Barry—Ox Ogham Monument in the Co. Cork. — 485 
LXIX.—On an Ocoam Monument at RatHcopaNE, IN THE CouNTE 
oF Corx. By the Rev. Epmonp Barry, P.P., Rathcormac. 
[Read, 28 June, 1886.] 
On the 9th of October, 1885, in going from Rathcormac to hold a 
station at the house of (Little) John Carey of Ballyrobert, in the 
extreme south of my parish, I noticed a coffin-shaped stone lying on 
the top of the southern ditch of the second field, to the east of John 
Carey’s house. Remembering that at Island and elsewhere I had 
seen similarly shaped stones inscribed in Ogham, I turned aside to 
examine the stone for an inscription. I could see none on the angle- 
lines exposed to view; but on running my hand down through grass. 
and briers I felt regular grooves low down on the off-side of the stone, 
and knew that I had there an Ogham inscription. 
After the station, Mr. Carey and a dozen more accompanied me to 
the stone; some to turn the stone or tell its history as far as they 
knew; the rest through curiosity. The ditch on which it lay is the 
parish boundary, here separating the farm of John Carey of Bally- 
robert, in the parish of Gortroe, united to Rathcormac parish, from 
the farm of James M‘Grath of Rathcobane, in the parish of Temple- 
bodan, united to the parish of Lisgoold, all in the barony of Barry- 
more, in the county of Cork. From time immemorial the stone had 
lain in the dyke, or gripe, at the Rathcobane side of the bounds- 
ditch, till shortly before my visit John Carey, by leave of James 
M‘Grath, removed it from dyke to ditch preparatory to breaking it 
in pieces, in order, with the fragments, to roof a gullet. In the 
stone’s bed in the dyke Mr. Carey found two or three fragments of 
“‘crockery,”’ each two or three inches square. But neither in re- 
moving the stone, nor before, nor after, till I saw it, did anyone now 
living suspect that it bore an inscription. Mr. M‘Grath remembers, 
however, that in his father’s time a labourer named Fitzgerald used 
to insist that there was writing on the stone; but then, as Fitzgerald 
was wholly illiterate, no one heeded him. 
The field, in a dyke of which the stone so long lay, is called 
Parkadallane: that is, Po1y1c on 0oLL4in, the Field of the Pillar-stone. 
According to Mr. M‘Grath it has its name, not from the inscribed 
stone, but from an uninscribed flag, that crops out of the ground 
to a height of three feet towards the 8. W. angle of the field. 
Indeed, not oatlldn, but lio is the Irish word for an Ogham- 
inscribed stone; as, for instance, in the Lebar na h-Uidre, and in the 
Book of Leinster. Then, as 0otll, and also soll, means blind, 
possibly what ‘ooLLén, anciently 5olLAn, properly means is a blind 
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