Graveslab, Killogilleen, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Tombs & Memorials
Lying flat against the south wall of a ruined church at Killogilleen in County Galway, a seventeenth-century graveslab rewards slow looking.
At roughly 1.79 metres long and just over half a metre wide, it is not especially large, but the carving covering its surface is dense and deliberate, the work of someone who understood both the grammar of religious symbolism and the patience required to execute it in low relief.
The upper portion of the stone is occupied by an elaborate latticework panel, formed from the overlapping geometry of lozenge shapes, saltire crosses (diagonal, like the cross of St Andrew), and Greek crosses, all converging on a central circle. Where these forms meet the edges of the panel, semi-circles mark the sides and quadrant-circles fill the corners, giving the whole composition a contained, almost textile quality. Below this decorated head, a shaft descends to a base of three grieces, the stepped platform that in Irish funerary carving typically supports a cross. Midway down the shaft, small rectangular panels project in relief on either side; they carry no inscription and no ornament, though Robert M. Chapple, who catalogued the stone in 1997, noted they may originally have been painted. Higher up, at roughly a quarter of the shaft's length, a pair of IHS monograms appear in low relief, one on each side. The IHS is a Christogram, an abbreviation of the name of Jesus drawn from Greek, common on post-Reformation Catholic funerary work in Ireland. Each monogram here carries a cross patteé fitché, a cross whose arms flare at the tips and whose base tapers to a point, springing from the crossbar of the H. In both cases, the letter S tilts slightly to the right, a small quirk consistent across both carvings. Towards the lower section of the stone, worn numerals are just legible: to the left of the shaft, what appear to be a one and a six; to the right, a faint five and a clearer four. Read together, these fragments most likely form a date in the 1600s, though the precise year remains uncertain given the condition of the stone.