200 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



with which he was regarded must have been powerful indeed to have 

 induced them to encounter the great labour of procuring a stone 

 of such ponderous magnitude, 25-^ ft. in length, to convey it to this 

 spot, and to drag it to the top of this rocky knoll. The labour of 

 erecting it must have been a herculean one. Even with all our 

 modern engineering appliances it would be a serious work ; how 

 much more to a people who had little aid beyond brute force. There 

 can, I think, be no question that the people who erected this great 

 memorial pillar came from seaward, and were a colonizing race. 



In this picturesque land-locked bay of Ballycrovane they came 

 ashore, and probably made their first settlement. Why did they 

 select this wild, remote, and rocky district ? Perhaps, because the 

 more fertile districts were thickly inhabited, and they may not have 

 felt themselves powerful enough to make a hostile descent upon 

 a populous shore. At that period the now bare mountains and coasts 

 were forest-grown. These supplied them with game, the sea teemed 

 with fish, and from thence they could reconnoitre the more inviting 

 neighbourhoods, previous to pushing their way inland. Here proba- 

 bly their great chief and lawgiver died ; perhaps he was the leader 

 of their expedition, and here, on the spot of their landing, looking 

 out on the sea, which had borne them to their new homes, they 

 appropriately erected the huge memorial pillar of him they so much 

 venerated. 



The bay of Kenmare, upon the shore of which this great monu- 

 ment stands, is stated by many authorities to be the Inbher-Sgene of 

 the bardic legends, famous for the landing of the Milesians or Gaedhil, 

 Whether this estuary, or that of Dingle, was the scene of this trans- 

 action, there can be no doubt that the former was the theatre of 

 remarkable events connected with the early occupation of the south of 

 Ireland. On the western side, and near the mouth of the bay, on 

 Derrynane strand, stands an Ogham-inscribed pillar- stone ; higher 

 up, at the same side, and nearly opposite Ballycrovane, is the great 

 prehistoric stone-built fortress of Staigue ; higher up still, and 

 about three miles from the shore, stands the stone circle of Derrygur- 

 rane, with its great overthrown Ogham-inscribed pillar ; and nu- 

 merous other remarkable megalithic remains are to be found along 

 both shores of the bay, nearly up to the town of Kenmare. 



