Cill Ghruabháin | Kilgrovan 6 (I-WAT-030)

Provenance

Discovery: Discovered, along with a fragment of an ogham stone (I-WAT-031), in 1966 during a non-archaeological dig ‘in surface soil of an earthwork… which was destroyed by bulldozer’ (Raftery and Lucas 1969, 105). Known locally as a Cillín/killeen, a more recent geophysical survey has confirmed the existence of an ecclesiastical enclosure (Cill Ghruabháin). The enclosure is bivallate (int. diam. c. 50m; ext. diam. c. 60m), perhaps with an annexe or secondary enclosure attached to the SE, which may be the arc represented on the 1927 map. A number of smaller circular features (diam. c. 10m) within the enclosure could represent hut-sites, or even the church (Purcell 2003, 6-8). Five other ogham stones previously discovered at this site (I-WAT-025 – I-WAT-029), by Mr. Willliam Williams of Dungarvan in 1857, are now at Mount Melleray Abbey.

Findspot: Kilgrovan (Cill Ghruabháin), Co. Waterford, Ireland (ITM Coordinates (approximate): 630844, 593197)

Current repository: Ireland National Museum of Ireland (inv. no. 1966:96)

Last recorded location(s): National Museum of Ireland (seen and recorded in 3D in Jan 2013).

Support

National Monuments Service SMR ID: WA031-045008-

Object type: Pillar

Material: Sandstone

Dimensions: H 0.98 × W 0.42 × D 0.13 m

Condition: Stone (grey, fine-grained sandstone) broken off at one end and ‘subjected to fracture cleavage’ (Raftery and Lucas 1969, 105). There appears to be a similar cleavage fracture to I-WAT-025 found at the same site over 100 years earlier.

Inscription

Text field: The inscription is incomplete at both ends, running up one angle and across the top, possibly originally continuing down the damaged opposite angle.

Letters: The ogham strokes have been v-cut with a flat chisel and are evenly spaced without word division. The M strokes are straight rather than sloped. The distal ends of the M and Q of MAQI (i.e. the H-aicme) may have been lost due to the vertical fracturing of the stone. However, it is noteworthy that the C, further on at a wider section of the stone, also stretches the entire width of this side of the stone in a manner very similar to that found on I-WAT-025, where the same stretching of scores the width of the stone occurs on the opposite B-aicme. This may suggest that the same person carved both.

Date: Mid 6th century AD (linguistic)

Edition

Transcription: [---]U MAQI CUMUGODỤ-Ụ MUCO[I---]

Critical apparatus:

1. The three vowel strokes at the beginning are perhaps the remnants of an I, the genitive ending of the preceding, lost name. At end of the name CUMUGODU|U, after the D, six vowel strokes are written, three on either side of a 90° angle of the stone. The six strokes are here provisionally rendered as U|U, but they could also represent IA or perhaps a supernumerary spelling of I. 2. The inscription contains the fragment of an IN, a PN, and the two formula words MAQI and MUCO[I]. After MUCOI another name must have followed to complete the gentilic formula.

Translation

… son of *Cumcaide (?) from the sept of …

Commentary

Motta (1981, 135) proposes several comparisons. One is with the name COMOGANN (I-KER-012 = CIIC 145, Arraglen, Co. Kerry), COMMAGGAGNI (I-KER-131 = CIC 1083, Rathkenny, Co. Kerry), OIr. Comgán. However, that name goes back to *komago- ‘co-fighter’ + *-agno-. There is no way that the U of the first syllable could be explained by this analysis, let alone the -UGODU|U at the end, which would have to contain a different suffix. The comparisons with the names Cumma (a hypocoristically shortened name) and Cum­mascach ‘mixed, disturbed’ (earlier *kom-miskāko-) likewise lead nowhere for elucidating the present name. The only analyses that are formally able to account for CUMUGODU|U are a com­pari­son with OIr. cumcae ‘difficulty, strait’ (Ziegler 1994, 158) or with the verb con·ic ‘to be able, powerful’. Cumcae is the abstract of the adjective cumung ‘narrow’ (PrimIr. *kom-ingu-, PC *kom-angu-). Unexpectedly, cumcae has a [g] instead of the [ng] of the adjective; the lack of palatalisation of the middle cluster -mc- is also unclear. Formally, CUMUGODU|U could re­present /kuμəgodi̯a-/, i.e. a derivative with the productive OIr. adjectival suffix -dae (earlier *-odi̯o-) from this abstract cumcae. The meaning would be appro­ximately ‘the one characterised by nar­row­ness or difficulty’. In order to explain the spelling of the present form, it has to be assu­med that the vowel of the second syllable has already been reduced to a schwa, represented by U in this case. Alternatively, the name could be connected with the verb con·ic (PrimIr. *kom-igge/o-). The phonological analysis would be the same. Morphologically, the name would con­sist of the verbal stem *kuμig- (earlier *kom-igg-) + the adjec­tival suffix *-odi̯o-; its meaning would perhaps be ‘mighty, the one with power’. In either case, the name would appear as *Cumcaide in Old Irish, but no such name is attested to my know­ledge. Also in either case, it would be easiest to emend the final -U|U to -I, the genitive singular ending of a i̯o-stem. Adjectives in OIr. -dae are typically derived from nouns (Wodtko 1995: 224–289), which favours the con­nection with cumcae ‘difficulty, strait’, unless the derivational basis of the second op­tion is not the verbal stem *kom-igge/o-, but an otherwise unattested o-stem noun *kom-iggo- ‘power’ (for the formation, cf. OIr. comrac ‘encounter’, PrimIr. *kom-ro-iggo‑).

The fragmentary state of the inscription renders it difficult to assess the value of the final vowels. If the foregoing etymological speculations are correct, the second syllable of the name would display reduction in its quality, pointing to the time shortly before or around the time of syncope in the mid-6th century.

References

• McManus 1991, 73 (xii)
• Moore 1999, 178-179, 199
• Purcell 2003, 6-8
• Raftery and Lucas 1969, 178-179, 199
• Ziegler 1994, 158