PROCEEDINGS 



OF 



THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY. 



1841, No. 28. 



February 22, 1841. 



. Rev. H. LLOYD, D. D., Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Mr. Charles T. Webber presented to the Academy an 

 ancient stone, on which is carved a rudebass-reHef, supposed 

 to be the representation of a dogkiUing a wolf. Mr. Webber 

 accompanied the present with a communication to the effect, 

 that the stone was taken from the Castle of Ardnaglass, in 

 the barony of Tireragh and county of Sligo, and was 

 said to commemorate the destruction of the last wolf in 

 Ireland. The current tradition in the place from whence 

 it came was, that some years after it was supposed that 

 the race of wolves was extinct, the flocks in the county 

 of Leitrim were attacked by a wild animal which turned 

 out to be a wolf; that thereupon the chieftains of Lei- 

 trim applied to O'Dowd, the chieftain of Tireragh, (who 

 possessed a celebrated dog of the breed of the ancient 

 Irish wolf dog), to come and hunt the wolf; which appli- 

 cation being complied with by O'Dowd, there ensued a 

 chase, which forms the subject of an ancient Irish legend, 

 detailing the various districts through which it was pursued, 

 until at length the wolf was overtaken and killed in a 

 small wood of pine trees, at the foot of one of the mountains 

 in Tireragh. The quarter of land on which the wolf was 

 killed, is to this day called Carrow na Madhoo, which means 



