Commemorating the Dead

The stonework surviving from early medieval Wales is of particular importance owing to the near-total disappearance of more perishable materials such as wooden buildings, fabrics and manuscripts. Stonework shows us styles of decoration and calligraphy that may once have been common in many materials. Inscriptions tell us a good deal about the languages of Wales and their development in sound and spelling.

In the immediate post-Roman period, from about AD 400 to 600, the most striking monuments — shared with Ireland and the Atlantic seaboard from Brittany to Argyll — are the so-called ‘Early Christian’ inscribed stones. Only some of these are explicitly Christian, but it seems probable that most of them were erected within Christian communities. Typically they commemorate the dead, sometimes specifying the deceased’s social status, for example as bishop, priest, priest’s wife, king, ‘protector’, ‘leader’ (tovisaci), magistrate or doctor (medicus). Some, as one would expect, follow the tradition of sub-Roman Christian memorial stones: an example is the pillar now in the church at Llanerfyl, Montgomeryshire, commemorating Rustica, daughter of Paterninus, aged thirteen, in horizontally inscribed Roman capitals, and ending with the formula IN PA[CE], ‘in peace’.

A surprisingly high proportion, however, are inscribed vertically and include little more than the name of the deceased and his father. In this they resemble the contemporary Ogam stones of Ireland and it is likely that many of them were erected by Irish settlers or by native Welsh people responding to Irish practices. This explains both their concentration in the areas most open to Irish influence (for example, there are thirty-six in Pembrokeshire but none in Monmouthshire) and the predominance of Irish personal names on them. In Pembrokeshire twenty-five early inscriptions use Ogam script and/or Irish names as opposed to a single inscription with only Welsh names (plus a number with only Latin names, which could have been used by both communities).

Some inscriptions use both Roman and Ogam letters, as if to assert the equal status of the two scripts and the communities who used them. An example is the Crickhowell stone, now in Brecknock Museum, Brecon. The Roman letters commemorate Turpillus, ‘boy’ of Trilunus Dunocatus (an early form of the Irish name Dúnchad). The Roman name Turpillus created a problem, as the Ogam alphabet originally lacked a symbol for P, a sound absent from early Irish. Hence an X-shaped ogam symbol is used instead, as also on the dual script Pumpeius Carantorius stone in Margam Stones Museum. An impressive example of an inscription solely in Roman letters but with an Irish name, Corbalengas, is the pillar stone from Penbryn, Dyffryn Bern, Cardiganshire, as photographed in raking light by the Royal Commission. Originally the stone stood on a cairn covering an earlier Roman cremation burial overlooking the sea. Corbalengas is styled Ordous, a spelling of Ordovix, suggesting that his family had been established in Wales long enough to identify itself with the native tribe of Ordovices.