What is recorded here

Ten centimetres of dense stone spanned a dark underground chamber in a forgotten Rathmalode rath before men dragged it into a Lougher cottage doorframe. CURCI MAQI MUCOI V still stands out sharply on the broken edge, but the wooden museum base in Ballyferriter swallows the final name and forces every reader to stop at the void.

Hitchcock (1853, 401) discovered this stone acting as the lintel to a cottage door in Lougher townland and it is now in the museum in Ballyferriter (see KE042-165----). It formerly acted as a Man-made underground passage lintel in a rath in Rathmalode townland, and though Macalister (1945, 189, no. 195) described the fort as small and erased, this is the only known ringfort in the townland and is therefore the probable provenance. The stone is 0.28m wide, 0.1m thick and at least 1.04m long. Its base, including the last 4 letters of the inscription, are concealed by the wooden base in which the stone now stands and Macalister's reading of this section could not be verified. However, the visible scores are all clearly legible and there is little disagreement in previous accounts as to the reading of the inscription: CURCI MAQI MUCOI V…… The V is followed by 1 or 2 vowel scores, but the stone is then fractured and the remainder of the final name is missing. (Cuppage 1986, no. 520) This stone has been studied as part of the ‘Ogham in 3D’ project undertaken by the School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. To access details go to the following website: https://ogham.celt.dias.ie/search.php?ciic=195 Compiled by: Nora White Date of upload: 16 January 2017

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