Account of a Human Body found in a Beg in Ireland. 117 



depend on various circumstances, as situation, humidity, soil, 

 &c., that fact alone can give us no certain criterion of their 

 age. On this point, perhaps, the rude dress in which the body 

 was clothed, is likely to afford more satisfactory ground for con- 

 jecture. 



That it belonged to a period antecedent to the arrival of the 

 English, may be concluded from the evidence of Gerald Barry, 

 who says, the Irish were but hghtly clad in woollen garments, 

 barbarously shaped, and for the most part black, because the 

 sheep of the country were usually of that colour : and from the 

 spirit of that author's work, we have little reason to suppose, 

 that if any portion of the Irish in his time had been clothed 

 in skins in his time, he would have failed to notice it. 



If we credit the early annals of our native writers, we would 

 believe that among the Irish, so far ba-k as the reign of Ti- 

 ghernmas, in the year of the world 2815, the various ranks of 

 persons, from the king to the peasant, were distinguished by 

 the number of colours striped in their garments ; and so barren 

 are our ancient chronicles of any notice of skins being used for 

 dress, that Mr Walker (the ingenious author of an Essay on the 

 Dress of the Irish), expresses his belief, that the art of manu- 

 facturing woollen garments, and the fashions into which they 

 were shaped, were brought into this country by the Milesian 

 colony. Few, however, will give implicit credit to these autho- 

 rities ; and we may well doubt the truth of accounts that make 

 the Irish so much more civilized than the Gauls and Belgic Bri- 

 tons, even at a later period. From Tacitus, it appears, that 

 the Germans, and from Caesar and Diodorus that the Belgae, 

 ware the skins of some beast ; tlie Bracea^, or party-coloured 

 woollen garments, being apparently confined to the higher or- 

 ders. In these customs, we may suppose the Belgic inhabitants 

 of Ireland^ called Fir-bolg, agreed ; and it was in a district un- 

 questionably inhabited by that colony, that the body here no- 

 ticed was found (sec O'Flaherty's Ogygia). But we must not 

 conclude that such a luxury was common to all the British and 

 Irish. We are told by Dion Cassius, and Herodian, that the 

 inhabitants of the northern parts of Britain went entirely naked ; 

 and it appears from numerous ancient monuments still existing, 

 that the Celtic tribes of the Irish for many centuries later were 



