Ill] 



AND HISTORIC TIMES 



399 



inverted over the burnt bones. Directly above the bones lay 

 the skeleton of a woman with its head to the west, and beside 

 it were the remains of a small horse, which lay on its left side 

 with the head to the west," and which had been probably 

 buried along with the human body. The woman was probably 

 a slave killed to be the guardian of her master's grave 1 . 

 Dr Scharff 2 , who examined the horse bones, states that they all 

 belonged to one individual a seven-year old stallion of small 

 size. " To judge from the length of the humerus, radius, and 

 metacarpal, the forelimb belonged to a small race of horse or 

 pony. The measurements of these bones are somewhat larger 

 than those given by Dr Marek of an Exmoor pony, but they 



FIG. 119. The O'Donovan Shield; Skibbereen 3 . 



are almost identical with those of the largest of the horses 

 found at La Tene," which I have identified with the Ligurian 

 ginni, the ancestors of the grey Camargue. As cremation only 

 came late into Ireland and was never general, being chiefly 

 used by the chieftain class, and as it was practised by the 

 Gauls in Caesar's day and by the Belgic tribes of Kent 4 , there 

 is a high probability that it came into Ireland with the La 

 Tene, or * late Celtic ' culture. It is certain that the Loughrea 

 tumulus is pre-Christian and it probably belongs to the period 

 when the La Tene culture came into Ireland. Accordingly 



1 Kidgeway, Early Age of Greece, Vol. i. pp. 497, 505. 



2 Proc. Roy. Irish Acad, loc. cit. 3 Ridgeway, op. cit. Vol. I. p. 462. 

 4 Id., Vol. i. pp. 503, 505. 



