162 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



I am not aware that O'Curry or O'Donovan has left any account 

 of what they supposed the inscription really to be; but it is obvious 

 that they did not consider it to have been accurately transcribed by 

 OTlanagan, which is hard to reconcile with the idea of his having been 

 the inventor, seeing that a person making use of something previously 

 fabricated by himself or his confederates for the purpose of being so 

 used, would not be likely to misapprehend his own preparations. 



O'Curry, however, does not appear at any time of his life to have 

 been influenced by any gentle feelings towards the memory of OTlana- 

 gan. In his Catalogue of the Academy Original Collection (Series i., 

 vol. i., p. 312), he returns to the subject: — 



" Page 19, line 5, commences a translation of an extract from the poem entitled 

 Cath-Gabhra, or the battle of Gaura, ascribed to Oisin. This extract goes to say that 

 the fierce and mighty Conan was not in that battle, for that he had gone the previous 

 May to worship the sun on Mount Callan in Clare, where he was killed by the Feni of 

 Finn, and his sepulchral monument raised on the north-west, and his name inscribed in 

 Ogham characters on a fiat stone. Mr. 0' Flanagan gave a copy of this Ogham inscrip- 

 tion, and a translation to the Royal Irish Academy, which they published in 1789 

 [1787.] 



" But the accuracy of the rendering and translation may be questioned ; as it is well 

 known that Mr. O'Flanagan's knowledge, not only of Oghams, but of the Irish language 

 in general, was very superficial, and his solution was not original, because Michael 

 Comyn, a clever general scholar, and a good Irish one, was the first to give this version 

 of the inscription, about the year 1760, but not at all in a serious sense. And the 

 quotation from the poem above alluded to is not to be fouud in any copy that I have 

 seen older than the year 1790. Indeed, I never saw it at all but in one copy made even 

 later than 1790; so that I am perfectly satisfied this extract was founded on a purely 

 original tale, written in Irish by the aforesaid Michael Comyn, entitled ' The Adven- 

 tures of Torlbh Mac Starn and his sons,' to give a popular illustration of some monu- 

 ments of antiquity, and some topographical features of the western coast of the county 

 Clare ; and that this extract was concocted with the view of giving colour to Yallancey's 

 doctrine of the ancient Irish being fire worshippors, for after the falsifications described 

 at No. 26. 4, in this catalogue, what would not Vallancey and 0' Flanagan do to carry 

 out their own views in antiquarian researches?" 



I do not know where O'Curry finds that the inscription had been 

 read in the same sense by Michael Comyns, about 1760, but direct 

 attention to it as a fact of some importance, considering that Vallancey 

 appears for the first time, as far as I know, in Irish affairs as a Captain 

 of Engineers stationed at Kilkenny in 1763, and having regard to other 

 considerations which will subsequently present themselves. 



0' Donovan's imputations are definite in fixing the fabrication of 

 the Ogham on Lloyd, and that of the corroborative verses on OTlanagan, 

 although as regards the inscription it will occur to candid minds that 

 if it were known and deciphered in the same sense in 1760, John Lloyd 

 must have been somewhat negligent in utilising his preparations, as he 

 did not publish his account for nearly twenty years after. It is in his 

 Irish Grammar (Introd. xlvii.) that O'Donovan makes his public charge 

 against OTlanagan of having fabricated the verses : — 



''It is stated by some that this stone had lain buried for ages, while others asserted 

 with confidence that the inscription was forged by Mr. John Lloyd, a Munster Irish 

 poet of the last century, who was the first [?] to notice it himself in his Short Draught 



