540 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



Sir W. R. Wilde' reports that tlie earliest historic notice of tlie dis- 

 covery of these instruments was by Sir Thomas Molyneaiix iu his 

 "Discourse Concerning the Danish Mounds, Forts, and Towers of Ire- 

 land," 1725. This author bases his opinion upon the work of Olaus 

 Wormius's treatise of the antiquities of Denmark (1655), in which every- 

 thing of high antiquity found in Ireland was accredited to the Danes. 

 This was carried to such excess as to include many things exclusively 

 Irish, and of which nothing like them were ever found in Denmark. 

 These authors were followed in some degree by Du Chaillu. 



In 1750 thirteen or fourteen of these curved bronze horns were dis- 

 covered near Cork. Three of them were figured by Charles Smith in his 

 "History of the County of Cork," and are believed to be the same sold 

 to Bishop Pocock and figured by the Society of Antiquaries in " Vestuta 

 Monumenta," and afterwards copied in the "Historical Memoirs of the 

 Irish Bards," 1786. 



Three trumpets and a fragment of straight tube were discovered in 

 the County of Limerick in 1787, and figured in Volume II of its Trans- 

 actions. In 1704 four bronze trumpets were found in a bog on the bor- 

 ders of Loch Nashade, near Armagh. In 1809 two joints of a large 

 and perfect curved bronze trumpet were found in a peat bog at Ardbrin, 

 County Down. In 1833 Dr. Petrie- described and figured a cast bronze 

 horn, one of several found at Dowris and then iu possession of the 

 Dean of St. Patrick, one of which is here represented as fig. 181. In 

 1835 several trumpets were discovered in a bog near Killarney. The 

 largest measured 15 inches and the smallest 10^ inches from point to 

 point. They were distributed among various antiquarians in Cork. In 

 1847 three trumpets were discovered near Cloghoughter Castle, County 

 Cavan. In 1840 four trumpets were discovered in the bog of Drum- 

 best, County Antrim. 



The Eoyal Irish Academy, recently consolidated with the Kensing- 

 ton Museum under the denomination of the Museum of Science and 

 Art, Dublin, possesses sixteen specimens of these bronze trumpets. 

 Sir W. R. Wilde-' divides them into two classes — (1) those of which the 

 small end is stopped and the mouth hole is in the side, flute fashion, 

 and (2) those with the small end open and the mouthpiece inserted 

 trumi)et or horn fashion. On none of the specimens was any moutli- 

 l)iece found, but the appearance when found and subsequent examina- 

 tion satisfies the student of its existence and use. Of those blown 

 from the ends, some were cast and some hammered and riveted. Those 

 closed at the end and with mouth hole on the side were all cast. From 

 these differences he makes five varieties of prehistoric bronze trumpets 

 in Ireland. 



The cast specimens were in one i)iece, having been molded com- 



' Catalogue of Antiquities of the Royal Irish Academy, I, p. 623. 



-Dublin Penny Journal, II. 



^ Catalogue of Antiquities of the Royal Irish Academy, I, pp. 626, 627. 



