Graveslab, Glebe, Co. Longford
Co. Longford |
Tombs & Memorials
Inside a late-medieval church in Glebe, Co. Longford, a limestone graveslab carries one of those inscriptions that stops you.
Carved in false relief, a technique in which the lettering is raised by cutting away the surrounding stone rather than incising the letters themselves, the text records the burial of a woman named Anna Forbes, also known by the surname Aghr(?)outy, the second name now partly illegible, along with her three children. The date is the 23rd of November 1696. Four people, one stone, a single November day.
The slab stands against the north wall of the church, in the company of two 18th-century graveslabs. At 1.39 metres tall and 0.66 metres wide, it is a substantial piece of limestone, and the inscription it carries is a compressed record of a loss that the carver clearly thought worth preserving with some care. The name Anna Forbes suggests a family of Scottish or planter origin, not unusual in Longford in the late 17th century, while the alias Aghr(?)outy hints at an Irish name running alongside the anglicised one, a small trace of the layered naming practices common in that period. Whether she and the children died together or were interred at different times is not recorded; the single date beside four lives leaves the question open.
