Provenance
Discovery: Discovered before 1945 but details not recorded by Macalister (1945, 134).
Findspot: Derk (An Deirc), Co. Kerry, Ireland (Approximate only)
Current repository: Ireland National Museum of Ireland (inv. no. 1936:3452)
Last recorded location(s): In the collection of the National Museum of Ireland. This stone was recorded in 3D in collaboration with the Discovery Programme in 2016 as part of the Ogham in 3D project.
Support
National Monuments Service SMR ID: KE017-022----
Object type: Slab
Material: Sandstone
Dimensions: H 1.12 × W 0.46 × D 0.15 m
Condition: A fine-grained micaceous sandstone slab with some flaking (including loss of at least one ogham character) and damage to the lower left, narrow face. Widest at the top, tapering downwards ‘to a point’, according to Macalister (1945, 134), but the bottom of the stone is now mounted in a stand and so not accessible. Macalister (1945, 134) dismisses the inscription ‘on account of its orthographical eccentricities, and the unlikeness of the stone to anything which an ogham carver would naturally choose’ and doesn’t give it a CIIC number.
Inscription
Text field: Up on the left arris, across the top and down the right of one of the broad faces of the stone.
Letters: The ogham characters are pocked in quite bold strokes, becoming more widely spaced towards the end. The vowels are wedge-shaped notches.
Edition
Ogham text: ᚋᚐᚊ̣ᚔᚐᚔᚏᚐ[ᚂ] ᚋᚐᚊ ᚋᚐᚊᚈᚏᚓᚅᚅ
Transcription: MAQ̣IAIRA[L] MAQ MAQTRENN
Critical apparatus:
- Macalister (1945, 134) noted that a ‘triangular flake on the B-surface has carried off the last letter of the first name’ and suggested that ‘the size of the matrix shows that it must have been L’.
Translation
of Mac-[…] son of Mac-Thréuin
Commentary
This inscription consists of two compound personal names with the first element MAQQAS. The inital name is unclear due to a break at the end of the name removing the last character which, as Macalister deduces, may have been an L.
The compound name MAQAS-TRENI is attested elsewhere in the ogham corpus (in I-COR-007 Ballynabortagh 3 and I-COR-035 Ballyknock North 5, Co. Cork and in Wales: W-BRE-006 Llywell and W-PEM-004 Cillgerran). The word TREN- (Old Irish trén ‘strong’) is also found in other names, for example NETTA-TTRENALUGOS (I-COR-071) from Montaggart, Co. Cork and TRENAGUSU (W-PEM-004) from Cilgerran in Pembrokeshire.
References
- Macalister 1945, 134