1907-1908.] 



49 



Mrs. Hobson to give her lecture on "The Great Burial 

 Mounds of Lough Crew," in the course of which she said for a 

 long time she had promised herself the pleasure of visiting the 

 great pagan necropolis on the Loughcrew Hills, and last April 

 found herself at Oldcastle, the nearest village. The chief tombs 

 are on the tops of the hills, and are easily seen from the train. 

 They are two miles from Oldcastle, rather in the direction of 

 Kells, at an elevation above sea-level of 904 feet, and forced out 

 of the lower silurian rocks. There are two main peaks with tombs 

 still surmounting them ; the others are covered with demolished 

 cairns. The two principal tombs are open, and easily entered. 

 Ancient writers say there were fifty of them. In 1864 there were 

 thirty. To-day the number is hard to ascertain. Some are 

 merely heaps of debris, others grass-grown and hard to determine. 

 Externally they appear heaps, or rather hills, of small loose stones. 

 The interiors are composed of a passage and rude circular 

 chamber divided into compartments, one into four and another 

 into seven niches. The largest of the cairns now demolished 

 must have been sixty yards in diameter at the base. The Hag's 

 Chair cairn is 115^ yards in circumference, base to summit 21 

 spaces (Conwell). The legend goes that a hag named Calleach 

 Bearthe started to jump from one peak to another with her apron 

 full of stones, but, as might be expected, she fell, and so 

 scattered her load, and at the same time lost her life. At the side 

 of this cairn is a great stone sofa 10 feet long and about 10 tons 

 weight, probably a seat of justice, or used for some ceremonial 

 now long forgotten. The interiors are most impressive and 

 magnificent examples of dry cyclopean masonry, formed of huge 

 boulders and slabs, the centre chambers being built of overlapping 

 courses till closed, as were so many of the early buildings in 

 Ireland, " with a single stone." Passage and chamber combined 

 are cruciform. The impression forces itself upon one that here 

 we have buildings of a ruder and more primitive type than at 

 New Grange. On the next height is an even larger and more 



