BabelStone

The Ogham Stones of Cornwall and Devon

2009-11-08

[Mirrored from http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2009/11/ogham-stones-of-cornwall-and-devon.html]




In anticipation of next week's blog post, I thought it would be useful to present a brief survey of the known Ogham stone inscriptions in Cornwall and Devon. Although the large majority of Ogham stones are found in Ireland, a number of Ogham stone inscriptions are known from Scotland, the Isle of Man, Wales, and the south-west peninsula of England (the modern counties of Cornwall and Devon), as well as a single outlier at Silchester in Hampshire. At the time that most Ogham inscriptions were made (5th century through 8th century C.E.), the south-west peninsula was occupied by the British Celtic kingdom of Dumnonia, but there were strong trading and religious ties between Dumnonia and Ireland which might explain the presence of a small number of monumental stones with Ogham inscriptions (seven certain inscriptions marked with red tags and another four dubious or unconfirmed inscriptions marked with yellow tags).


Location of Ogham Stones in Cornwall and Devon

Red tags mark the sites of certain Ogham inscriptions (a dot indicates that the stone is in situ)
Yellow tags mark the sites of dubious or unconfirmed Ogham inscriptions
Blue tags mark museums or other sites where Ogham stone are held

[See also the Ordnance Survey Map of Britain in the Dark Ages (⍊ = Memorial stones with ogams)]


As can be seen from the map, the stones are mostly found in a band running from north-east Cornwall down to south-west Devon. Three of the certain Ogham inscriptions are sited in churches or churchyards, one of which (St. Kew) was only moved to the churchyard after it was discovered in a nearby stream. Maybe coincidentally, two of the other three stones, that are not sited by a church, are also associated with water; one is sited on the bank of a stream, and the other (now in the British Museum) was originally being used as a footbridge over a stream.

A fragment of an Ogham stone found in the Penwith peninsula in autumn 2009 is by far the most westerly example of a Dumnonian Ogham stone. It is also very unusual in that the Ogham inscription is carved on the face of the stone on two artificial stemlines, rather than along the edge of the stone as is the case with the other Ogham stones from Cornwall and Devon (and also the vast majority of Ogham stones elsewhere). There is also no evidence of a parallel Latin inscription on the fragment. This stone is discussed in more detail at The Penwith Ogham Stone.

Unlike most Irish Ogham stone inscriptions, but as is also the case with almost all of the Welsh Ogham stone inscriptions, the Cornish and Devonian Ogham inscriptions are almost all bilingual and bi-script, with the text written in Latin (script and language) on the face of the stone, and in Ogham along the edge or edges of the stone (starting at the bottom, and reading up to the top). The Latin text tends to be longer than the corresponding Ogham text, forming complete sentences, whereas the Ogham text tends to merely give the name of the person commemorated by the stone. It is generally assumed that the stones commemorate Irish settlers, and so the language of the Ogham inscriptions would have been Primitive Irish, but only one of the stones is inscribed with the typical X maqi Y (X, son of Y) formula used in most Irish Ogham inscriptions, and so can be said for certain to be written in Primitive Irish. Another stone has an inscription IGENAVI MEMOR, that is linguistically ambiguous: it may simply be an Ogham transcription of the corresponding Latin inscription on the stone, INGENVI MEMORIA "the memoria of Ingenuus", or it may be a translation into Irish, with memor representing a loanword from Latin (see the entry for mebair in eDil). The other four stones only give the commemorated person's name in the Ogham script, which makes it difficult to be absolutely certain what the nominal language used for writing Ogham on these stones was, especially as some of the names are very un-Celtic. In fact, only the names on three of the six stones are Goidelic (i.e. Primitive Irish), whereas the names on the other three stones are Latin (the fragment of Ogham inscription on the newly-discovered Penwith stone is too short to read a name from it, but the presence of the unusual letter P, which is not used in Irish inscriptions, suggests that the name is probably Latin) :

The mixed Irish/Latin nature of the Dumnonian Ogham stones can perhaps best be explained as being due to the Irish immigrants being in a small minority in the Brythonic communities that they settled in, and so they had their commemoration stones inscribed in Latin (the lingua franca of the time) for the benefit of the local inhabitants, and also in Ogham in recogntion of their own cultural heritage. The TVST3/1 stone is particularly interesting in this respect, as it seems to commemorate a father and a son in two inscriptions, the father being commemorated by a simple Ogham inscription, and his son being commemorated by a much longer Latin inscription that records his occupation as a smith. This suggests that perhaps Enabarras was a first-generation Irish immigrant, but that his son Dobunnus had become Romanized, and no longer considered Irish to be his main language. The Latin names Ingenuus, Iustus and Latinus may also reflect a process of cultural acclimatization, whereby second or third generation Irish immigrants rejected the generally hypocoristic names used by their forefathers, and adopted more "civilized" Latin names.

