Graveslab, Abbeyshrule, Co. Longford

Co. Longford |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Abbeyshrule, Co. Longford

In the burial ground beside the ruined Cistercian abbey at Abbeyshrule, a limestone slab lies flat against the earth with an inscription that names the dead with unusual specificity.

Carved in false relief, a technique in which the background is cut away to leave lettering or imagery standing at the original surface level, the slab bears a Latin prayer, two armorial shields, and a cross rising from the horizontal bar of an IHS symbol. That monogram, an abbreviation derived from the Greek name for Jesus, appears here with a cross growing directly out of the H, a common devotional rendering in Counter-Reformation stonework.

The inscription identifies the deceased as Conaty Ferrall of Lislea, an armiger, meaning a man entitled to bear a coat of arms but ranking below a knight, who died on 18 January 1644. The prayer continues to name Margaret Geraldine, described as the relict, or widow, of Conaty. The slab measures one and a half metres in length and sits approximately thirty metres to the north-east of the abbey itself. The date of death places the commission of this stone in a particularly turbulent period in Irish history; 1644 fell during the years of the Confederate Ireland wars, when much of the country was convulsed by conflict involving Old English, Gaelic Irish, and various crown forces. The Ferrall family, bearing armorial shields and a Latinate memorial, were clearly a household of some local standing, connected to the Gaelic and Old English worlds that the Cistercian monasteries of the midlands had long served.

The slab remains recumbent in the burial ground, and the Latin inscription, worn in places, can still be read along its edges. The two armorial shields beneath the IHS symbol are carved on the same face, though the weathering of the limestone over nearly four centuries means some detail is now difficult to make out at close range.

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