Prehistoric Dwelling Places 93 



instances have been recoi'ded on sufficiently good authority, where 

 Ogam stones have been used as mere building material in the con- 

 struction of Souterrains. The highest authorities have dated all 

 these Ogam inscriptions as between the fourth and sixth centuries. 

 In one instance Dubordieu records a stone as having been found, 

 apparently as a roofing flag, in a Souterrain near Seaforde, County 

 Down, on which a rude Celtic inscription was cut. Sir Samuel 

 Ferguson in a very interesting paper on this stone,* weighs the 

 evidence relating thereto, and dates the inscription about the 

 7th or 8th century. The Souterrain in which it was found was 

 one of those evidently later specimens which I have called the 

 County Down type. 



These indications of date prove to us that, at any rate, the 

 particular Souterrains where the Ogam stones were used as 

 building materials may safely be put down to at earliest about a 

 century after the Ogams were cut, say to the 6th, 7th or 8th 

 century, and in the Seaforde instance to perhaps the 8th or 9th 

 century. Such instances of inscribed stones being used as 

 building material of Souterrains are fairly widely spread. Most 

 occur in Co. Cork, some in Kerry and Waterford, but one only 

 has so far been discovered in Ulster, namely, that at Connor, 

 found by Canon Carmody. This Souterrain is of the usual crude 

 Co. Antrim type, but all the Souterrain Ogams are of about the 

 same period, namely, the 5th or early 6th century. It seems a 

 fair deduction, therefore, to assume that the architectural custom 

 of building underground dwellings prevailed generally from at 

 earliest, perhaps the 4th, up to the 7th or 8th century, and those 

 of the South Co. Down type up to perhaps the 8th or 9th cen- 

 tury. It is regrettable, although remarkable and of considerable 

 importance, that these ty[)ical Lecale or South Down Souterrains 

 are so well and closely built that the surrounding soil has never 

 permeated into them or covered up the original floors, which 

 remain to-day as clean as in the days when they wore inhabited. 

 Thus any remains that might have been hidden by the soil had 

 *Proceedings R.I. A., 2nd Series, vol. I., p. 129. 



