Provenance
Discovery: This rounded boulder was discovered close to Ballaqueeney chapel. It was recovered during the quarrying of gravel for railway ballast in 1874.
Findspot: Rushen, Rushen, Isle of Man (National Grid Reference: SC 2000 6800)
Current repository: Isle of Man Manx Museum (inv. no. Category: MM 2)
Last recorded location(s): Now in Manx Museum. Recorded by OG(H)AM project in June 2024.
Support
Isle of Man Historic Environment Record (IOMHER): 0024.60
Object type: Boulder
Material: Sandstone?
Dimensions: H 0.52 × W 0.12 × D 0.10 m
Condition: The boulder was already broken when found. The ogham inscription is incomplete.
Inscription
Text field: The ogham inscription runs up one edge and onto the top.
Letters: The inscription was described by Macalister (1945, 480) as ‘finely cut, with a V-shaped section’.
Date: Probably fifth century AD (linguistic)
Edition
Ogham text: ᚁᚔᚃᚐᚔ[ᚇᚑ]ᚅᚐᚄ ᚋᚐᚊᚔ ᚋᚒᚉᚑᚔ ᚉᚒᚅᚐᚃᚐ[ᚂᚔ]
Transcription: BIVAI[DO]NAS MAQI MUCOI CUNAVA[LI]
Critical apparatus:
- The end is broken off. Rhys suggests CUNAVALI, which is as good a restoration as any (Macalister 1945, 482).
Translation
of Béoáed, son of the descendants of Conall(?)
Commentary
The personal name BIVAIDONAS, attested elsewhere in the corpus (e.g. I-WAT-024) and in later sources (as Béoáed), is a compound of the o-stem adjective *biu̯o- ‘alive, living’ (OIr. béo) and the common n-stem second element *ai̯don- ‘having fire’, a derivative of *ai̯du- ‘fire’ (cf. OIr. áed) (Ziegler 1994,137-138; McManus 1991, 103, 105). This example has the final syllable intact suggesting that it is quite early.
The kin-group name (MUCOI CUNAVA[LI]) is uncertain due to the loss of letters at the end but the restored -LI is possible and has a parallel in an inscription in Latin script from Cornwall (CIIC 468: RIALOBRANI CVNOVALI FILI). This name consists of the commonly found element CUNA- (OIr. cú ‘hound’) and possibly a parallel of Gaulish -valo- ‘powerful, strong’ (Ziegler 1994, 161; cf. ‘Catuvalos’ in an inscription from Nîmes: RIIG, GAR-10-08).
References
- Kermode 1907, 73-74, 98-99
- Macalister 1945, 480; 482
- Ziegler 1994, 137-138; 161