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Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



it would have been designated merely as the great " cloghan." At what- 

 ever time it received the name, it most probably presented much the 

 same appearance as shown in the plan ; for the expression is not so appli- 

 cable to a cairn or barrow, as it is to such a ruinous pile of chambers 

 and galleries as Cloghanmore presented at the time when this drawing 

 was made. 







D 



5 o 



Ground-plan, Cloghanmore, Glenmaulin. 



All that now remains is the ground-plan and underworks of what 

 appears to have originally been a tumulus or long barrow. The sepul- 

 chral cists have everywhere been stripped of their outward covering, 

 and, in most cases, of their roofing-stones. Enough, however, remains 

 to show the general plan, which was composed of two larger circles, 

 placed side by side, and together forming a long oval, with one smaller 

 circle annexed at the southern end. All the chambers were constructed 

 on the ground surface. The passages leading to them either opened 

 externally on the level of the adjoining land, or branched off from one 

 or two principal adits. 



If we suppose Cloghanmore to be covered over, it would present 

 the appearance of an elevated mound, showing the ends of its chambers 

 and galleries all round, j ust above the ground-level. Such is, in fact, the 

 present appearance of the cemetery which remains to be noticed in 

 this connexion, being the burial -ground at Killeen Cormaic in Kildare, 

 with this difference, that the seemingly Pagan substructions in which 

 the resemblance consists have, in the latter, been overlaid by accumu- 

 lations of Christian burials, continued down to the present time. 



Killeen Cormaic is situate close by Colbanstown bridge, on the west 

 bank of the Greiss river, which hei'e forms the boundary between the 

 counties of Kildare and AVicklow, on the road leading from Dunlavin to 

 Ballitore. As I know no other place which presents such a continuity 

 of monumental retrospect, made still more attractive by the presence of 

 at least four inscribed ogham stones, one of them a " biliteral" if not a 

 "bilingual" example, I have thought that a careful drawing, which 

 may preserve the characteristic features of the spot hereafter, will not 

 be irrelevant to the more immediate subject of inquiry. 



