Memorial stone, Rinneen, Co. Clare

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Memorials

Memorial stone, Rinneen, Co. Clare

On a north-east-facing slope in Rinneen, Co. Clare, a limestone slab stands upright in a field, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, commemorating a woman who died in 1795.

It looks, at first glance, like a gravestone that has wandered far from any churchyard. But local tradition holds that it never marked a burial at all, and for the better part of two centuries it lay flat on the ground, unnoticed beneath the grass, until the field was reclaimed in the 1970s.

The stone is roughly 1.5 metres tall and 0.75 metres wide, with the curved top edge typical of eighteenth-century headstones. Above the inscription, the letters IHS are carved in very low relief, a Christogram derived from the Greek name for Jesus and commonly found on Catholic memorial stones of the period. The inscription itself is crudely cut into the north-facing side, while the south side remains rough and unfinished, suggesting the carver worked with modest tools and modest means. It reads: "This stone was erected by Michael Reidy in memory of this moth.. Bridget Cah(?)ikawll(?) died in the year 1795 aged 61." The word before Bridget's surname is cut short, possibly "mother", and the surname itself is badly worn or was never cleanly executed. Scholars have suggested it may read Caherlough, which is the name of the townland immediately to the east, and if so, the stone may have been placed near the boundary of her home place rather than over any grave. The partial letters and uncertain readings give the inscription a quality that is less ruined than simply unresolved, as though the stonemason ran out of either skill or stone before finishing the thought.

The stone sits in open ground with wide views northward across the Clare landscape. The barbed-wire fence around it keeps livestock at a distance, and the monument itself is oriented roughly west-northwest to east-southeast. It is a quiet, puzzling thing: a formal act of remembrance, made in the vernacular of funerary tradition, for a woman whose resting place, if there was one, lies somewhere else entirely.

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