Provenance
Discovery: Found ‘imbedded in the sand’ on the chapel site by Gilbert Goudie in 1876.
Findspot: Dunrossness, Shetland, Scotland (National Grid Reference: HU 3685 2090)
Current repository: Scotland National Museums of Scotland (inv. no. IB112)
Last recorded location(s): Now in the National Museums of Scotland, where it was seen and recorded in 3d (using photogrammetry) for the OG(H)AM project in November 2024.
Support
Trove: 587
Object type: Slab
Material: Sandstone
Dimensions: H 760 × W 265 × D 45 mm
Condition: The ogham inscription is well-preserved for the most part except for a potentially substantial portion missing from the beginning. The end of the inscription, however, appears to be complete despite the fracture at the upper edge of the slab. The two broad faces are severely laminated and large chunks of the surface have been lost.
Inscription
Text field: The inscription is carved up the entire length of the narrow edge of the stone. The inscription begins mid-letter. There is 30mm of stem visible after the final letter which suggests that no lettering has been lost at the end.
Letters: The inscription has been pocked and rubbed. Forsyth (1996, 472) notes that little attention has been given to smoothing as the ‘pocks are still clearly visible’. The strokes are well-defined but not deep, they have rounded ends and a curved cross-section. The stemline has been re-cut on top of the letter strokes. The inscription is very neat and regular, the letters are clearly differentiated by size, slope, and spacing.
Date: Seventh century
Edition
Transcription: [---]ḄES MEQQ NANNAMMOVVEZ
Critical apparatus:
- The direction of reading is indicated by the slope of the b- and h-aicme consonants which is consistent. The inscription lacks forfeda, bind-strokes, or word-division. The inscription could include the Gaelic word for ‘son’ in the genitive case, which could then be expected to be followed by a personal name in the genitive case. The extant segment of the first name is too short for analysis beyond noting that -nes, and -les are perfectly possible syllables for personal names in both Gaelic and Brittonic languages. Note also that Nes was an Irish male personal name in its own right. The final name is rather long for a single name and further segmentation might be required.
Translation
‘…bes, son of unblemished choice?‘
Commentary
MEQQ also occurs as MAQQ in mainland Scotland is a form of Irish MAQ(Q)I, ‘son’. This allows the preceding and succeeding letters to be interpreted as personal names. The final syllable of the final word appears to be a form of Pictish -(g)uist from Celtic gustus meaning ‘choice’. The final personal name appears to be Pictish rather than Gaelic as it appears to lack the expected Irish genitive ending -guso, while Pictish -(g)uist appears in both nominative and genitive position. Working backwards from the final element in the final word, if the preceding O represents a composition vowel, then it has clear implications for dating. Such syllables were lost in Brittonic in the first half of the sixth century ‘and in Gaelic slightly later’, but this seems rather early for the St. Ninian’s Isle text (Jackson 1955, 166). Regarding the first element of the last personal name, perhaps St. Ninian’s Isle’s Nanamo is a reduplicated form of Celtic Namo- which Evans (1967, 369) interprets as WCB nam ‘defect, blemish, fault, vice’. If the initial NA- is a negative prefix, the final name might mean ‘unblemished choice’.
References
- Forsyth 1996, 472-479
- Goudie 1878, 20-32
- Jackson and Wainwright 1955,
- West 2013-06-08