220 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 



In March, 1854, the gang of labourers digging near an old hawthorn bush, a 

 short distance to the south of the railway bridge, in Moghaun north, on the 

 west side of the line, and opposite the lough,^ undermined a sort of cist. A 

 stone fell disclosing a sort of box made of rough stones, and a mass of gold 

 ornaments : armlets with dilated or cup-ends, thin gold " gorgets," and many 

 fibulse; a few ingots of gold were also found. The men, after a general 

 scramble for the prize, though not sure of its value — for some thought the 

 objects were of brass —proceeded to dispose of the "fairy gold " for what it 

 might fetch. The find proved to be a mass of beautiful fibulte, bracelets, and 

 lesser ornaments. Two bracelets passed to the O'Briens, most of the rest came 

 into the hands of a local shopkeeper, some, it is said, for oatmeal and other 

 supplies ; some fell into the hands of goldsmiths in Limerick ; many were cut 

 up and melted. Dr. Todd and Lord Talbot de Malahide exhibited a very 

 large and interesting number of specimens at the meeting of the Archasological 

 Institute, in Cambridge, that same year in August ;- while Dr. Todd reported 

 to this Academy on June 26th, 185-i,^ that at least £3000 worth of ornaments 

 were found in a small mound, over a little stone chamber a quarter of a mile 

 from one of the largest earthen forts in Ireland. Windele records it as 

 " torques, fibulte, armlets, ring-money of various sizes and patterns, some of 

 which has been melted down by barbaric silversmiths, more passed into 

 private hands." 



Present-day tradition at Newmarket only remembers " nuggets,"^ and says 

 that no one throve who took the fairy gold, " though one man was the better 

 of it for some time." 



Members of this Academy are well acquainted with the objects and 

 models of fibulfe, acquired for our collection, and still to be seen in the 

 Museum, an expert description of which is greatly to be desired. 



1 The evidence of the local people, and some of the older inhabitants in Quin and elsewhere, was 

 corroborated unknowingly bj^ my late sister, Mrs. Stacpoole, showing me where Mr. John Hill, 

 formerly county surveyor, had shown her the place of the find. It exactly tallied with my other 

 information. 



-Journal of same, 1854, No. 41, p. 181. Dr. Todd's communication to the Institute is there 

 abstracted. 



3 See "Catalogue of Gold Antiquities," pp. 31-33. The Journal of the Kilkenny Society 

 (Roy. Soc. Antiq. Ireland), vol. ii., p. 287, has a short note telling (wrongly) how the find was 

 made on Mr. Blood's property of Ballykilty ; and tells how a man grasped up ornaments, "the fuU 

 of his hat," and ran to Newmarket, where he sold them for £30 ; they were afterwards valued in 

 Limerick for £400. In vol. iii., p. 181, Rev. James Graves describes the event more accurately : 

 in tidying the new railway bank a stone fell out displaying a rude cist covered by a slab, and a 

 number of beautiful ornaments and some ingots of gold were found. Mr. Graves saw some sold 

 for £.500. Mr. F. Barnes, c.e., contractor of the Limerick and Ennis Railway, was his informant, 

 and locates it in Mooghaun, near the lake, but at a spot never covered by the water. The cist 

 measured 15 inches to 24 inches square . 



* Uuery ingots ; see last note. 



