Cross-slab, An Fhaiche, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Crosses & Monuments
On the southern slopes of a spur running down from Brandon Mountain, within a stone-walled burial ground known as An Cheallúnach, two cross-slabs mark a place that most people walking the Dingle Peninsula would pass without a second glance.
Cross-slabs are among the more modest survivors of early Christian Ireland, upright or recumbent stones bearing incised crosses that typically served as grave markers or devotional objects in small rural enclosures. What makes the second of the two slabs at this site quietly compelling is the nature of its decoration: a circle carved into its flat western face, and within it, faint traces of further markings that may describe a Maltese cross.
The slab itself is unassuming in scale, measuring 38 centimetres wide, 10 centimetres thick, and 35 centimetres high. A Maltese cross, with its four arms of equal length flaring outward at the tips, appears in early Christian contexts across Ireland and western Britain, often associated with communities that had connections to the broader Mediterranean church. Whether the markings here represent exactly that is uncertain; the word "perhaps" in the Cuppage archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, published in 1986, is doing considerable work. The enclosure itself, roughly irregular in shape and sitting about 500 metres to the north-east of Faha village, is recorded under the Irish name An Cheallúnach, a term related to the word for a burial ground associated with an early church site.