O'Keilly — Ancient Water-milh, Native and Foreign. 61 



mills for grinding their corn. Their native hills abounded in 

 cascades suggesting the employment of water-power, and their forests 

 furnished the materials for their mill-ioheehr 



(p. 11.) — "Now it so happens that the poetical account of the first 

 water-mill £ver erected in Ireland (written by a bard who died 

 A.D. 1024) and the popular tradition state the millwright who 

 constructed it was brought from Scotland. This was in the third 

 century, when, as the poet relates, the Monarch Cormac, desirous of 

 saving a beautiful bond-maid the labour of grinding corn daily in a 

 quern, sent across the sea for a millwright who erected a mill on the 

 stream of Mth near Tara (Poem of Cuan O'Lochain, quoted in the 

 historical notes to the Ordnance Survey of Londonderry), "VVe have 

 no description of this mill to assist us in forming a conception of 

 its form or construction, but we may assume that it was of wood, and 

 of a simple form, probably not very different from the one which is 

 the subject of the present article. This traditional story, at all events, 

 points to the quarter from whence the invention was believed to have 

 come. Now, if on examination, we should find that mills quite 

 similar to our specimen were in use, or are actually still in use, in a 

 number of districts in the British Islands and the islands adjoining, 

 known to have been peculiarly Scandinavian, and for centuries under 

 the government of the Northmen, it would be difficult to avoid the 

 inference that these machines were introduced thither by them. 

 This I am enabled to show from various independent authorities, 

 whose several notices of mills I now place together for comparison." 



1 . In the Faroe Islands. — "The construction of a water-mill in Faroe 

 is exceedingly simple. The building for the most part consists merely 

 of wood, the roof being supported by four posts or pillars ; but, to save 

 timber, these pillars are sometimes built of stone, mixed with mud ; it 

 is entirely open below, so that the water can have a free course tkrough 

 it. On the gi'ound is placed a loose beam, having in the middle a 

 piece of iron, with a small hole in it, which, however, does not pass 

 through the beam. This hole is made to receive the gudgeon of a 

 perpendicular axle, which proceeds up to the millstone, and this axle 

 supplies the place of a crown wheel and spindle. To the upper end 

 of the axle is fixed a round rod of iron, which passes through the 

 lower stone, and which supports the iron cross that bears the upper 

 millstone. At the lower end of the axle there are eight leaves or 

 boards mortised into it, about 18 inches in length, a foot in breadth, 

 and from 1 to 1:^ inch in thickness. These leaves, which perfonn the 

 part of a water-wheel, do not stand exactly in a perpendicular, but with 



