In the town of Slaughterbridge (Cornwall, UK), just off the road from Camelford to Tintagel, there is a garden created in the 18th century by Charlotte Boscawen, Lady Falmouth. In it there is an ancient stone almost 3 meters long, which bears inscriptions in Latin and Ogam.
This is not at all unusual, as more than 400 such inscriptions are known on stones scattered throughout Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland. Ogam is an alphabet developed in the early Middle Ages, used to graphically represent the Irish and Pictish languages, and was primarily used between 400 and 600 AD.
The stone in question was first documented by the writer Richard Carew in 1602 in his book The Survey of Cornwall , and later described by the poet Alfred Tennyson, whose work is mainly inspired by mythological and medieval themes, in 1848.
The Latin inscription reads as follows:LATINI (H)IC IACIT FILIUS M[]ARI. While the ogam transcription, arranged on one of the edges, is:LA[TI]NI» ᚂᚐᚈᚔᚅᚔ. The translation proposed by some researchers is Latino son of Macaro lies here .
Latin names in British inscriptions are common and reflect intermarriage between Irish settlers, who arrived in the 5th and 6th centuries, and the local population of Celts who had adopted Latin names during the Roman occupation, which ended in 410 AD.
But others want to see in it a more legendary reference, translating the last and incomplete part by Magni Arturi , that is, the Great Arthur. The reason is that the area where the stone is found is associated with the site of the mythical Battle of Camlann (other proposed locations are Somerset or Salisbury), in which Arthur slew Mordred and his Saxon hordes, but was mortally wounded in the process. year 537 AD, according to the Annales Cambriae , the oldest reference on the subject.
Both the Norman poet Wace (c.1115-c.1170) and Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain (1136), explicitly mention the River Camel at Slaughterbridge as the scene of the final battle.
Moreover, very close to Slaughterbridge is the aforementioned town of Camelford, which legend identifies with the famous Camelot. And as we said at the beginning, Tintagel is also close. In fact, the whole area is full of places associated with Arthurian mythology, and there is even a museum, the Arthurian Center, which offers routes, exhibitions and information.
As for the stone, it has been dated to the 6th century, something on the other hand common in this type of commemorative tombstones in ogam. And while nothing in it hints at a relationship with King Arthur, legends are sometimes more powerful than science in the popular imagination.
It is most likely the tombstone of some unknown Celtic chief of the time.