12-2 



Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



their settlement ; the locality from this running north was known as Fingal, 

 from the Norse occupation. We must also recollect that at the time Sir 

 William Wilde described this find, it was a common notion that weapons 

 being found at a place always denoted a battle ; but archaeology has advanced 

 greatly since that time. 



After a battle birds of prey are not the only scavengei's ; the bodies of 

 the slain would have been almost certainly despoiled by the enemy, sup- 

 posing their friends were unable to bring them of!'. On the otlier hand, there 

 are many points which seem to indicate that we have to deal with a biuial- 

 place, and that the objects found were placed with the dead. The graves 

 were those of both men and women ; the brooches and the beads, which are 

 rare in men's graves, probably belonged to the latter, also the needle-case 

 and the spindle-whorls. 



The three bent swords (fig. 24, Wk. 9) could not have been bent by the 

 finders, as the iron would have snapped across, as it would at 

 present if any attempt was made to straigliten them ; the one of 

 tliem which is so broken across was probably snapped since the 

 find was made, in an attempt to straighten it. The bending may 

 have been due to a sun'ival in certain exceptional cases of an 

 ancient and widely distributed rite of breaking or injuring objects 

 placed with the dead. 



M. Salomon lieinacb, who has handled this subject at length 

 in a memoir on the sword of Brennus in " L' Anthropologic,"' 

 hi»s shown how the widespread error, accepted almost without 

 reserve by modem historians, that the Gaulish iron was worth- 

 less, rested on the text of Polybius, and arose from that author, 

 who wrote at a time later than the events to which he referred, 

 and did not understand the rite, having condemned the bad iron 

 Wk. 9. of the Gaulish swords as the cause of the number of tliese bent 

 Fio. 24. and twisted swords which had been found. M. Eeinach mentions 

 that bent and damaged swords have been discovered in Normandy, 

 Campagne, in the valleys of the Rhone and Rhine, in Switzerland, in the 

 north of Italy, in Hungary, and, in Denmark, in the Island of Bornholm. 

 Such swords are also found in grave-mounds in Norway ; and examples are 

 figured in Du Chaillu's " Viking Age," and other works. 



All the objects of this important find have now been published for the 

 first time, including those figured by Sir William Wilde. Owing to the 

 circumstances of the find, some of the objects may be mixed with others of 

 rather later date ; but most of the weapons belong to the period representing 

 the first coming of the Norse to Ireland. 



' " L'Anlkropologie," 1906, pp. t^Z tt ug. 



