"Fourteen portions of pottery, some rudely glazed, others burned, and some only backed; and consisting of fragments of various vessels used either in the arts or for domestic and culinary purposes, such as crucibles, pitchers, and bowls. Among these is a fragment of a bowl or urn, of unglazed pottery, highly decorated with deeply grooved lines on the outside, and slight indentations on the everted lip. It is of great antiquity; composed of very black clay, darkened still more by the long-continued action of the bog, and mixed with a quantity of particles of white quartz or feldspar, which was probably added to give it stability. A similar description of art may be remarked in some of our oldest mortuary urns. When we consider that, except the urns which must be referred to the Pagan period, we have scarcely any examples of ancient Irish pottery, these specimens possess a peculiar interest for the investigators of fictile ware.
"Fragments of Kimmerage coal rings; probably part of a bracelet, which seems to have been jointed at one end.
"The bowls of two small pipes, similar to those in the Museum, and usually but erroneously denominated 'Danish tobacco pipes.'
"An enclosed ring of bronze, 3¼ inches in diameter; a large decorated bronze pin, 7½ inches long; and a smaller one, 3 inches in length.
"An iron knife-blade, with perforated haft, 8½ inches long: this article looks as if it had been attached to a long handle; a smaller blade, with tang for haft, 2¾ inches in length; a globular piece of iron 2¾ inches in diameter, like a crotal, with an aperture on one side; the head of a small iron hammer; three portions of rings, and eleven other iron fragments, the uses of which have not been determined.
"A small perforated stone, like a whorl or distaff weight." (Ibid., p. 290.)
FURTHER DISCOVERIES.
Mr. G. H. Kinahan's observations on the Irish crannogs, which now (1863) began to appear, have greatly contributed to the dissemination of a correct knowledge of their structure and geographical distribution. His notes on the crannogs of Lough Rea (B. 58), Ballinlough (B. 70a), Lough Nahinch (B. 70b), and Lough Naneevin (B. 118), which successively appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, were followed in 1872 by an article on "Lake Stone-dwellings in Connaught" (B. 214), in which he shows that in some cases dry stones were substituted for the ordinary wooden structures and rubbish of which the artificial islands were usually constructed—a fact which finds many parallel illustrations in Scotland.
Mr. Kinahan says that Reed's Island, Shore Island, Ash Island, and Island M'Coo, in Loughrea, are crannogs; while Blake's Island may also be one. From Shore Island 300 tons of bone were procured, among which was the head of a Megaceros Hibernicus which measured 13 feet from tip to tip of its horns. Amongst many relics found here made of stone, horn, and wood were a few metal objects, as iron shears, a brass pin, a crozier made of brass, a battle-axe, a cast for a coin, and a hammered iron vessel.
The only other writer on Irish crannogs to whom I find it necessary to allude in a special manner is Mr. W. F. Wakeman. Personally acquainted with Petrie and Wilde, and probably deriving inspiration from their enthusiastic devotion to archæology, and an eye-witness of the first great crannog find at Dunshaughlin, Mr. Wakeman has ever since been a careful observer of the antiquities of his country. His special attention to crannogology dates only from 1870, but since then scarcely a year has passed without his pen and pencil being in requisition to record some fresh discovery in this field of research.