TRANSAOTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 119 
shell ornaments and rude unglazed pottery (the primitive nomadic hunter and 
fisher) arrived in Ireland and occupied its plains, forests, and fastnesses in that same 
state of life in which we find similar primitive races of mankind in the present day, 
—here contending with the bear, the wolf, the fox, the osprey, the seal, and the 
otter for his food, as his predecessors did with the auroch in mid-Europe,—I 
have not the slightest doubt. I think the reindeer and the elephant, and pro- 
bably the musk-ox, had become extinct before man’s arrival in Erinn, and I have 
always inclined to the idea that he was not contemporaneous with that great 
monarch of the cervine race, the Irish Elk; but in this opinion, however, I may be 
mistaken. 
Standing on the coast of Great Britain he could, with the practised eye of the 
hunter, have discerned from the Welsh mountains the hills of Erinn; and he could 
have clearly seen Donaghadee from Port Patrick. 
But whether he came adrift upon a plank or raft, or in a singlestick canoe, is 
more than [ caneven speculate upon. That there were inhabitants in Ireland at the 
time of the arrival of these first recorded colonists I have but little doubt. Whether 
these or subsequent races were the men who erected the Lacustrine habitations, 
the Pfahlbouten of Switzerland, and their analogues the Cranogues of Ireland, or 
banqueted in the Kitchen-middens of Jutland, requires a further investigation of 
their remains. 
With these rather lengthened preliminary remarks, which I thought necessary 
for the information of strangers, or those not specially acquainted with the subject, 
it is now my particular province to tell you something of the early races of the land 
we live in, and their representatives still existing among its present population, 
With respect to the authenticity of the early chronicles and legends that relate the 
history of these immigrations—so much sneered at by one set of inquirers and so 
faithfully believed in by another—let me make two observations, one chronological 
and the other topographical. Our Irish Annals were first committed to writing by 
Christian scribes in either Gaelic or Latin, and were not only intermixed with 
classic story, but with scriptural incidents, particularly those relating to the dis- 
persion of mankind after the deluge. Of a portion of their chronology there can, 
however, be little doubt; for in recording cosmical phenomena, such as eclipses of 
the sun or moon, the approach of comets and the like, they scarcely differ by a 
year from that great astronomical and chronological work, ‘LZ’ Art de vérifier les 
dates,’ computed by the French philosophers hundreds of years after those Annals 
were last written or transcribed. ‘This synchronism, to say the least of it, is re- 
' markably confirmative of those very early Irish Annals. It is just possible that 
long before the age of alphabetic writing some means by tallies, runes, or 
other devices may have been invented for fixing the ages of these cosmical 
phenomena. = 
Now the other incident is of equal authenticity in confirmation of the historical 
statement of our early records. Long, long before the Christian era it is there 
said that a battle took place on a certain plain in Mayo; and an incident con- 
nected with the fight is thus told :—A king or chief was surprised in early morning, 
while performing his ablutions at a deep well, by three warriors of the enemy, who 
came upon him unawares. He was saved by the prowess of one of his attendants, 
who killed his three assailants, and then died upon the spot. Hundreds of years 
passed by, the locality around had been cultivated and grazed upon again and 
again ; still the valley, the well, the subterranean watercourse with its fairy legends, 
the hurling-field, the cairns, circles, pillar-stones, and other surrounding topogra- 
phical features remained. The gallant soldier who laid down his life for his royal 
master was buried where he fell; and as the army (stated to have been thousands 
strong’) passed by, each man—as was the custom of the day—threw a pebble on his 
graye, then called and still known as “The cairn of the one man.” Not long 
ago, with the written legend in my hand, and_possessing a full knowledge of the 
locality, and accompanied by a few stalwart Connaught men, I proceeded to the 
spot, told my incredulous auditory the tale of their ancestors, dug and lifted stone 
after stone until we came upon a small chamber under a large flag, wherein we 
found deposited a beautiful cinerary urn containing some black earth and frag- 
ments of burnt human bones. The sepulchre, with its surrounding stone circle, 
