456 



pio6 being elsewhere Anglicised Few, as in the case of the Fews in Ar- 

 magh, les Fayes 0 IN'eachtan's Country, in Eoscommon, &c., that the 

 present name Fuerty may well be Fiodh {Few)., apt) {a/rt\ C15 {tigh or 

 ty), Few-art-ty. 



St. Patrick when he baptized the people of Hymany, came from 

 Uapan, now Oran, in the north of the county of Eoscommon, where 

 he had just been baptizing the 810I TTluipeabaTg, or 0' Conors ; and 

 Fuerty would be precisely in the position the Saint would natu- 

 rally have taken, and it also fulfils another of the points of Colgan's 

 description by being in a loop of the Sueh, which there is very remark- 

 ably sinuous. 



Mr. Petrie wrote to my friend Dr. 0' Donovan, to Tuam, county of 

 Galway, on 8th September, 1838, as follows : — 



"I have got from Mr. Smith some copies of Irish inscriptions, col- 

 lected in Ireland by a man named Matt O'Conor, — one in the church- 

 yard of Fuerty, county of Eoscommon ; another at Fair Hill, county of 

 Galway." 



O'Donovan, being at that time unable to return to the county of Eos- 

 common, communicated Mr. Petrie' s communication to me, and requested 

 that I would make inquiry for anything of the kind. I did so ; but all 

 my exertions were in vain, till July, 1862, when I received a polite note 

 from the Eev. J. S. Gumley, Perpetual Curate of Fuerty, to say that two 

 curiously sculptured stones, of evidently ancient date, had recently been 

 discovered, hid under rank grass, at the interment of a parishioner ; and 

 that, knowing I took an interest in such matters, he would gladly point 

 them out to me. It was traditionally said that a man named O'Conor, 

 a great scholar, had disco- 

 vered them several years 

 ago, and that he had stated 

 the inscription upon them 

 to mean — Eight men, 

 who took their title as fish- 

 ers of men, lie here until 

 the end of time." On go- 

 ing there, I found two in- 

 scribed flagstones, bearing 

 every mark of extreme an- 

 tiquity. One was of grey 

 and the other of red sand- 

 stone. They were placed 

 in proximity, as the cover- 

 ing of a recent grave, and 

 were of about similar di- 

 mensions, 3 ft. X 2 ft. 6 in. 

 !N"o. 1 was nearly square. 

 The inscription is in in- 

 cised letters, and very 

 legible, except the two 

 last strokes of what I 



No. 1. 



