Provenance
Discovery: This gaming board fragment is one of three ogham inscribed slate pieces (S-BUT-002, S-BUT-003) discovered between 2001 and 2004 after a series of excavations conducted since the late nineteenth century on Inchmarnock, the small island off the west coast of Bute named after St Ernán using the affectionate form Marnock (Lowe 2008, 114-175). A rich collection of slate slabs and fragments incised with parts of Latin and Gaelic inscriptions, drawings of people and boats, gaming boards as well as several carved stones were found during the excavations.
Findspot: North Bute, Bute, Scotland (National Grid Reference: NS 02372 59635)
Current repository: Scotland National Museum of Scotland (inv. no. X.HRE 690)
Last recorded location(s): Now in the National Museum of Scotland (X.HRE 690).
Support
Trove 40268 Inchmarnock find number: IS.76 SF1263
Object type: Gaming board
Material: Slate
Dimensions: m
Condition: An inscribed slate fragment which appears to be the remains of a gaming board. The stone has some fracturing and wear and is especially abraded in the middle portion of the ogham graffiti. The inscription is mostly clear with the first four letters and final letter intact, the middle portion is more doubtful.
Inscription
Text field: The ogham inscription is one of the many inscriptions on this stone. The inscription has an irregular horizontal stem-line that gets cross-cut by a set of long parallel lines running vertically. The stem begins 60mm from the left edge of the slab and could have possibly extended beyond the fractured edge.
Letters: The scratched letters are widely spaced, and there is a clear distinction between long and short strokes. In fact, the long strokes denoting consonants are very long. There is a gap of about 10mm before the first letter and a further 10mm before the second letter in the inscription. The first stroke of the third letter appears 12mm later and it is the first of, as Forsyth and Tedeschi (2008, 147) note, a pair of long oblique strokes which seems to be ‘angled at its mid-point (>), whereas its partner is straight. The two are about 3mm apart at the stem, yet about 6mm apart at their distal tips’. After a further gap of 8mm there is another pair of oblique strokes, parallel to each other at 3mm apart. Finally, the next letter touches the stem 16mm from the preceding stroke’s crossing of the stem, sloping towards one another. The rest of the inscription from this point is very indistinct for around 78mm. Following this section is a group of four strokes below the stem. It is possible that the stem continues beyond this but the stone is too abraded to tell. The final stroke is about 85mm from the fractured edge.
Date: Seventh to ninth century
Edition
Ogham text: ᚛ᚋ[.
Transcription: ᚛M[.]C[---]GGAI ←
Critical apparatus:
- Forsyth and Tedeschi (2008, 148) previously read: 1) Left to right: IA[G]GH[-]S[-B]; 2) Right to left: [H-]C[-]BGGAI 2. The script of Inchmarnock 3 and Inchmarnock 1 (S-BUT-002) is very similar with strokes rather than notches for vowels, and with H-strokes that slope backwards, both of which are, as Forsyth and Tedeschi (2008, 149) note, ‘typical of the Scottish ogham corpus’. 3. The form of script on the Inchmarnock ogham inscriptions is ‘simple and devoid of baroque, ‘supplementary’ letters’ common of later Scottish oghams to the east (Forsyth and Tedeschi 2008, 131).
Translation
Regardless of the direction in which the inscription is read it does not yield any particular sense, consequently, no translation can be provided.
Commentary
Described by Forsyth and Tedeschi (2008, 130) as ‘an informal doodle’, nevertheless, this ogham inscription represents important evidence for ogham literacy in a recreational context.
Forsyth and Tedeschi (2008, 130) remarked that the Inchmarnock ogham-inscribed slate pieces represent ‘the first find of non-monumental ogham from an ecclestical site’.
From the Inchmarnock ogham inscriptions it is clear that ‘Gaelic-speaking scribes were familiar with the ogham alphabet and used it in informal sometimes jocular way, for brief marginal glosses and comments’ (Forsyth and Tedeschi 2008, 130)
References
- Forsyth, Tedeschi, and Lowe 2008, 128-153
- Lowe 2008, 147-149