_Historical Notices of Crannogs._--According to Keller, Swiss “_Pfahlbauten_,” or pile dwellings, attained their highest development about fifteen hundred years B.C. This statement he founds on the absence in them of traces of winter corn, hemp, and domestic fowl (unknown to the Greeks till the time of Pericles). These lacustrine sites appear to have been abandoned about, or perhaps before, the commencement of the Christian era; whilst on the other hand, although we have no account of the first erection of crannogs in Ireland, and must therefore consider their origin to date back from prehistoric times, yet we have undoubted proofs of their continued use down to the close of the seventeenth century; although now where “… swells the wave All other sounds are still, And strange and mournfully sound they; Each seems a funeral cry O’er life that long has past away, O’er ages long gone by.” In Connaught, next after Ulster, the greatest number of lake dwellings have been discovered, but a list of them could have only temporary value, as further explorations might greatly change, or even reverse, the numerical superiority of the crannog sites in Ulster. It is only of late that Munster can be said to be embraced within the lake-dwelling area, whose ambit now includes the entire kingdom. From the present stand-point, the northern province, however, seems to have been _facile princeps_ the home of the lake-dweller. Its population, even to the close of the seventeenth century, followed a life of rude and primitive character. The waters of the Erne, its tributaries and lakes, stretched for a distance of nearly sixty miles; the counties of Monaghan and Cavan of the present day formed then a district of low wooded hills, interlaced with a perfect net-work of bogs and lakes, through which ran but one road--that by Carrickmacross in the barony of Farney--whilst the Few mountains, at that period wooded, served to complete a “scientific frontier” of nature’s own formation. The term “Lake Country” has often been applied to the county Fermanagh: indeed the whole territory would seem at no very remote date to have been a watery maze. Upon almost every side may be observed either marshes that had once been lakes, or else sheets of water varying in size, from what may be termed lakes to mere lakelets; and at a period when the whole neighbouring country was one mass of wood these inland loughs served as tolerably secure retreats. At the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland castles on terra firma seem to have been but lightly esteemed by the northern chieftains, for the conqueror of Ulster had erected many strongholds to secure the subjugated territory, more especially in the country of Mac Mahon, who “with solemn protestations vowed to become a true and faithful subject, whereupon de Courcy gave him two castles with their demeanes to hold of him. Within one month after