Cross-slab, Eochaill, Co. Galway

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Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Eochaill, Co. Galway

In a children's burial ground on the Aran Islands, a small limestone slab sits partly swallowed by the earth, its base terminal hidden under soil, its full shape known only from a drawing made decades ago.

The cross-slab at Eochaill on Inis Mór is modest in its dimensions, roughly half a metre visible above ground and just over four centimetres thick, yet it carries a careful and considered design: a single-line Latin cross with forked terminals at the arms and head, and small raised bosses near the upper ends of both faces.

The slab stands to the north-east of Teampall Chiaráin, an early medieval church site, and within what is known as a cillín, a children's burial ground of the kind found across Ireland, where unbaptised infants and others considered outside the formal Church were interred, often at the margins of consecrated ground or near older sacred sites. Crawford noted the slab as early as 1913, and a later drawing by Higgins, published in 1987, recorded the obscured base terminal as either heart-shaped or spike-shaped, a detail impossible to verify without disturbing the ground. The forked terminals on the arms and head are a feature associated with early Christian stone carving in Ireland, giving the cross an almost branching quality, as though the lines are reaching outward rather than simply ending. The bosses, low rounded projections on the stone surface, appear on both sides of the slab, suggesting it was carved with both faces in mind.

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