"Serious essays were written to prove their pre-historic origin, and to claim for them a history that in our day reads as arrant nonsense. In 1784, a short pipe was asserted to have been found between the jaws of the skull of an ancient Milesian exhumed at Bannockstown, county Kildare. Upon this discovery, an elaborate and learned paper was written in the 'Anthologia Hibernica,' setting forth this pipe as a proof of the use of tobacco in Ireland long before that country was invaded by the Danes. This pipe has been proved by comparison to be probably quite late in the reign of Elizabeth. They also have a more modern pipe, the stem of which describes one or more circles, while another is tied in a knot, yet allows a free passage of air. At another time, in opening an Anglo-Saxon grave mound, some of the men employed came across a fairy pipe which evidently had rolled down from among the surface-soil, and, being turned out in juxtaposition with undoubted Anglo-Saxon remains, was immediately set down by the learned director of the proceedings as a relic of that period. At another time I had brought to me, as a great curiosity, two 'Roman pipes,' as I was informed--the finders jumping to the conclusion that because they had dug them up at little Chester (the Roman station Derventio), they must be Roman pipes! I believe they expected to receive a large sum from these relics: how grievously they were disappointed I need not tell. Instances of this kind are far from rare. [Illustration: Fairy pipes.]