125 



unburnt bones being placed on each side of the urn, in two parcels, 

 neatly bound up with copper wire.* And in a few others, round 

 glass bottles, (evincing an early acquaintance with the manufacture 

 of glass) and beads, -f- such as are called Druid beads in Wales, 

 and Glain-naidr,J in Scotland and the Western Islands,§ where 

 they have been found in similar situations. In these sacred cairns 

 it was customaryll to place the remains of chiefs and heroes, 

 and with them their favourite dog, their ornaments and weapons, 

 which are often discovered beneath the Crom-leac, the Cairn, or the 

 Pillar-stone, which so frequently stands adjacent. Many Cairns 

 appear to have been formed over a Cromleac ; this has, in various 

 ins'ances, occurred near Armagh,^ where several Cairns having 

 been pulled down, discovered underneath a Crom-leac, and buried 

 beneath this altar was an urn or bones. The same circumstance 

 has been observed in Scotland.** These burial Cairns are seldom 

 of as great size as the allar cairn, which often covers a large space, 



stood an altar eight feet long by four broad, upon which, it is conjectured, the bodies were 

 burned, as in the earth around it were mixed bones and pieces of coal, and the stones bore the 

 mark of fire. Close to the altar was a very deep pit fiUed with unctuous black matter, as if the 

 refuse of the burnings had been thrown in there. Among the urns of ashes were intermixed 

 tombs which contained only unburnt bones and no urns — whence it is evident that both modes 

 of sepulture were in use at the same time, — Phil. Trans, vi. p. 64. Edit. 1809 — Hutton, Shaw, 

 and Pearson. 



* Smith's Hist. Cork, II. 411. 



f Lhwyd describes these beads as having a snake painted round them ; and concludes that 

 the ova anguina of the Druids were these glass beads. In Scotland they are accounted sacred, 

 an J in some places are on May-day steeped in water, with which the cattle are afterwards 

 sprinkled, to preserve them from Elf-bolts. — Phil, Trans.' vi. 20 — 21. Edit. 1809, Hutton, &c. 



J Glain — Glass, and perhaps Napimh, holy — or Neamdha, heavenly. 



§ Pennant's Tour, 343. 



II Transactions R. I. A. XIV. p. 110. 



f History of Armagh, p. 609. 



•* Pennant's Tour to the Western Highlands, p. 343. 



