Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 391 



with the descriptions of Blundeville and Giraldus Cambrensis. 

 The horsemen on the Kells cross use bridles, but do not appear 

 to have stirrup or saddle, but the cross of Clonmacnoise has 

 suffered too much from time and weather to sanction any 

 dogmatic statement about these details. 



In the matchless illuminations of the Book of Kells commonly 

 assigned to the end of the seventh or the beginning of the 

 eighth century, we meet representations of horsemen several 

 centuries earlier than those from the cross of Kells, but as they 

 are introduced for purely decorative reasons, we cannot rely on 

 them for more than the costume of the riders and the trappings 

 of the steeds. Thus the grotesque horseman on folio 89 wears 

 a short green cloak with a broad band of bright red and a yellow 

 border, green breeches, the feet being bare, whilst the horse has 

 a yellow cover, all the por- 

 tions which appear being 

 depicted in green (Fig- 

 110) 1 . Neither has this 

 horseman nor another on 

 folio 255 stirrup or saddle, 

 though both have bridles. 

 By the absence of defen- 

 sive armour, stirrups and ^ 



FIG. 110. Irish Horseman; Book of Kells. 



saddles, and the use of 



bridles or halters we may recognize in the horsemen of the 

 Book of Kells the same equipment as that used by the Irish 

 in the time of Giraldus some four centuries later. 



It has now been proved that the typical Irish horse as 

 described by Thomas Blundeville in 1580 was, no recent 

 outcome of Spanish sires, as believed by the members of the 

 Royal Commission, but was already in general use in Ireland 

 by the tenth century, if not earlier. But this is not all ; three 

 horse-skulls lately discovered in a crannog (lake-dwelling) are 

 of the highest importance in proving that not only were horses 

 of the North African type used in Ireland as early as the 

 tenth century, but possibly at a considerably earlier date. 



1 Wilde's Cat. of the Antiq. of the Roy. Irish Academy, p. 300. 



