9 
daughter of Turlogh O’Conor, by whom he had seven sons. 
The inscription, now before the Academy, seems to settle the 
question raised by O’Farrell in his Linea Antiqua, as to whe- 
ther Finola, or the daughter of Walter Bourke, was his first 
wife. And it is confirmed by the testimony of the Book of 
Lecan, and by the fact recorded by the Four Masters, that 
Finola survived her husband two years, Melachlin having 
died in 1401, and Finola in 1403.* 
These dates, as Mr. Curry has observed, fix the date of 
the inscription, as well as of the fresco painting; and this 
conclusion is fully established by the form of the characters 
in which the inscriptions on both monuments are written ; 
they are manifestly the black-letter characters ‘of the end of 
the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century. 
It is a singular proof of the ignorance or carelessness of 
the antiquaries of the last century that Ledwich should have 
ascribed this inscription to the thirteenth, and that on the 
fresco painting to the seventeenth century, although they are 
manifestly incharacters of thesame date. One may indeed fairly 
doubt whether he had ever seen either inscription, although 
he did not scruple to dogmatize as to their date. With re- 
spect to the inscription on the fresco, he makes no attempt to 
read it, either in the text of his work or in the very inaccurate 
engraving which he gives of the whole painting, where, 
though he marks the position of the inscription, he evidently 
represents it as illegible. | 
But Mr. Curry infers from the omission of the usual form: 
«Pray for Mealachlain, &c.,” at the beginning of the inscrip- 
tion, and from its being only said that the stone was erected 
to, or to the honour of, the chieftain and his wife, that they 
were living when it was put up. Of the erection of monu- 
mental inscriptions, during the life of the parties mentioned 
in them, there are many examples; and, in the present in- 
* O’Donovan’s Hy-Many, p. 107. 
