18S 



remarkable are, one on the top of Knocknaree in the County of Shgo, 

 which is reared to the height of thirty feet, and terminates in a flat sur- 

 face; another on the summit of Sheve Croob, in the County of Down; 

 one near Newry Water, apd another at Windgates in the County of 

 Wicklow. Such was the heap thrown over Achan, as mentioned in the 

 Scriptures;* the funeral monument of Hector, recorded in the twenty- 

 fourth Book of the Iliad, and that of the robber Balista, mentioned 

 in Virgil ; and that such was the use of the Irish cairns is sufficiently 

 testified by the bones and skeletons, and more rarely sepulchral urnsj-f* 

 which have been found beneath them, (as at Annaghcloghmullen, in 

 the County Armagh. ;];) We must not confound with the cairns 

 those heaps of baked earth or burned stones often noticed in the 

 country, and with which it is apprehended the natives cooked their 

 victuals, placing them red hot under, over, and around their meat. 

 They preceded the use of turf, while they are also said to furnish an 

 evidence of the incorruptibility of charcoal, small pieces of which are 

 still to be found in them, as sound and perfect as the stone they are 

 mixed with.§ 



The religious architecture of the day was that, to which stone was 

 exclusively consecrated, and consisted of round towers, cromlechs, 

 rocking and pillar stones. In giving a short sketch of these, as has 

 been above given of the raths, mounts, and cairns, it is hoped, 

 though the inquiry cannot be much aided by foreign lights, that yet 

 it will not be considered a digression. It would be impossible to con- 

 nect the various periods and subjects which this Essay is expected to 

 illustrate, without some such linking evidences. The round towers 



* Joshua, vii. 26. 



f See Mr. Nevilles's paper in Philosoph. Trans. No. 337. Art. 27. 



t See Stuart's Armagh. 



§ See Townsend's Statist. Surv. of Cork, p. 140, &c. 



