46 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



but left in its stead a substitute which will, I hope, well compensate 

 the student of Irish case-endings in the examples it affords of external 

 inflections of the ingredient words becoming internal inflections of 

 their compounds, in this commemoration of Cathbar son of Fercorb. 



Another ignis fatuus, exhaled from the same source, which it 

 was my lot to follow for some considerable time through the ety- 

 mological quagmire, arose on a comparison of another of these 

 drawings with a notice of certain Cornish inscribed stones, men- 

 tioned by Borlase, and re-illustratecl in the " Archseologia Cam- 

 brensis." Among other Romano-British legends remaining in the 

 neighbourhood of Penzance, is one which seems to read Rialob- 

 bran. This legend certainly has a questionable aspect ; but con- 

 sidering that among Mr. Du ISToyer's transcripts there was one — 

 that of apparently one of the best preserved examples at Ballintag- 

 gart — which yielded the vocables Riamastami, it seemed at least pru- 

 dent to await an opportunity of comparison. 



I therefore, on my first visit to Ballintaggart, approached the 

 original with a curiosity sharpened by the expectation of finding this 

 additional link in the chain of South British and South Irish resem- 

 blances. The Ballintaggart legend, however, seen by a favourable 

 light, after some study declared itself in the form Tria maqa mailagni. 

 Here, while the illusory show of a near resemblance between British 

 and Irish formulas in lapidary writing was dispelled on the one hand, 

 an additional and real evidence of the analogies of early British and 

 Irish names was revealed on the other. The patronymic Mailagni, to 

 which may be added the various forms of Talagni, Dillagni, Corbagni, 

 Tasigagni, all found in Irish Ogham texts, has its analogue in the 

 Roman-lettered Maglagni of the Llanfechan monument. 



Trenacatus hie jacet filius Maglagni. 



Let me ask the consideration of our Irish scholars to a question 

 which here seems legitimately to present itself : is the broad an which 

 occurs as the termination of many of our Irish names — Brocan, Cronan, 

 Sillan, &c. — a softening of this kind of inspissation in older forms ; 

 and would the Oghamic names I have enumerated be recognizable as 

 Mailan, TaiMn, Corban, &c. ; and if so, to what period should we refer 

 the transition ? In this connexion let me instance the names Benin = 

 Benignus ; and Ainia, on the St. Manchan's pillar, which seems to be 

 reflected in the Aeignei of the Tallaght martyrology. 



Here, too, we have the ground of a reasonable inquiry, whether 

 we have been right in assuming that names beginning with the ele- 

 ment Mail are necessarily refcrrible to tonsured j>ersons; for, although 

 the accompanying cross speaks plainly enough to the Christian period, 

 the form Mail is not what theory would have led us to expect. With 

 regard to the rest of the inscription, it will remain to be determined 

 whether Tria is a numeral or a proper name ; and on the result of that 

 inquiry will depend the more interesting speculation whether inmaqa we 

 have a feminine form of the genitive or an inflection of the ubiquitous 



