Ogham stone, Knockboy, Co. Waterford

Co. Waterford |

Stone Monuments

Ogham stone, Knockboy, Co. Waterford

The medieval parish church of Seskinan at Knockboy, County Waterford, contains something quietly remarkable built into its very fabric: not one ogham stone, but seven. Six of them have been repurposed as lintels and structural elements in the church walls, their ancient inscriptions pressed into service as building material, probably centuries after the stones were first carved. The seventh stands upright in a corner of the church, a rare survivor in its original orientation.

Ogham is an early medieval script, typically incised along the edge of a stone as a series of notches and lines, used primarily to record personal names in an archaic form of Irish. The stone that now serves as the inner lintel of the south doorway was identified in 1851 by the geologist and antiquarian G. V. du Noyer. It measures 1.88 metres in length and is both weathered and damaged, with a hole perforating the lower right-hand angle that has obscured part of the inscription. The scholar R. A. S. Macalister, working in 1945, restored the text as Q[E]CC[I]AS M[U]C[OI B]R[O]E[NIONAS], where the letters in square brackets represent his reconstruction of the damaged sections. The formula "mucoi" indicates tribal or kin-group affiliation, a common construction in early Irish ogham inscriptions, meaning something like "of the tribe of". The name preserved here, then, likely commemorates a person identified as belonging to the Broeniona grouping, though the first name, Qeccías, is itself worn enough to require reconstruction.

The stone has since been examined as part of the Ogham in 3D project run by the School of Celtic Studies at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, which uses digital scanning to record inscriptions that are too fragile or worn to study reliably by eye alone. That a single church doorway should carry such a stone, and that six further ogham-inscribed pieces should be embedded elsewhere in the same structure, points to a locality that was once dense with early medieval commemorative activity, even if the original context of those stones is now entirely lost.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Ogham stone, Knockboy, Co. Waterford. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement