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April 22nd, 1839. 

 SIR Wm. R. HAMILTON, A. M., President, in the Chair. 



The Rev. Dr. Walsh read a paper on a Sepulchral Urn 

 and Stone Coffin found in the Parish of Kilbride, with some 

 notices of the Parish. 



The union of Kilbride, county of Wicklow, consists of 

 four parishes, forming a triangular area of fifteen miles in 

 circumference, bounded by the River Ovoca, the sea coast, 

 and a line drawn from one to the other. The Irish language 

 is entirely extinct among the peasantry, and though the names 

 of places and particular objects are very expressive in that 

 language, they are altogether unintelligible to the people. Not 

 an individual among them can speak a word of their native 

 tongue. The majority are of the reformed religion, English 

 colonists located in this maritime district, after the wars of 

 Elizabeth, Cromwell, and James. They preserve many tradi- 

 tions of their achievements ; one family kept a sword taken 

 from the last tory seen in the county, whom they killed. It 

 had six pounds of brass in the hilt, obtained perhaps from the 

 copper mines of Cronebane, long before they were regularly 

 worked. The people are serious and religious, and dis- 

 tinguished for their moral qualities, dishonesty is unknown 

 among them, and their sobriety is such, that there is not a 

 public house in the union of fifteen miles in extent, nor 

 did Dr. Walsh remember to have ever seen in the parish a 

 drunken man on Sunday. 



The land is divided by a ridge of hills rising through the 

 centre, dividing it into the Vale of Ovoca and the Vale of 

 Redcross. This ridge affords many lovely prospects from its 

 summit. One was compared by Dr. Pococke to the view he 

 had seen of the Vale of Nazareth, from the ridges of 

 Mount Lebanon. The sea shore is a level strand, lined with 



