Macalister — On Some Recently Discovered Ogham Inscriptions. 141 



long, 4 feet 6 inches high, and 4 feet wide. The walls of the cave were the 

 boulder-clay, unlined with stones of any kind. A small passage, unlined 

 with stones, leads off from one corner to a small and much dilapidated 

 beehive-cell. The roof was formed of lintel-stones, two of which, being 

 broken, were supported in the middle by pillar-stones set upright. There 

 were in all eight lintels. The inscriptions were on five of these, and on the 

 northern of the two supporting stones. (See Plate XY, 2.) 



A woman told us a local legend to the effect that a field close by the fort 

 was called Cillin, and had once been a burial-ground, and that it had been 

 transported in a single night to Kilbonane, about a couple of miles away. 

 This obeys the rule first established by Brash, that there is always an ancient 

 burial-ground close by when ogham stones are found in a souterrain. The 

 tradition possibly may also rest on an actual nocturnal raid on the cemetery 

 by the rath- builders, and the surprise of the neighbours, not in the secret, 

 to find the stones gone. Such tales of the transfer of cemeteries are told 

 elsewhere in the country ; but the coincidence in this case is worth passing 

 mention. 



Beginning at the inner (northern) end of the souterrain, the following 

 are the measurements and inscriptions on the stones: — 



(1) First lintel : slate, 6 feet 5 inches long, by 1 foot 10 inches broad, by 

 7 inches thick. The inscription, as is usual in Co. Cork, is scratched in fine 

 lines, and has suffered badly by the scaling of the stone. It could, however, 

 be completely deciphered :— 



T 



H i ll 



UL 



hhi'iii III ""'/' m ii ::•./::• 



nw 



M I CANAVV IMAQ L (u) G (u) N (i) 



There is a gap of 4 inches between the first two words, and of 2J inches 

 between the second and third. Such careful word-spacing is rare in Ogham 

 inscriptions. The upper half of the first M can scarcely be seen ; the u's of 

 luguni are very faint, and the I in the same word is gone altogether. 



Leaving for the present the names, we may notice an important point 

 with regard to orthography : I refer to the spelling maq for jiaqi. This has 

 been found elsewhere, and has been explained in various ways. But the 

 very close connexion between this stone and the next shows that the 

 simplest explanation is, after all, correct — that it is a mere abbreviation. 

 The letter I takes up a good deal of space, and is troublesome to cut. It can 

 easily be supplied by the reader ; and therefore I for one would be inclined to 

 abandon all explanations which seek to account for the appearance of words 

 and names in their crude form by calling in extra-Celtic syntax to account 



