Horses were put to the same uses as at present:--riding, drawing chariots, racing; and more rarely ploughing, drawing carts, and as pack-animals. A bridle with a single rein was used in horse-riding. The rein was attached to a nose-band not at the side but at the top, and came to the hand of the rider over the animal’s forehead, passing right between the eyes and ears, and being held in its place by a loop or ring in the face-band which ran across the horse’s forehead. This single rein was used to restrain merely: it could not be used to guide. No spurs were used: the rider urged on and guided the horse with a rod having a hooked goad at the end. The ancient Irish--like the Britons, Gauls, and Romans--used no saddles: but there was usually a thick cloth between rider and horse. Chariot-drivers sat too far from the horse to make use of a horse-rod; so they used a two-rein bridle like ours. Those who kept horses for riding were very fond of ornamenting their bridles and trappings with gold, silver, and enamel: so that the bridle alone was often worth from five or six cows up to eighteen or twenty. The Irish used several kinds of boats, of which the commonest was the curragh, made of wickerwork woven round a frame of strong wattles, and covered with hides which were stitched together with thongs. Boats of this kind are still used round the coasts, but tarred canvas is employed instead of skins, as being cheaper. Those used on rivers and lakes and on short coast voyages, were small and light and covered with a single skin. But those intended for rough seas and long voyages were made large and strong, with solid wooden decks and seats, and a mast, spars, and sails, so that they could be propelled by oars or sails, or both together. These were covered with two, or with three, hides, one outside another, and the hides were tanned so as to make them thick and hard, much the same as our thick leather. Some of these were large enough to hold fifty or sixty people. It should be remarked that wicker-boats were also used very generally in Britain, and occasionally on the coasts of some parts of the Continent. The Irish had also ordinary wooden ships with sails and oars, and with sleeping-berths, like our small sailing vessels, and these they often used in very long voyages, either for trade or invasion. But for foreign expeditions their favourite vessel was the strong well-made curragh; and how suitable and safe these curraghs were is indicated by the fact that on one occasion Julius Cæsar ordered a number of them to be made for use in some special expedition. Gildas, a British writer, tells us that whole armies of the Irish were often seen landing on the British shores from curraghs; and an ancient Irish writer says that during a certain military expedition the sea between Ireland and Scotland looked as if covered with a continuous bridge of curraghs.