Ogham stones are notoriously difficult to date accurately, as they normally lack any archaeological context, and because Ogham letters lack the sophistication of Latin letters it is usually hard to date them on epigraphic grounds. The Dumnonian examples have the advantage of having parallel Latin inscriptions, but even so it is hard to be certain when the stones were carved. Thomas (1994) dates them all to the 5th century, whereas Okasha (1993) dates them to any time within the 5th to the 8th centuries. My personal feeling is that the adoption of Latin names by many of those comemmorated on the stones suggests a date that is closer to the Roman period than to the Anglo-Saxon period, so I think a 5th century to 6th century date for the inscriptions is most likely, which would make them contemporaneous with the Ogham stones of South Wales.



Cornwall (Kernow)

Stone Description Inscriptions
CISP LWNCK/1
CIIC 466

 Site : Lewannick Church, Lewannick [SX 2760 8070]
Original Location : Buried on the south side of the churchyard.
Current Location : In the churchyard (west of the lych-gate).
First Recorded : 1892
Dimensions : 1.22 × 0.40 × 0.23 m.
Ogham Layout : Left edge, bottom-to-top.
Date : 400–799 (Okasha), 500–533 (Thomas)
Notes : 		INGEN | VI | MEM | ORIA
INGENVI MEMORIA
The memoria of Ingenuus
 ᚔᚌᚓᚅᚐᚃᚔᚋᚓᚋᚑᚏ 
IGENAVI MEMOR
The memoria of Ingenuus
CISP LWNCK/2
CIIC 467

 Site : Lewannick Church, Lewannick [SX 2760 8070]
Original Location : In two pieces, built into the walls of the north porch of the church.
Current Location : Inside the church.
First Recorded : 1894
Dimensions : 1.50 × 0.34 × 0.28 m.
Ogham Layout : Left edge, bottom-to-top; Right edge, bottom-to-top.
Date : 400–799 (Okasha), 500–566 (Thomas)
Notes : The Latin and Ogham inscriptions have the same orientation (both apparently reading vertically top-to-bottom). Additionally, the Ogham inscription is carved twice, once correctly as ULCAGNI (matching the VLCAGNI in the Latin inscription) and once incorrectly as UDSGQI (with the strokes of the letters L, C and N branching off to the wrong side of the stem, transforming them into the letters D, S and Q repectively). My hypothesis is that the stone was carved before it had been erected by two different masons, one working on the Ogham inscription and one working on the Latin inscription, and that they each thought a different end of the stone was the base. The Ogham inscription of the name Ulcagni was originally carved up what the mason assumed to be the left edge of the stone. as is normal, but because he accidentally carved the strokes of the letters L, C and N on the wrong side of the stem, he recarved the name correctly up the right edge of the stone; then when a different mason (who perhaps could not read Ogham) came to carve the Latin inscription, he assumed that the end of of the stone that the Ogham inscription starts at was the head of the stone, and carved his inscription down the stone from that end, with the result that if the stone is oriented with the Latin inscription reading downwards, as is normal, then the Ogham inscriptions appear to also read downwards (ULCAGNI down the left edge and UDSGQI down the right edge). As the stone does not stand in situ, and is in quite bad condition (broken into two pieces), it is not evident which way up the stone originally stood, but my feeling is that it would have been more legible to have the Ogham inscriptions oriented correctly (UDSGQI reading up the left edge and ULCAGNI reading up the right edge) and the Latin inscription misoriented (reading vertically up from the base). This orientation is shown in the picture on the left. 		--]CIA CITVLCAGNI
[HI]C IACIT VLCAGNI
Here lies Ulcagnus
 ᚒᚇᚄᚐᚌᚊᚔ 
UDSAGQI
Of Udsagcus (for Of Ulcagnus)

