Ogham stone, Baile An Reannaigh, Co. Kerry

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Stone Monuments

Ogham stone, Baile An Reannaigh, Co. Kerry

A late eighteenth-century storm did more than reshape the coastline at Cill Mhic Uíleáin on the Dingle Peninsula.

When it finally subsided, it had torn open a burial mound and exposed seven ogham stones arranged in a rough semi-circle, a possible fragment of an eighth, a cross-inscribed stone, slab-lined graves, quantities of human bone, and the ruins of several houses. Ogham is an early medieval Irish script in which letters are represented by groups of notches or scores cut along the edge or face of a stone, most commonly recording a personal name in a formulaic genealogical phrase. The antiquarian John Windele sketched the site in 1838, capturing the unusual configuration of the stones before most of them were moved.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Lord Ventry removed six of the seven standing stones from the site. Four of them, numbered one to four in the scholarly record, were repurposed as ornamental features lining the driveway to Burnham House, now Colaiste Íde, between Dingle and Ventry. The remaining two he kept at Chute Hall near Tralee, and it is there that this particular stone, number six from the original group, now resides, in the townland of Tullygarran. The stone stands 1.1 metres high with a base measuring 0.29 by 0.20 metres. Its inscription, carried on two opposed angles, reads CCICAMINI MAQQI CATTINI, a formula meaning roughly "of Ccicaminus, son of Cattinus". Two of the vowel scores are no longer traceable, but the rest of the inscription remains clearly defined, as noted by Cuppage in 1986. The seventh stone from the original find, unlike its companions, was never removed and can still be found at Cill Mhic Uíleáin itself. So a group of monuments that began together in a single exposed mound during one winter storm is now scattered across three separate locations in County Kerry, each stone carrying part of a story that has long since lost its middle.

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