432 



and flexible metal, which, unlike to our modern bell-metal, 

 could be bent to a considerable extent without breaking. In 

 addition to the defect just mentioned, was another, and per- 

 haps a greater impediment to sonorousness, arising from the 

 mode of construction. These Dowris crotals are very inarti- 

 ficially formed as instruments for the propagation of sound. 

 They are either hollow pears or hollow spheres, without any 

 aperture, saving (and that only in some few specimens) two 

 small slits in opposite points, through which passed a bar, 

 whereon the core was supported during the operation of cast- 

 ing. Even these small openings were intentionally and carefully 

 hammered, or otherwise closed in, after the core had been ex- 

 tracted. Some of the specimens which have the slits open 

 seem to be in that state solely in consequence of the acciden- 

 tal breaking of the metal in (he act of being hammered in. 



" The foregoing reasons seem to prove that the Dowris 

 crotals never were intended for any use requiring the emission 

 of sound audible beyond a very narrow limit indeed. It may 

 reasonably be asked here, could an artificer, so skilful as the 

 Dowris bronze founder, have been ignorant that crotals con- 

 structed as his were could not yield a loud sound ? It appears 

 tome to be next to impossible that he could have been so, and 

 he must have formed them with some other view. I am, there- 

 fore, induced to suppose these crotals were employed solely in 

 some religious ceremonies. 



" Ledwich (Antiquities, p. 251) tells us that the bell- 

 crotal was used by the pagan Roman priests ; and Walker 

 (Memoirs of the Irish Bards, p. 93) says : ' Small bells, such, 

 we mean, as were appended to the tunic of the Jewish high 

 priest, and afterwards employed by the Greeks and Romans 

 for various religious purposes, but particularly to frighten 

 ghosts and demons from their temples, were undoubtedly in- 

 troduced with Christianity into this kingdom.' I apprehend, 

 notwithstanding the respectable authority of Mr. Walker, 

 that it is assigning by far too modern a date to the use of bells 



