1838.] 249 [Mooney. 
a skeleton or a cinerary urn, while in many cases the skeleton and the 
cremated remains ar found together.* The two methods of disjointed 
and extended burial belong either to two distinct races or to widely sepa- 
rated periods, while cremation appears to hav been practiced at all times 
and by different races, As Fomorians, Firbolgs and Tuatha-de-Dananns 
each in turn held sway over the whole island until restricted and hemd 
in by a late invasion, it follows that, we may expect to find the remains of 
any one people most numerous where their dominion was earliest es- 
tablishd or where they held out longest against their conquerors. An 
archeologic map of Ireland, which should indicate the character and 
number of the prehistoric remains in each district of the country, would 
be invaluable in this connection, but without this we ar obliged to depend 
upon descriptions of isolated monuments, and it is therefore impossible to 
mark out race areas. 
As cremation cannot be assignd to any particular period, we shal speak 
first of disjointed burial, which evidently belongs to a very ancient and 
distinct race type. According to Wilde, the disjointed skeleton is usually 
found beneath the surface in ‘‘a kistvaen, or small stone chamber, roofed 
either with a single flag or covered in with that form of arch resembling 
a beehive dome. There is no tumulus or heap of earth to mark the site of 
these sepulchres, several of which have been turned up with the plow. 
Within this small square vault the bones are generally placed in a regular 
manner, the small ones at the bottom, the long ones, as the legs and arms, 
at the top, and the whole is crowned with the skull.’’} In one instance, 
in the Queen’s county, the stone chamber was found in the outer circle of 
arath, or prehistoric earth fort, and close beside the skeleton was one of 
the most beautiful cinerary urns ever found in the country. From the 
general form and symmetry of some of the skuls found with this mode of 
interment, Wilde is inclined to think that the owners belongd to one of 
the highest types of the Indo-European race. 
A remarkable mound opend in the County Sligo, one of the last strong- 
holds of the Fomorians and Firbolgs, was found to contain a large kist- 
vaen, within which wer the remains of six human interments. In each 
case the bones wer piled in the manner described and surmounted by the 
skul, but the smaller bones wer all half-burnd, while around each pile 
* According to Rooke Pennington, such is the case also in England. In an article on 
the “Relative Ages of Cremation and Contracted Burial in Derbyshire,” he says: ‘‘In 
fact, it is the rule to find interments in the two modes in the same barrow.” Jour, Anth. 
Inst., iv, 271, London, 1875. 
+W. R. Wilde, The Boyne and the Blackwater, 2d ed., 231, Dublin, 1850. The distin- 
guished author, the late Sir William Wilde, was the master spirit in Irish archeology. 
To avoid needless repetition it may be here stated that, unless otherwise noted, the fol- 
lowing descriptions of the prehistoric sepulchral remains at New Grange, Dowth and 
elsewhere, ar based mainly upon the statements in the valuable chapter on “ The Eth- 
nology of the Ancient Irish”’ in the work above quoted. The statements there given 
hay been compared with those of Holden, Kinahan, Lewis and others in the volumes of 
the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and such conclusions drawn 
as seemd warranted by the facts. 
