Cross-inscribed stone, Cill Mhic An Domhnaigh, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Crosses & Monuments

Cross-inscribed stone, Cill Mhic An Domhnaigh, Co. Kerry

One of the more quietly unsettling facts about this early Christian site on the lower eastern slopes of Mount Eagle is that one of its carved stones has effectively ceased to exist as a physical object.

The second of two cross-inscribed slabs recorded at Calluragh burial ground, known in Irish as An CheallĂșnach, is now known only through a rubbing held by the Royal Irish Academy. The stone itself has not been located, and the rubbing, made by the antiquarian Crawford and noted in his 1912 publication, is all that documents what was once carved there.

What the rubbing shows is striking in its detail. The vanished stone carried two distinct carvings: a Greek cross with expanded terminals at its arms, and below it a saltire cross, that is, an X-shaped cross, whose ends terminated in double spirals. Each of the four quadrants formed by the saltire contained a small cup-shaped hollow ringed by a circle. This kind of layered, symbolic carving is characteristic of early medieval stonework in the Dingle Peninsula, a region exceptionally dense with such monuments. The burial ground itself, oval in plan, also contains the remains of a clochĂĄn, a type of dry-stone corbelled hut associated with early monastic or hermitic settlement, along with what may be a souterrain, an underground passage typically used for storage or refuge. A first cross-slab survives within the enclosure, and a third stands roughly 45 metres to the south-east, propped against a field fence. Two quernstones, the paired grinding stones used for processing grain, were also recorded here by a researcher named Curran, though their current whereabouts are unknown.

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