88 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



seven large stones in the periphery of its base, a great stone-chair facing 

 the north, in our days popularly called "The Hag's Chair," measuring 

 1 feet in "breadth, 6 feet high, and 2 feet thick ; from which dimen- 

 sions it must be upwards of ten tons in weight, allowing twelve 

 cubic feet of rock to weigh one ton. It occurred to us that, instead 

 of this "being the chair of any old hag of antiquity, whether real 

 or mythical, it would be much more reasonable to look upon it as 

 having had, in the long past days of its glory, some practical use. 



At that remote period in the history of man, before the advent of 

 Christianity, it is well known that the sun was an object of worship ; and 

 the veiy fact that the entrances to the interior chambers of the majo- 

 rity of the earns on the Loughcrew Hills point to the east, or the rising 

 sun, bears strong internal evidence that this form of worship prevailed 

 when these tombs or earns were constructed. If such were the case, 

 for we are without any absolute historic evidence on the point, we 

 can well imagine how appropriately a great seat of justice was placed 

 in the north side of the great law-maker's tomb, from which, with all 

 the solemnity attaching to the place, his laws were administered, say 

 at mid- day, with the recipients of the adjudication fully confronted 

 with the great luminary, the object of their worship. For these rea- 

 sons we propose, henceforth, to call this remarkable stone chair, em- 

 blazoned as it is, both on front and back, with characters at present 

 perfectly unintelligible to us, " Ollamh Fodhla's Chair." 



Ollamli Fodhla's Chair (Front View). 



Unfortunately, from a natural fracture in the stone, a considerable 

 portion of the back has scaled off, and the pieces being lost, we are 

 now unable even to guess what cryptic characters may have been in- 

 scribed upon the lost portions. In the following woodcut, however, 

 it will be seen that the portion of the original back of the chair still 

 remaining is inscribed with characters quite analogous with those upon 

 its front. 



The chair is a rock of native Lower Silurian grit, having a rude 



