The Lake Dwellings of Ireland: Or ancient lacustrine habitations of Erin, commonly called crannogs.Wood-Martin, W. G. (William Gregory)
History
The Lake Dwellings of Ireland: Or ancient lacustrine habitations of Erin, commonly called crannogs.
Wood-Martin, W. G. (William Gregory)
Lake-dwellers and lake-dwellings -- Ireland
In the centre of the crannog of Drumgay, county Fermanagh, there was
a large block of stone punctured with a cross, and another resembling
it was discovered many feet deep, in the centre of the pagan carn of
“The Miracles,” in the same district. Similar figures are inscribed or
punched upon rocks and upon the sides of natural, or partly artificial
caves, as at Loch na Cloyduff, _The Lake of the Dark Trench or
Diggings_, and the “Lettered Cave,” in the cliffs of Knockmore, “_Great
Knoll_,” county Fermanagh. Within the precincts of well-authenticated
pagan tumuli, as at Dowth, cross patterns have been found, accompanied
in several instances by “scorings,” at present unintelligible. On the
base of a sepulchral urn, preserved in the Museum of the Royal Irish
Academy, the cross is displayed, and the figure of a cross within
a circle occurs on an urn discovered at Broughderg, county Tyrone.
Mr. Albert Wray has described some spoon-shaped objects of antique
bronze, all decorated with the figure of a cross similar in design to
the symbol as observable upon the earliest Irish quern-stones. The
bronze articles in question exhibit a style of workmanship which has
invariably been associated with pre-Christian times in both Britain
and Ireland; whilst in the latter country discs and thin plates
of gold belonging to the same period have been found presenting a
cross-like ornamentation. At Drumgay, at Lough Eyes, at Roughan, and
at Drumsloe, _the Ridge of the Host_, were cross-inscribed querns.
Drumsloe lake, now almost drained, is situated within a short distance
of Ballinamallard county Fermanagh. Interesting objects, now dispersed
or lost, have been there from time to time turned up on the site of
a crannog, the traces of which are now nearly obliterated, and the
curious quern or _bró_, of which the accompanying cut is a facsimile,
is one of the few remaining relics authentically connected with the
locality. The quernstone measures one foot six inches in diameter.[110]
[Illustration: Fig. 62.--Upper surface of Quernstone from Roughan Lake.
One-eighth the real size.
Fig. 63.--Quernstone from Lough Eyes. About one-tenth the real size.]
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