126 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



The conclusion, however, to which most minds will be conducted, 

 on a consideration of the foregoing facts which I have endeavoured to 

 •present, as far as I know them, in all their bearings, will probably be 

 thatthe presumption in favour of thePagan origin of Relig-na-ree, arising 

 from tradition and from its similarity to other probably Pagan ceme- 

 teries, has not been displaced; and that, assuming it to have really been 

 one of the three royal cemeteries of the Pagan Irish, its meanness presents 

 a material obstacle to the acceptance of the grand remains at Slieve na- 

 Calliagh as marking the site of another. In such a point of view there 

 would arise even greater difficulty in accepting the New Grange group 

 as the Brugh na-Boinne of the tract on the Cemeteries. 



Turning to Tara, which was also a royal Cemetery in Pagan times, 

 according to the same poems, the evidence afforded by the remains still 

 traceable there leads to a similar inference. The leacht of Leaghaire, 

 stated to have been interred in the rath the remains of which still bear 

 his name, is no longer traceable. The plough has erased the tomb 

 erected over the head and neck of Cuchullin. A little pile of earth 

 and field stones, twenty-six feet in diameter, is all that remains to 

 mark what Petrie took to be the grave of Caelcu, one of the Tara 

 monuments deemed great enough to be commemorated in the tracts in 

 prose and verse which he has published. In identifying this mound 

 with the leacht of Caelcu, Petrie has been drawn into a disregard of 

 the text, which is very rare, if not unexampled, in his other writings. 

 Seeing this presumably sepulchral mound at or towards the north- 

 western extremity of the long hall, and finding that the text placed the 

 leacht of Caelcu at its north-eastern extremity, he concludes that the 

 text must have been miscopied, and that " there is every reason to 

 believe that it should have been written north-west, as the Irish tran- 

 scribers frequently mistake the word sair for siar" (p. 215). But, in 

 truth, the only reason for the belief is, that a sepulchral mound being 

 sought, here is one at hand, which, supposing the text to be the other 

 way, will suit the purpose. It was a prolific error; for, assuming this 

 to be Caelcu's tomb, it becomes a point of departure for new identifi- 

 cations ; and those appropriate to the rath of Grainne and some of its 

 adjuncts, the remains of the Claenferta, still very obviously recognis- 

 able by their pensile position on the steep declivity towards the north- 

 west, leaving the Claenferta unidentified. Claenferta signifies the 

 sloped or oblique trenches, ditches, or graves, but more properly the 

 last ; and in fact, around the margins and on the summits of the two sin- 

 gularly-circumstanced rathsin question there are minor mounds indicat- 

 ing places of interment; so that most probably we are here among the 

 remains of the principal Cemetery of Tara ; and may judge, from their 

 character and dimensions, whether the royal sepulchres at Tara were 

 in any respect monuments of the same class with the groups at JSTew 

 Grange and those on the range of Slieve-na-Calliagh. Apparently the 

 same disparity exists here as in the other cases above enumerated, A 

 character of littleness pervades all the objects. Even the objects 



