348 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
Premising so much, and asking attention to this matronymie ot 
Merlin, I proceed to give some account of the situation and his- 
tory of the Kenfig Monument, and to indicate in detail what remains 
of the inscription. To reach the Kenfig Stone, descend at the Pyle 
station on the railway from Cardiff to Swansea, and pursue the road lead- 
ing westward at first on the northern side of the railway, by Water- 
street, towards Margam. Some hundred yards beyond the last house of 
the scattered hamlet of Water-street, at somewhat over a mile and a half 
from the station, the stone will be observed erect on the south side of 
the highway. The ‘street’? entering into the local name intimates 
that we are here on the line of the Roman road leading towards Widum 
(Neath) of the Itinerary from the Silurian Venta (Caer Gwent) and 
the ‘‘trajectus’’ of the Severn; and may prepare us for observing 
without surprise that the stone bears on its face, towards the road, 
an inscription in Latin This is the long-known legend, Pumperus 
Carantortus, incised in debased Roman characters, reading from above 
downwards. The © in Pumpeius is of the Irish form, and the general 
aspect of the work, coupled with the position of the monument, point 
to an origin in the later post-Roman period. 
So far as regards this part of the mscription, the stone was known 
to the editor of Gough’s Camden :— 
“Between Margam and Kinfeage by the road-side lies a stone near four feet 
long, with this inscription :— 
Pump eius 
Caran topius. 
This, as the Right Reverend the Bishop of Landaff informs me, the Welsh by 
altering read and explain thus :—Pim Bis AN CAR ANTOPIUS, q. d. The five fingers of 
our friends or neighbours slew us, believing it to be the sepulchre of Morgan, the 
prince from whom the country took its name.’’—(Camd. Brit. 1789, vol. i. p. 493.) 
But it was not until 1846 that the existence of the associated 
Ogham was noticed. We owe this discovery to the acute eye of Pro- 
fessor Westwood, who here, for the first time—apprized of the nature 
of Oghamic writing by Petrie’s Essay on our Irish Ecclesiastical 
Architecture—discovered the existence of such characters in Wales. 
In 1878 Mr. Rhys, now Celtic Professor in the University of 
Oxford, gave the Kenfig Stone, amongst other Ogham-inscribed Welsh 
monuments, a careful inspection, and succeeded in making out the 
remains of what evidently is some form of the key-word Magi, which 
determines the course of the reading, and ascertains the positions 
wherein we should look for the principal name and for the patronymic. 
In other Ogham bilinguals of Wales each name in the Ogham cha- 
racters is a literal or nearly literal echo of a corresponding name in 
the Roman ones. Expecting to find such a replica of the Latin in the 
associated Ogham here, Mr. Rhys conceived that certain triradial 
marks at the commencement of the legend, being in fact the symbols 
I have referred to, are representatives of the two p’s of Pumpxtus, one 