[The strokes of the letters L, C and N branch off the wrong side of the stem, so that the intended ULCAGNI reads as UDSAGQI.]
 ᚒᚂᚉᚐᚌᚅᚔ 
ULCAGNI
Of Ulcagnus

[Presumably a correction for the incorrect "UDSAGQI" on the other edge.]
CISP LWNCC/1 Site : 'Churchtown', Lewannick [SX 2700 8000]
Original Location : Unknown.
Current Location : In situ ?
First Recorded : 1994
Dimensions :
Ogham Layout : Unknown.
Date : 400–700 (Thomas)
Notes : This stone is listed in Thomas 1994 p.333, but with few details and no reading for the purported Ogham inscription. 		 
CISP STKEW/1
CIIC 484

 Site : St. Kew church (St. James), St. Kew [SX 0215 7687]
Original Location : In a stream near the church (perhaps originally used as a footbridge).
Current Location : Inside the church.
First Recorded : 1924
Dimensions : 0.72 × 0.37 × 0.39 m.
Ogham Layout : Left edge, bottom-to-top.
Date : 400–799 (Okasha), 550–599 (Thomas)
Notes : The Latin and Ogham inscriptions unusually have the same orientation, and so one of them must have been oriented contrary to normal practice when the stone was erect. I assume that the Ogham inscription would have been written top-to-bottom up the left edge, as is normal for short inscriptions, in which case the Latin inscription must have been written reading vertically up the stone, which is odd, but not as odd as a single line of Ogham being written top-to-bottom down one of the edges. (Compare also the ULCAGNI stone.) 		IVSTI
IVSTI
Of Iustus
 ᚔᚒᚄᚈᚔ 
[I]USTI
Of Iustus
CISP WVALE/1
CIIC 470

 Site : Worthyvale, Minster [SX 1092 8568]
Original Location : Used as footbridge over a stream near Slaughter Bridge.
Current Location : 0.3 km upstream from Slaughter Bridge, on the left-hand bank of the stream.
First Recorded : 1602
Dimensions : 2.06 × 0.70 × 0.37 m.
Ogham Layout : Right edge, bottom-to-top.
Date : 400–799 (Okasha), 533–566 (Thomas)
Notes : 		LATINIICIACIT | F/IL/IUSMAGAR/I
LATINI (H)IC IACIT FILIUS MAGARI
Of Latinus, here lies the son of Magarus

[Thomas 1994 reads 'Magari' as 'Macari'.]
 ᚂᚐᚈᚔᚅᚔ 
LA[TI]NI
Of Latinus
CISP LCARF/1
CIIC 457

 Site : Lancarffe House, Bodmin [SX 0820 6900]
Original Location : In a stream near the house.
Current Location : Built into the wall of a summer house in the garden of Lancarffe House.
First Recorded : 1912
Dimensions : 1.87 × 0.25 × 0.04 m.
Ogham Layout :
Date : 400–799 (Okasha), 533–566 (Thomas)
Notes : Marked as an Ogham stone on the Ordnance Survey Map of Britain in the Dark Ages, but no Ogham inscription is noted in the CISP database, or shown in the drawing of the inscription in Macalister 1945. 		DVNOCAT{I}HICIACIT | F/ILIME{S}CAGN{I}
DVNOCATI HIC IACIT FILI MESCAGNI
Of Dunocatus, here lies the son of Mescagnus

[Macalister 1945 reads 'Mescagni' as 'Mercagni'.]
CISP SENDL/1
CIIC 478

 Site : St. Endellion [SW 9890 7970]
Original Location : By the road between Roscarrock and St. Endellion Church.
Current Location : In Situ (by a junction about 1.5 km from St. Endellion).
First Recorded : 1753
Dimensions : 1.49 × 0.31 × 0.21 m.
Ogham Layout : Right edge, bottom-to-top ?
Date : 500–799 (Okasha), 566–599 (Thomas)
Notes : The Ogham inscription is very doubtful. "There seemed to me to be faint and doubtful traces of Ogham—but nothing that could be regarded with any confidence" (Macalister 1945 p.457). "There is no sign of any ogham text today and in my view this can be disregarded" (Okasha 1993 p.23). 		BROCAGNIIHCIACIT | [N^R]ADOTTIFILIVS
BROCAGNI IHC IACIT [N]ADOTTI FILIVS
Of Brocagnus, here lies the son of Nadottus (or Radottus)
 ᚁᚏᚑᚊᚐᚌᚅᚔ 
[BROCAGNI]
Of Brocagnus
CISP SCLEM/1
CIIC 473

