Tomb - table tomb, Balrothery, Co. Dublin
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Tombs & Memorials
Somewhere in Holmpatrick graveyard in Balrothery, County Dublin, a sixteenth-century table tomb, a flat-topped slab raised on supports, carries an inscription that has been quietly garbled by a well-meaning but Latinless hand.
The tomb belongs to Elizabeth Finglas, wife of Thomas Hussey of Holmpatrick, who died on the twenty-seventh of November 1577. At some point after the original carving, someone recut the letters, and the results are instructive in the worst way: what had been the standard Latin formula QVE OBIIT, meaning "who died", now reads QVF OBMT. The blunder was noticed and documented, and that small act of scholarly indignation is part of what makes the monument worth attention.
The tomb was recorded in May 1904 by E. R. McC. Dix, who published his findings in the Journal of the Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead in Ireland in 1906. Dix transcribed the inscription with care, noting that in the original several letters had been conjoined, a common economy in medieval and early modern stonecutting. The slab bears the coats of arms of both families united in marriage, the Hussey arms impaling those of the Finglas family. Heraldic impalement, in this context, simply means the two family shields placed side by side on a single escutcheon to represent a married couple. The Hussey arms, which Dix noted resemble those of the Barons of Galtrim, are described in heraldic terms as "barry of six, ermine and gules, on a canton of the last a cross or"; the Finglas arms as "per pale, sable and argent, a fleur-de-lys counterchanged". The initials T. H. appear above the Hussey shield and E. F. above that of the Finglas family. The closing line of the inscription, abbreviated in the stonecutting conventions of the period, translates as "on whose soul may God have mercy".
Holmpatrick graveyard sits in the village of Balrothery, north County Dublin, and the site is recorded in the national monuments record under the reference DU005-031002-. The table tomb itself is not the kind of monument that announces itself loudly; older graveyards in Ireland tend to reward a slow walk and a willingness to crouch and read. Knowing in advance that the inscription has been recut and corrupted gives a visitor something concrete to look for, and the heraldic slab with its paired shields is the identifying feature. Dix's 1906 article remains the most detailed account of what the original inscription likely said, and reading it alongside the stone, with its introduced errors still visible, gives a particular kind of satisfaction.