Qualla: Ballintaggart Ogham Stones

Ballintaggart Ogham Stones: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Behind a hedge east of Dingle racecourse, inside a thirty-metre stone enclosure, nine rounded boulders lie pointed outward like the spokes of a wheel. They are sandstone, water-rolled, the colour of damp peat. To the casual visitor they look like a curious cluster of glacial erratics. Look closer at their edges and the language emerges: lines and notches cut into the stone in a notation that the early Irish called ogham. The Ballintaggart stones carry some of the oldest written records of Irish personal names anywhere in existence. They date from the fifth and sixth centuries - the world of Saint Patrick, of early Christian monks who were still figuring out how to write their language down. Most carry the name of a single individual. A few preserve the language as it existed before vowels had begun their long medieval shift. They are gravestones, in a sense, but they are also the earliest surviving Irish autographs.

Ballintaggart Ogham Stones: Notches at the Edge of Stone

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ogham is an alphabet of grooves and notches cut along the edge of a stone. It uses a vertical line - usually a corner where two faces meet - as its baseline, and adds short strokes above, below, or across it to indicate letters. The system was developed in early Ireland, possibly...

Ballintaggart Ogham Stones: Nine Stones, One Circle

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Eight of the Ballintaggart stones lie in a circle, each pointing outward. The ninth sits at the centre. Several have been incised with crosses in addition to their ogham inscriptions - the crosses added centuries later, when the same site was reused as an early Christian burial g...

Ballintaggart Ogham Stones: The Names They Hold

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Each stone has been catalogued by Macalister in his Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum, the standard reference for ogham. Stone CIIC 155 reads AKEVRITTI, presumably a personal name. CIIC 156 reads MAQQI-IARI KOI MAQQI MUCCOI DOVVINIAS - here is Mac-Iair, son of the Corcu D...

Ballintaggart Ogham Stones: Patrick's Century

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The dating matters. Some of these stones - particularly CIIC 157 and CIIC 161 - are in a form of Irish so early that linguists place them around the mid-fifth century, the lifetime of Patrick. That makes them the oldest pieces of Irish writing in this part of Kerry, and among the...

Ballintaggart Ogham Stones: A Circle You Can Almost Read

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Visiting Ballintaggart today is a quiet experience. You park beside the racecourse, walk through a gap in the hedge, and find yourself inside the round enclosure with nine sandstone boulders lying in the grass. A small interpretive panel translates some of the inscriptions. The s...