Most funerary monuments at least manage to survive intact, or else disappear entirely. The fragment propped against the south wall of the nave at Moig South in County Limerick does neither, sitting in a kind of incomplete permanence, bearing just enough information to raise more questions than it answers.

The slab dates to 1634, and what remains is one half of what was once a rectangular piece of limestone, measuring 139 centimetres in length, 87 in width, and 19 in depth. Carved into its face, in false relief, meaning the lettering appears raised by cutting away the surrounding stone rather than carving the letters themselves into the surface, is a simple inscription within a panel: 'p.A. 1634'. The initials almost certainly identify the person commemorated, though who p.A. was remains unrecorded in any surviving account. The source description, drawn from the Urban Archaeological Survey of County Limerick compiled by John Bradley, Andrew Halpin and Heather A. King for the Office of Public Works in 1985, offers nothing further on the identity. An earlier reference appears in the Memorials of the Dead series from 1907 to 1909, suggesting the slab was noted by antiquarians at least a century ago, already in its current fragmentary state. What became of the other half is unknown.

The site is rural and the remains modest, so a visit requires some patience and a tolerance for the kind of quiet that settles around roofless churches. The nave wall against which the slab rests would once have formed part of an enclosed space of worship; now it is open to the sky. The limestone of the slab weathers slowly, and the lettering, cut with care by a mason nearly four centuries ago, remains legible. It is worth looking closely at the panel to appreciate the technique of false relief carving, which was common on Irish grave monuments of the seventeenth century. The slab does not announce itself, and the missing half is simply absent, leaving the inscription and its date to carry whatever meaning they still can.