[Illustration: Fig. 25. Bronze Skean from Loughran Island.] The distinguishing characteristic of the bronze dagger or skean from Lagore (fig. 24) consists in its openwork handle forming one piece with the blade. The weapon is 9¾ inches in length; the handle, 3⅛. The blade, 1⅜ inches in width, is flat, with broad bevelled edges. Fig. 25, found at Loughran Island, in the Lower Bann, is 4⅞ inches in length by 1¾ in width. It is a thin, flat, angular-shaped dagger blade, decorated on the surface of the mid-rib with a series of dotted lines, and pierced at the broad end by four small rivet-holes.[93] Daggers or skeans of bone, as well as of bronze and iron, have been frequently found in Irish lake dwellings, and knives formed of flint are not uncommon. The iron knives found in the crannog of Ballinderry, and now in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, resembled those figured in Munro’s _Ancient Scottish Lake Dwellings_.[94] At the time the Catalogue of the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy was compiled by the late Sir W. Wilde, although some objects of bronze, supposed to have been ornaments on leather or wooden dagger sheaths, are mentioned by him, yet he was unable to point to any example composed altogether of bronze. Since that period, however, three sword-sheaths of that metal have been discovered in the crannog of Lisnacroghera, county Antrim. Their workmanship is exquisite. They bear traces of enamel, and one of them contained a sword of iron so firmly attached to it by corrugation that any attempt to withdraw it must have involved the mutilation or utter destruction of the bronze in which it was encased.