| Corpus Refs: | Macalister/1945:72 |
| Site: | AUTAG |
| Discovery: | first mentioned, 1898 Rhys, J. |
| History: | Macalister/1945, 75, cites John Rhys as the first publisher of the stone in 1898. |
| Geology: | |
| Dimensions: | 1.12 x 0.76 x 0.36 (converted from Macalister/1945) |
| Setting: | in ground |
| Location: | earliest Macalister/1945, 75--76: `To find this stone, take the road from Dunmanway to Aultagh Wood. At the wood the road forks: follow the right-hand branch as far as the iron gate of a cottage pathway on the right-hand side: the pathway leads straight to the stone - an irregular boulder...partly sunk in the ground'. |
| Form: | boulder Macalister/1945, 76: `...an irregular boulder'. |
| Condition: | inc , some |
| Folklore: | none |
| Crosses: | none |
| Decorations: | There are two 'star'-shaped carvings on the stone. |
| Macalister, R.A.S. (1945): | ODUDBOLDSE Expansion: OBUDOLDSE Macalister/1945 76--77 reading only |
| Macalister, R.A.S. (1945): | UBEDABOALTASI Expansion: UBEDABO ALTASI Macalister/1945 77 reading only |
| Orientation: | Indeterminate |
| Position: | n/a ; broad ; inc ; undecorated |
| Incision: | inc |
| Date: | None published |
| Language: | Indeterminate (oghms) |
| Ling. Notes: | Macalister/1945, 77: 'Including the long scores we get UDEDABO ALTASI which might pass for two rather bizarre names: but there are such endless possibilities of miscut or misplaced scores, that to try to restore what the lapidary was actually commissioned to write is perfectly hopeless'. |
| Palaeography: | none |
| Legibility: | some Macalister/1945, 76--77: `The inscription on its face has apparently been fashioned by an illiterate artificer, copying by rote from a wooden model cut for his guidance, with no very clear idea what to do with it. The surface of the stone being in his judgement too small to hold the inscription in a continuous line, and the craftsman too inexperienced to use the edge as a stem-line, he divided it into two, indicating the "join" by star-like marks. The feather-mark, found commonly in Ogham scribbles in manuscripts, was doubtless used when brief communications were made upon waxed tablets or strips of vellum, to avoid the errors latent in this ambiguous script. Without some such indication of the beginning of the writing, the recipient had no guide as to which was the top of the bottom of the line. The mark appears here; as it is in the middle of the line, not at the end, the model must have been cut, not on a rod, but on a ring of wood: the lapidary did not even understand its function. Such rings of wood were not improbably often suspended from stones which now bear no inscriptions: they would be more easily cut than the stone, and would at least outlast a generation. The inscription is further complicated by the interspersed long strokes, apparently intended to differentiate the separate letters. These may be quite otiose; or they may be exaggerations of the last score of the preceding letter. The latter is, perhaps, the more probable, as the result of ignoring the long scores gives us the meaningless obudboldse (we must read retroversely from the feather-mark, as otherwise we should be embarrassed by the presence of the carefully-avoided letter H)...there are such endless possibilities of miscut or misplaced scores, that to try to restore what the lapidary was actually commissioned to write is perfectly hopeless'. |
| Lines: | 2 |
| Carving errors: | n |
| Doubtful: | yes |