Memorial stone, Corrafaireen, Co. Galway

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Memorials

Memorial stone, Corrafaireen, Co. Galway

Inside a graveyard at Corrafaireen in County Galway, a small holy well sits enclosed within a drystone chamber, and on its eastern wall a plaque carries an inscription that has survived since 1688.

Holy wells, typically natural springs associated with a particular saint and visited for healing or devotion, are common across Ireland, but this one has an unusual personal dimension. Someone took the trouble not only to commission a carved image but to ensure that their own name would remain attached to it across the centuries.

The well is dedicated to St Patrick and occupies the north-east corner of a roughly square stone chamber measuring about two and a half metres on each side. A step on the southern side leads down to the water. The plaque on the east wall, measuring 0.7 metres high by 0.5 metres wide, depicts Patrick standing on a snake and holding a double-armed cross, a form of cross with two horizontal bars that appears frequently in representations of bishops and high-ranking clergy. The inscription, rendered with full stops separating each fragment of broken text, reads: PRAY FOR FA THOMAS KIEGHRYE WHO MADE THIS IMAGE IN REMEMBRANCE 1688. The awkward line breaks suggest the text was cut to fit the stone rather than composed for easy reading, and the name Father Thomas Kieghrye, otherwise obscure, is preserved here solely because he chose to attach it to an act of devotion at a moment when public Catholic expression in Ireland was already carrying considerable risk. The Penal Laws, which severely restricted Catholic worship and clergy, were being consolidated in the decades around that date, which makes the confident placement of a named priest's memorial on a public religious structure all the more striking.

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