Ferguson — On the Catkin Ogham Inscription. 171 



delay, and carried up both parts of the stone to the original site ; 

 we then closed the pit (or grave), collected all the small scattered 

 stones, and built up the monument again as near as possible to what 

 it was when first I saw it. We then cleaned and washed the inscrip- 

 tion stone, and I compared my copy of the Ogham, which I found so 

 correct that I adopted it as the true reading, and here it is: — 



"Fan lia no ltca Conaf [n] Colgac Cosobada [c].'' 

 " Under this stone is laid Conaf [n] the fierce [and] turbulent." 



I have supplied the [c] at end, which I suppose to have been 

 lost with the missing corner of the stone. 



" The work of restoration and collation being now over, I asked 

 if they knew whether the widow and her sons found anything in it. 

 One man answered that she ' did not,' or ' could not,'' find any- 

 thing in it; that the bed was pillaged long before her time by a 

 man named O'Flanagan, who was the first man that ever opened it, and 

 who took away everything he found in it. I asked was it known 

 tvhat he did find in it. The man replied that he found two iron spears; 

 one was long, and nearly eaten away with the rust; the other was 

 short and heavy, and with them was a large iron vessel as large as a 

 stone pot, which O'Flanagan called a clog ad (helmet), and he found 

 with them some small pieces of bone and iron. All those my infor- 

 mant characterized as end agus airm catha chonain mhail (the bones and 

 battle arms of Conan the bald). I asked if there was any person now 

 living who saw those things. He said there was one old man in 

 Breintre who saw them all. I went on the following Sunday to this 

 old man, and he told me he was one of the four men who carried 

 them out to the road on a hand-barrow for O'Flanagan; that he, 

 O'Flanagan, told them he was bringing them to Mr. Burton, and 

 gave them a pound-note between them for their trouble ; and he added, 

 " O'Flanagan did not bring them to Burton, but carried them with 

 him into Ennis, and away out of the country." 



[The illustrations referred to in this paper will be found either amongst the draw- 

 ings and casts preserved at the Academy, or in photographic reproductions which the 

 Committee of Publication propose to publish in the Transactions. — Ed.] 



