Tyrone's Aghascrebagh Ogham Stone - Our Space 31

It probably marked a grave or a boundary or was a commemorative inscription incised on the stone pre-500 AD. ‘Do Te Tto Maqi Maglant’ it reads - two mens’ names joined by Maqi (= "son of" - an early version of ‘Mac’ in our modern surnames).

So what are Ogham Stones? Before people here began writing on vellum skins, what survives is what they carved on stone. The ogham script wrote early Irish words in the years 300-600 AD. It is very unusual because it consists solely of parallel lines in groups of 1-5 lines, usually carved vertically along the corner edge of a stone.

The words generally read upwards, starting at the bottom left-hand side of one side of the stone, across the top and down the right-hand side (up-top-down) - a uniquely three-dimensional script.

Over 400 ogham stones and fragments have survived mostly in the lower half of Ireland; some in South Wales, South West England, the Isle of Man and Scotland.

Nowadays jewellers create ogham items, using its unusual alphabet to spell a modern person’s name. (Look at the websites of local jewellers Fallers or Thomas Goldsmiths).

And if you visit the Aughascrebagh Stone some day, have a thought for those two people there in the southern Sperrins a thousand and a half years ago, Te Tto and his father Maglant. What a different life they could talk to us about - in very early Irish.