199 
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 tothe Cromlech I have 
long considered very problematical, and Drwid’s altar still 
more doubtful. Iam now nearly convinced that these monu- 
ments are not Druidical or Celtic. We have no evidence 
