What is recorded here

That is a cross-slab. It is a small pillar, thirty centimetres tall, twelve centimetres wide and eight centimetres thick. One broad face carries a shafted ringed cross rising from an oblong base. The cross is twenty-four centimetres tall. Its ring is cut through the shaft, and its arms reach beyond the ring. The upper arm ends in a flat-butted serif. The horizontal arms are damaged at their ends. The other broad face is badly worn, but it still holds an inscription. The words read OROIT DO MURCHAD. They mean Pray for Murchad. The slab stood in Teach Molaise church on Inishmurray Island. Dunraven recorded it there in 1866. It left the island in 1971 and entered the National Museum of Ireland. It is still a cross-slab, but it is no longer in the church where Murchad's name was set into stone.

This record refers to a cross-slab, which was first recorded by Dunraven in 1866 (Petrie 1878, 15) in Teach Molaise church (SL001-005001-) on Inishmurray Island, Co. Sligo. It was removed to the National Museum of Ireland (Register No. 1971: 1117) in 1971. Its original location is recorded under the number: SL001-001028- Small pillar (H: 0.30 m, W: 0.12 m, Th: 0.08 m). Upper 80% of one face contains an incised shafted ringed cross rising from an oblong base (H: 0.238 m). All the arms seem to have extended beyond the ring but while the upper one terminates in a flat-butted serif, the terminals of the horizontal arms to not survive. On the other broad face is a now badly damaged inscription read by Macalister – broadly agreeing with Wakeman as: OROIT DO MURCHAD Translation: ‘Pray for Murchad’. The above description is derived from the results of a survey of the archaeological monuments on Inishmurray undertaken in 1997-1999 and published in: Jerry O’Sullivan and Tomás Ó Carragáin 2008 Inishmurrary. Monks and pilgrims in an Atlantic landscape. Volume 1: Archaeological Survey and Excavations 1997-2000. Cork. The Collins Press. Date of upload: 20 February 2018

This cross-slab is likely from the early medieval period (7th–10th century) and would have originally served a Christian liturgical or commemorative function, possibly marking a burial site or ecclesiastical boundary. Its relocation to the National Museum of Ireland reflects the 19th-century interest in preserving and documenting Ireland’s early Christian heritage.

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