a ring to do her honor.
No tribute pleased her better. A warning to all her enemies, these henges, which were known as the wastes of Macha, stood in the open countryside for all to see, while the birds and the elements worked their own transformations on them.