29. Four gold lunulæ, found together at Dunfierth, Carbury, County Kildare.[46]
30. A large spear-head, a round bronze shield, with a central boss for the hand, and two circles of smaller bosses, found in a mound or rath, at Athenry, County Galway.[47]
With the exception of Nos. 4, 5, 27, and 30, the above-mentioned finds are preserved in the Royal Irish Academy’s collection, in the National Museum, Dublin.
CHAPTER X
Bronze Trumpets
Numerous trumpets of cast bronze have been found in Ireland, both in the south and the north. They are rare in Britain. Two or more trumpets have often been found together; eight were found at Dungannon, County Tyrone, in 1713, and thirteen or fourteen near Cork in 1750. The Irish trumpets may be divided into three types—(1) in the shape of a horn, open at both ends, having the mouth-piece and trumpet cast in one piece; (2) of similar shape, but closed at the narrow end, with an aperture for the mouth at the side near the closed end; (3) also horn-shaped, but with a long straight tube attached to the narrow end of the carved portion, the upper end of the tube having four rivet-holes, to which another tube or mouth-piece may have been fixed. There are references in classical authorities to the trumpets used by the Celts. Polybius, describing the defeat of the Celts by the Romans at the battle of Telemon, b.c. 225, speaks of the innumerable horns and trumpets of the Celts (Gaesatæ, Insubres, Taurisci, and Boii).
Dr. F. Behn, of the Mainz Museum, has recently written an account of the music in the Roman army, in which he has brought together much information about the early bronze trumpets; and he includes a short description of the Irish type.[48] The Irish trumpets, which are furnished with the straight tubular piece, much resemble the Roman lituus; and, as a whole, the Irish type is very closely allied to the lituus and carnyx, the difference between the lituus and carnyx being that the expanded end of the carnyx takes the form of some fantastic animal’s head. Trumpets have been found in the Dowris hoard, with socketed spear-heads, and other objects of the late Bronze Age, and they must be dated to that period; on this account the Etruscan lituus can hardly have been derived from Irish trumpets; so that it is probable that the Irish trumpets, like those of Gaul, were derived from the south.