 Site : St. Clement's Church, St. Clement [SW 8510 4390]
Original Location : Used as a gatepost at the vicarage.
Current Location : In the churchyard, near the south door.
First Recorded : 1754
Dimensions : 2.26 × 0.40 × 0.37 m.
Ogham Layout : Left edge, bottom-to-top; Right edge, bottom-to-top ?
Date : 500–799 (Okasha), 500–533 (Thomas)
Notes : The Ogham inscription is very doubtful. It is marked as an Ogham stone on the Ordnance Survey Map of Britain in the Dark Ages, and Macalister 1945 shows a reconstructed Ogham inscription along the damaged edges of the stone (where he presumably believed that the Ogham inscription had been deliberately excised), but the CISP database makes no mention of an Ogham inscription on this stone. 		VITAL{I}FILITORRICI
VITALI FILI TORRICI
Of Vitalus, son of Torricus
IGNIOC
IGNIOC

[Possibly "...igni" plus "oc" for "hic".]
 ᚃᚔᚈᚐᚂᚔᚋᚐᚊᚔ 
 ᚈᚑᚏᚔᚉᚔ 
[VITALI MAQI ||| TORICI]
Of Vitalus, son of Toricus
BabelStone

 Site : Penwith
Original Location : In a field near a church.
Current Location :
First Recorded : 2009
Dimensions : 0.13 × 0.08 m.
Ogham Layout : Uncertain (two or three parallel stemlines on the surface of the stone).
Date :
Notes : A fragment of a slate slab found in a ploughed field, with one end freshly broken. The inscription, which unusually is carved on artificial stemlines on the surface of the stone, is very incomplete. 		 ᚘᚄ   
 ᚑᚘᚂ 
--]{P}S | [O!]P[L!][--

[There is possibly a third stemline on the top left, with a single letter A.]

Devon

Stone Description Inscriptions
CISP TVST3/1
CIIC 488
OIIWS 196

 Site : Roborough Down, Buckland Monachorum [SX 4900 6930]
Original Location : Used as a gatepost to a field.
Current Location : Tavistock Vicarage Garden.
First Recorded : 1834
Dimensions : 1.52 × 0.43 × 0.30 m.
Ogham Layout : Left edge, bottom-to-top.
Date : 400–799 (Okasha), 533–566 (Thomas)
Notes : 		DOBVNN{I} | FABRIFILII | EN{A}B{A}RRI
DOBVNNI FABRI FILII ENABARRI
Of Dobunnus the smith, son of Enabarrus
 ᚓᚅᚐᚁᚐᚏᚏ 
ENABARR
Enabarr
CISP FARDL/1
CIIC 489
OIIWS 197
OISW 164

 Site : Fardel Farm, Cornwood [SX 6110 5740]
Original Location : Used as a footbridge over the Fardel Brook.
Current Location : British Museum (not on display) [1861,0209.1].
First Recorded : 1861
Dimensions : 1.68 × 0.87 × 0.25 m.
Ogham Layout : Left edge, bottom-to-top; Right edge, bottom-to-top.
Date : 400–799 (Okasha), 500–550 (Thomas)
Notes : 		FANONI | MAQVIRINI
FANONI MAQVI RINI
Of Fanonus, son of Rinus
SAGRANVI (on the back of the stone)
SAGRANVI
Of Sagranuus
 ᚄᚐᚃᚐᚊᚊᚒᚉᚔ 
 ᚋᚐᚊᚔᚊᚔᚉᚔ 
S[A]FAQQUCI ||| MAQI QICI
Of Safaqqucus, son of Qicus

[These may also be two independent inscriptions, SAFAQQUCI "Of Safaqqucus" and MAQIQICI "Of Maqiqicus" or "Of the son of Qicus".]

References


Index of Blog Posts