Vortiporius - Monument Stone

Monument Stone

Its Latin inscription reads Memoria Voteporigis Protictoris (English: Monument of Voteporigas the Protector). The ogham inscription carries only the Goidelic form of his name: Votecorigas. Protictoris in the Latin inscription may imply a Roman-era honorific bestowed upon his ancestors, retained as a hereditary title into the 6th century. However, linguist Eric Hamp questions whether this is truly a title, suggesting that Protector may rather be a Latin translation of Uoteporix (which has essentially the same meaning as the Latin), a "sort of onomastic explanatory gloss". The ogham inscription in Goidelic shows that the Irish language was still in use at that time, and had not yet died out in South Wales.

The stone's original location at the church is next to a meadow known locally as Parc y Eglwys. Local tradition carries the admonition that plowing must not be done near the church. Examination of the meadow showed evidence of large hut-circles.

There remains a substantial question as to whether the stone refers to Vortiporius or to a similarly named individual, 'Voteporigis', as the 'r' in the first syllable gives the name different meanings depending on whether or not it is present. Rhys argued that the two individuals were the same person, saying that the 'r' had been added at a later date, and offering several suppositions as to how this might have happened. However, he was working before the twentieth century advancements in the study of ancient Celtic languages, and his philological conclusions are suspect. More recently, Patrick Sims-Williams (The Celtic Inscriptions of Britain, 2003) notes that the two names cannot refer to the same individual due to differences in their etymologies, adding that dating the stone to the time of Vortiporius may not be valid because it relies on the inexact dating of manuscripts and their transcriptions.