Was seven years buried in bog.”
The Faröe islanders had a similar practice with regard to tallow. Bog butter, or mineral tallow, is usually met with in single-piece wooden vessels, like long firkins.
Yokes.—For beasts of burden, the yoke was in use from the earliest ages, but any that have been hitherto discovered, whether double or single, appear too small for cattle of species still existent; however, the old race of domesticated kine in Ireland may have been smaller in size than those of the present day. Probably the first yoke that attracted notice was the one described and illustrated by Wilde in his Catalogue of the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, for it was not until a comparatively late period that the attention of antiquaries was directed towards this class of remains, usually found covered by a considerable depth of bog. A good idea of their general appearance is conveyed by the accompanying illustrations ([plate XVI.]) representing two yokes of wood that were discovered under eighteen feet of peat in Donagh, county Monaghan, in the year 1867. [Fig. 2] is drawn on a somewhat larger scale than [fig. 1]. [Figs. 3 and 4] represent yokes found by turf-cutters about the year 1874, deeply buried in a bog abutting on Lough Erne. One of them was composed of oak. [Figs. 5 and 6] are specimens curiously contorted, twisted, and split, the result of over-hasty drying.[105]
Fig. 48. Fig. 49. Fig. 50. Fig. 51. Fig. 52.
Piscatory Implements or Arrows and Spear-heads.
Piscatory Implements.—In the crannog of Drumgay, county Fermanagh, there were implements for forming the meshes of nets. They consisted of nine pieces of deer’s horn, varying in size from six to little more than three inches in length. Four of them are curiously fashioned. Similar objects, composed of the tips of deer’s horn, have frequently occurred in crannog “finds,” and, during excavations made about the year 1851, in Christchurch-place and Fishamble-street, Dublin, many like specimens were discovered. There can be little doubt that they were used for making fishing lines or nets: indeed one of the discoverers having procured some thread, at once proceeded to illustrate his theory by the manufacture of a fishing line. The suggestion has also been offered that they may have been arrow or javelin heads. From vegetable fibre the crannog dweller made nets with which he obtained an ample supply of fish from the waters around him, and sink-stones, used for either fishing lines or nets, are by no means a rare “find.” Quoit-like discs of sandstone, pierced with a hole to attach them to the bottom rope of a net, are not uncommonly employed, even in the present day, in remote localities. A bronze fishing-hook picked up from the bottom of a lake is here figured, and in plate XXIX., vol. ii., of Keller’s work, there is a representation of one closely resembling it. In 1845 there was found in Lough-na-Glack, county Monaghan, a bolt or missive of bronze, 16½ inches in length, evidently used for spearing fish, and of which two illustrations are given in Shirley’s History of the County Monaghan. The thong or string attached to this weapon, and by which it was hauled back after projection, was called in Irish fuainemain. The name is in the present day applied by the herring fishermen of the south of Ireland to the bolt-rope of their fishing-nets.
