40 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
were scattered promiscuously through the human bodies, together with 
the flaggings of sandstone on which the food was cooked, and the 
embers of the charcoal fires. 
Of the broken and cut bones of the ox I preserved three jaw-bones, 
teeth, parts of ribs, the upper fragment of a thigh bone, and one of the 
vertebre : this retains on it the marks of being divided by a sharp 
cutting or sawing instrument. The head of the femur, cut across as it 
lay within the acetabulum, and neatly sawn, was also picked up. The 
upper part of a thigh bone belonging to a young calf, and an incisor 
tooth were likewise gathered; they were portions of a very young 
animal, which would appear to point to the spring or summer months 
as the season of the year when this massacre was perpetrated. Sheep 
remains were rather abundant. I kept portions of jaws belonging to 
three or four of them, large and small trotter bones, and vertebre sawn 
across in an oblique direction. Of the pig, parts of the lower jaw were 
preserved, and separate teeth of the animal; among them were the tusks 
of two old boars and of a young one. Of the horse or ass, both teeth 
and bones were got. The left ramus of a lower jaw-bone of a large- 
sized dog was found by Mr. Moss, and a few days after I picked up the 
corresponding right bone. Dr. Macalister likewise found bones of this 
animal, and has decided that it was a dog of large size, possibly a 
wolf dog, not a wolf. 
October, 1880, I got the upper jaws and snout of an animal that 
TY believe may have been a wolf. It resembles the remains of that animal 
which I have examined in some English museums, but the identifica- 
tion is full of difficulty. It is worth directing attention to the fact 
that, common as we know the wolf once was in Ireland, the discovery 
of its bones is of exceptional rarity, for which it is difficult to offer 
any satisfactory explanation. The publications of the Irish Archeeo- 
logical Society in 1860 afford an interesting illustration, taken from 
Trish history, of the habit of the dog or wolf to prey upon the bodies 
of the slain. a.p. 869, in a battle where the Norsemen were defeated, 
the writer says: ‘‘The son of Gaithin attacked them as the wolf. 
attacks sheep, and they fled into a bog, and in that bog they were all 
killed, and dogs devoured their bodies.”—See p. 167, Three Frag- 
ments of Irish Annals, &c. 
It was difficult to conjecture why scattered remains of different 
domestic animals which had been cooked and eaten should become 
dispersed through a mound of slain human beings, and the difficulty 
was increased when later still we found the slabs of cooking stones 
and the charcoal used for firing also scattered about, and the stones 
themselves apparently used for offensive missiles: but in referring to 
published Irish annals that record the history of Danish invasions we 
obtain the following startling account of similar practices pursued 
by these people in one of their battle-fields fought in the North of 
Ireland. 
a.p. 851, a battle took place between the Norsemen and Danes in 
the fifth year of the reign of Maelsechlainn. The Norse galleys 
