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who used bronze instruments, and consequently a people 

 more advanced in civilization than the Firbolgs, who built 

 these monuments and used instruments of flint, the most 

 primitive of all ; they, however, knew the uses for which they 

 had been constructed, and that they were places or hills of 

 sepulture, and called them by that name cnoc mapb, or the 

 hill of the dead, and cnoc mapban, the hill of the dead bodies, 

 otherwise, the hill of burial. 



*' I cannot bring myself to believe that these monuments 

 were the work of the Danes of Dublin, of Christian times, 

 because the flint knife, and the rude urns of unbaked clay, 

 are indicative of a much earlier period. The Danes of 

 Dublin, and the Scandinavians of that period, were too 

 far advanced in civilization, to justify us in entertaining 

 such a notion as tenable for a moment ; and, therefore, I 

 would refer this monument to a most remote antiquity, at 

 least of three thousand years, as certainly the Celtic in- 

 vasion must have taken place near fifteen hundred years 

 before our era. 



"The character of this monument of antiquity is alto- 

 gether similar to the Cromlech, and its undoubted sepul- 

 chral character would induce the conclusion that all crom- 

 lechs were sepulchral, and nothing more than chambers of 

 the dead. New Grange itself would, if denuded, give the 

 appearance of an immense specimen of the sepulchral 

 chamber. It might be worthy of consideration, whether 

 that or some other large tumulus should not have the earth 

 which conceals its structure removed, and the stones left as 

 a demonstrative exhibition : for myself, I think it would be 

 well worth the expense of such an undertaking, if other cir- 

 cumstances did not make it impracticable. 



" The application of the term altar to the Cromlech I have 

 long considered very problematical, and Druid^s altar still 

 more doubtful. I am now nearly convinced that these monu- 

 ments are not Druidical or Celtic. We have no evidence 



