Derrynaflan is no ordinary island. This tiny 44 acre privately owned hill in Ireland’s largest inland county is not surrounded by ocean or lake. Unusually, it emerges from the Bog of Lurgoe into the vast brown bogs of Tipperary like a vivid green mirage. However, by dictionary standards, it is categorically an island. I would come to this remote bog to see where Ireland’s first hermit monks from the 6th century found solitude. While most of Europe was in the post-Roman disarray of the Dark Ages, the land of saints and scholars (as Ireland became popularly known) bucked the trend by entering a remarkable golden age of scholasticism and artistic achievement, marked by monastic settlements such as Derrinaflan. But what is particularly interesting about Derrynaflan is the priceless buried treasure that the monks probably left here. Discovered just a few decades ago, it changed Irish law and turned out to be one of the most exciting archaeological finds in the history of Irish art. Careful not to disturb the munching bulls, I gently climbed 200 meters to the ethereal ruins that still crown the island today. At the top, I wandered into what was left of a 12th-century abbey that replaced an earlier monastery. A soft apricot evening glow poured through unglazed windows on a long-gone altar. Two stumpy stone vessels were all that remained. One – a medieval stone boulaun (cup) – was indeed hollow enough to collect the “holy” (rain) water promised to the farmer. I blessed myself ignorantly as directed. An information board in the abbey revealed that there is much more to Derrynafflan than first meets the eye. In contrast, the little-known mystical land gained international archaeological fame in 1980 when a father and son from the town of Clonmel, about 25 kilometers away, discovered an elaborately decorated cup and plate using hobby metal detectors.