Provenance
Discovery: The slab was found during repairs to the church in 1900. The ogham inscripition was reported by Kermode in 1907.
Findspot: Kirk Maughold, Garff, Isle of Man (National Grid Reference: SC 4930 9160)
Last recorded location(s): ‘House of Crosses’ at Maughold (MM 145).
Support
Isle of Man Historic Environment Record (IOMHER):
Object type: Slab
Material: Slate
Dimensions: m
Condition: The stone is broken. The ogham inscription is incomplete, the end of the text is lost. The Norse inscription appears complete.
Inscription
Text field: The ogham inscription reads horizontally left-to-right and ‘is awkwardly placed near the edge of the stone’ (West 2011). Occupying the centre of the stone above the ogham inscription is a two-line inscription in Norse runes which also reads left-to-right horizontally.
Letters: The ogham inscription consists of the first two aicmi of the ogham alphabet and is well spaced. The beginning of the inscription is indicated by a feather-mark. The ogham inscription appears to have been chiselled. The second line of the Norse inscription consists of ‘the sixteen-letter “younger fuþark” in short twig runes’ (West 2011).
Date: Middle of the twelfth century
Edition
Ogham text: ᚛ᚁᚂᚃᚄᚅᚆᚇᚈᚉᚊ[---
Transcription: ᚛BLVSNHDTCQ[---]
Critical apparatus:
- The Norse inscription above the ogham inscription reads: [I]UAN : BRIST : RAISTI : THISIR : RUNUR FUTHORK HNIAS TBML
Translation
-
Ogham: the first part of the ogham alphabet
-
Norse runes: Juan Priest cut these runes
-
Norse runes: A line of the runic alphabet
Commentary
Forsyth (2024) notes that the feather-mark which precedes the first two aicmi of the ogham alphabet ‘is surely superfluous from a legibility perspective, but perhaps was considered a normal part of ogham by this period’.
According to West (2011), the Maughold stone and the Kirk Michael stone (M-IOM-005) are unique monuments that combine Norse Runic inscriptions and Ogham inscriptions on the same stone, ‘typifying the fusion of Irish and Norse cultures on the island during the medieval period (9th through 13th centuries)’.
References
- Kermode 1907, 213
- Forsyth 2024-08-23,
- West 2011-06-30