Tomb, Limerick City, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Tombs & Memorials
In the graveyard of St. Munchin's Church in Limerick city, a large flat slab carries an inscription that circles its entire margin, frame-like, as though the words themselves are keeping something in.
The text records the death of a young woman on 26th February 1649, and takes some care to make a particular point about her: that she lived as a virgin and died a maiden. It is a detail that would have carried weight in the seventeenth century, but set in stone and left to weather for nearly four hundred years, it reads today as something quietly insistent, almost plaintive.
The slab commemorates Elinor Younge, daughter of Thomas and Mary Younge. The inscription, recorded in full by an anonymous source published in 1898, reads: "Here Elinor Younge her body lies, of who 'tis truly said she aither a virgin lived and ere deceast a maiden, the daughter of Thomas and Mary Younge, 26th Feb. 1649." The Urban Survey of Limerick, compiled by Bradley and colleagues in 1989, describes it as a large slab with a marginal inscription, drawing on earlier notes from the 1890s. The year 1649 places her death in one of the most turbulent periods in Irish history, the same year Cromwell landed in Ireland, though the inscription itself says nothing of the wider world. St. Munchin's is one of the oldest ecclesiastical sites in Limerick, associated with the city's patron saint, and its graveyard holds several significant early modern monuments.
The church and its graveyard sit in the old Irishtown district on the north side of the city, close to the Shannon. The graveyard is accessible and the church itself is a Church of Ireland parish. The slab lies flat, as grave slabs do, so getting a clear view of the marginal inscription may require walking slowly around its perimeter and looking at an angle, particularly in low or overcast light when shadows help define the carved lettering. Lichen and weathering will have softened the text somewhat since the late nineteenth century transcription, so having the inscription text to hand before visiting makes the reading considerably easier.