Provenance
Discovery: The earliest record of the stone appears to be Todd (1840, 410-411) where he reports that it was ‘found with many others in a cave at Fortwilliam, in the county of Kerry, and sent up to the Provost and Senior Fellows of Trinity College’. Only one souterrain is recorded in the townland (KE021-009----) but it is not marked on any edition of the OS maps (Toal 1995, no. 1133).
Findspot: Fortwilliam (Clochán Ruairc), Co. Kerry, Ireland (ITM coordinates: 482393, 625144 (probable))
Current repository: Ireland Trinity College Dublin (inv. no. )
Last recorded location(s): Now on display in the library of Trinity College Dublin where it was examined and recorded in 3D in collaboration with the Discovery Programme in 2014 as part of the Ogham in 3D project.
Support
National Monuments Service SMR ID: KE021-138----
Object type: Pillar
Dimensions: H 1.15 × W 0.45 × D 0.35 m
Condition: This pillar and inscription are in very good condition apart from slight damage to the top left of the inscribed side. Todd (1840, 410-411) gave the dimensions of the stone as ‘four feet five inches (1.35m) high, and in its broadest part at the base four feet six and a half inches (1.38m) in circumference’ along with a detailed drawing. It is currently 1.15m (3ft. 9in.) above the display stand.
Inscription
Text field: The inscription begins 16.4cm (53ft. 9.7in.) above the display stand on the left side of the flat face and continues upwards, across the top and down about a third of the right hand side of that face. However, there is no clear stem-line as the edges of the stone are rounded and only the position of the vowel strokes mark where the stem-line would be.
Letters: The inscription is pocked on the rounded edges in broad, rather short consonant strokes (approx. 30mm/12in.). The vowel strokes are extra long (some even longer than some of the consanant strokes). Also, there is no extra space left between characters from the same aicme, most notably vowels, which results in much ambiguity. Macalister (1945, 134-135) notes that ‘three times there are groups of seven successive vowel-notches, which could be resolved in many ways: oi, ue, eu, io, aai, aoe, etc., etc.; and two G’s are run together, unintentionally producing a Z. These peculiarities, and the grammatical forms (notably MACI) marks this as a very late example of the use of Ogham script’.
Edition
Ogham text: ᚐᚅᚋ ᚃᚓᚇᚂᚂᚑ̣ᚔ̣ᚌᚌᚑ̣ᚔ̣ ᚋᚐᚉᚔ ᚄᚓᚇᚇᚑ̣ᚔ̣ᚅᚔ
Transcription: ANM VEDLLỌỊGGỌỊ MACI SEDDỌỊNI
Translation
name of Fíad[…] son of Sétnae?
Commentary
The first element of the first compound name is quite common in the ogham corpus and appears to be fíad (u-stem) ‘wild’. According to Ziegler (1994, 243) the second element may be lóeg (o-stem) ‘calf’, which can also be used figuratively of persons ‘favourite, darling’ (see eDIL).
The father’s name in this inscription is perhaps the same name (Sétnae) as that found on the Portersgate stone (I-WEX-003) with SEDAN[I] (Ziegler 1994, 231-232).
References
- Macalister 1945, 134-135
- Todd 1840-1844, 410-411
- Toal 1995, no. 1133
- Ziegler 1994, 231-232, 243