Cross-slab, High Island, Co. Galway

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Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, High Island, Co. Galway

Lying broken in three pieces across the grave it once marked, this early medieval cross-slab on High Island is a quietly unsettling object.

It was found recumbent, face up, on what researchers classify as a pseudo grave, a feature that mimics the form of a burial but contains no human remains. That detail alone sets it apart from most carved stonework of its kind.

The slab is one of three decorated cross-slabs in the south-eastern corner of the island's graveyard, all carved from garnet mica-schist, a locally sourced metamorphic rock flecked with dark mineral inclusions. This particular example, recorded and described by Fisher in 2014, measures just over a metre in length and roughly half a metre wide, irregular and slightly tapered, with a thickness of only four centimetres. Its carved design centres on a double band in low relief that frames two roundels, each connected to three large D-shaped terminals. The three upper terminals carry decorative motifs; the three lower ones appear to have been left plain. In a small but telling detail, the uppermost terminal has been angled to follow the oblique edge of the slab itself, suggesting the carver worked carefully around the natural shape of the stone rather than trimming it to fit a standard template. White Marshall and Rourke noted it in their 2000 study of the island's carved stones.

High Island, known in Irish as Árd Oileán, sits off the Connemara coast and is accessible only by sea in suitable conditions. The graveyard and its associated early Christian monastic remains are exposed and weather-worn, and the cross-slabs lie in close proximity to one another in the south-eastern section of the enclosure. Visiting the slab means visiting the island itself, which requires some planning; the crossing is dependent on weather and the availability of local boat operators.

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