_Lough Ravel_ (otherwise Derryhollagh).--This name is but a modern corruption of the ancient form, found in the Inquisition of 1605 to be in the district of the “Feenagh”:--“Est in eodem tuogh quidam lacus vocatus Loughdireare in quo est insula fortificata.” The site of this crannog, lying between Toomebridge and Randalstown, is known to the country people as “the island” in Aghaloughan bog; it seems to have been entirely artificial, constructed on oak piles driven into the bed of the lough, and bound together by horizontal beams of the same timber mortised to the piles. The interior was filled up with wood and earth, thus forming an island of about twenty-eight yards in diameter; and beyond this, at the distance of some six or eight yards, there still remain several oaken piles, probably traces of an outer stockade. On the crannog were stone hearths with marks of fire on them, and partially within the enclosure was a very perfect single-piece canoe of oak, twenty feet nine inches long, by four feet seven inches broad, the sides twenty inches deep. In the island and its immediate vicinity were querns, several wooden and copper dishes, daggers and spear-heads of bronze, iron celts, and stones with holes perforated in them; also some articles seemingly intended for ornamental purposes, and others of strange shape, regarding the use of which no conjecture can be formed. These “finds” have been sold from time to time to various collectors. At a short distance from the island, and twelve feet below the surface of the bog, was brought to light in the summer of 1856, a pan-shaped circular vessel of thin hammered copper, twenty-two inches in diameter, and eight inches in depth; it is now in the Belfast Museum, and a label attached to it states that a few years previously a similar one had been found nearer to the island; and in 1859 another vessel of small size, made of hammered copper, was discovered in the same locality. A bronze needle or bodkin, three inches long, with the eye quite perfect; a narrow iron hatchet, eight inches in length, and one and a-half inches wide at its cutting edge;[185] a bronze pin of unusual form, ornamented with two human heads (_ante_, p. 109, fig. 126); two bronze fibulæ (_ante_, p. 118, figs. 147 and 148); undressed flint flakes (_ante_, p. 58, figs. 12 and 13); the glass beads figured (_ante_, p. 124, figs. 168 and 169); and a beautifully designed silver brooch (_ante_, p. 121, fig. 157), were found in this crannog.[186]