Coffey — Intercourse of Gaul wilh Ireland before First Century. 103 



well collection is in the British Museum : iron spear-heads and " door- 

 handle" butts; also several small objects. One of these when found was 

 attached to the shaft of a spear 8 feet long, which was fui-nisheil at the 

 top with a ferrule of bronze upon which was displayed a kind of Greek 

 fret-pattern prepared for enamel ; the spear-head was missing ; but 

 Mr. Wakeman, who, with Canon Grainger, obtained it on the spot from 

 the person by whom it had been exhmned, considers that the large iron 

 spear-head figured in his paper was it (Journal E.S.A.I., vol. xvi., p. 392). It 

 measures about 16 inches in length, and the breadth of the blade 2 inches. 

 This discovery would seem to contradict the guess in the British Museum 

 Guide to the Iron Age (p. 147), which is disposed to consider these door- 

 handle butt-ends of spears as having been the linch-pins of chariots rather 

 than the butt-ends of spears. 



Mr. Knowles has in his collection from Lisnacroghera 

 several bronze butt-ends of spears, also a fragment of a 

 slender twist gold tore. Thei'e are also several smaller 

 spear-heads found there like fig. 5, which was found at 

 Carrick-on-Shannon. 



The date of the finds can hardly be later than La Tene II. 

 It is to be regretted that the erannog was not properly exca- 

 vated, and that the discoveries were left to the chance finds 

 of the turf-cutters, and so much scattered. They may indi- 

 cate the lauding of a body of Gauls direct from the Conti- 

 nent. The Brigantes settled in the north of England, about 

 Yorkshire and Lancashire, were probably a branch of the 

 Brigantes whom Ptolemy locates at Bregans on the east of 

 Lake Constance. The Brigantes of the south of Ireland were 

 probably another branch coming, as I think, directly from 

 the Continent. We must disabuse our minds of the old notion that the 

 movements of the Celtic peoples always took place as a hydrostatic wave 

 filling up the neighbouring parts. This idea is derived from the error, on 

 which Professor Zimmer comments so forcibly, which regards all Conti- 

 nental influences in Ireland as given through Britain. When Caesar 

 defeated the Helvetii, and turned back the sur\i\-ors to their old lands near- 

 Lake Geneva, from which they had advanced on their march as far as 

 Autun, the whole nation was setting out on a long journey to new lands in 

 the west, and had burnt their homes and the corn which they could not take 

 with them, and had made arrangemctits for -passing through the intermediate 

 lands. 



Fig. 5. — Canick- 

 ou-Shftnnon (i). 



R.I. A. rKOC, VOL. XXVIII., SECT. C. 



[16] 



