84 Proceedings of the Roi/dl Irish Academy. 



"Why, then, should the genitive end in a? The inscription, like all 

 other Oghams, except the latest, belongs to a period of rapidly weakening 

 Auslaut. If the ecclesiastics who spoke some Latin called this man 

 Vddamensis (4, -em), the people around who spoke no Latin would have 

 called him Udd[a]mens, just as sensus became sians, paenitentia pendait, etc. 

 For the inscription it became necessary to provide Uddmens with a genitive. 

 Either arbitrarily, or because the Latin genitive in is was known to corre- 

 spond with the Irish genitive in as [<os) — cf. mil, gen. mUed<*7mlitas, from 

 Latin miles, militis), the genitive ending of the consonant declension was 

 chosen. The omission of the Auslaut is elsewhere exemplified, e.g. Lugudem, 

 neta. In fact, if the name, as a strange one in form, remained uninflected in 

 the Irish usage, the Ogham would naturally refer it to the consonant 

 declension, since its popular genitive already ended in a consonant, being 

 identical with the nominative." 



3. Castletimon, Co. Wicklow. 



With Professor MacNeill I have re-examined this inscription for the 

 purpose of determining whether the last letters are cagi or, as read by some, 

 CAGNi. We have definitely settled that the inscription is to be read 



NETACAEI NETACAGI, 

 though there still remains a doubt as to the division into words. It might 

 be read as two names, on the analogy of an inscription in Wales that reads 

 TEGERNACi DOBAGNi ; this, I Understand, is the rendering preferred by 

 Professsor Mac Neill. But it might also be divided into three words, 

 NETACARi NETA CAGI, " of K nephew of C." The word for " nephew " should 

 be NIOTTA, as is found on some stones; but there is precedent for the 

 confusion with neta, as on the third stone from Mouataggart, Co. Cork. 



4. DUNGIMMEN, Co. CaVAN. 



This inscription was discovered so long ago as 1889 by Mr Charles Elcock, 

 and published by him, but with no attempt at a reading, in the Jouinal of 

 the Eoyal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, ser. iv, 

 vol. viii, p. 503. The sketch which he gives of the stone, and his description 

 of it, are good ; but he is so indefinite in his description of its situation that 

 I lost a good deal of time in searching for it, and had nearly abandoned the 

 quest, supposing the stone to have been destroyed, when I fell in with a 

 woman who knew of a stone in a field which she herself had noticed for the 

 first time only a few days before. This proved to be the monument sought 

 for. To find it, take the road from Oldcastle to Kilnaleck ; but when you 



