■ Prehistoric Dwelling Places 97 



Souterrain population, who were manifestly contemporaneous 

 with the grades of society of whose manners and customs he 

 writes so fully. But in O'Curry's " Manners and Customs " it 

 is admitted that the ancient manuscripts and annals which form 

 the fountain from which his vast knowledge was derived described 

 only the manners and customs of the higher grades of society, 

 the lowest grade described being the Bo airachs or gentlemen cow 

 owners, a class that may be described as analogous to our present 

 day smaller landed gentry or gentlemen farmers.* So that from 

 the Omission of any account of the ancient Irish Souterrain 

 inhabitants, we can only infer that they were of either a conquered 

 race or of the serf or labouring class, which even to-day, 

 collectively, form, as, judging from the number of Souterrain 

 dwellings that survive now, they did then, the numerically greater 

 portion of the population. 



This inference that the Souterrain dwellers were entirely of 

 the lower orders or of a conquered race is strongly borne out by 

 the general type of the remains I have found in the Souterrains, 

 which are remarkable as being entirely utilitarian, with the single 

 exception of one fragment of a jet bracelet found in Kilbride. 

 This is the only article of personal adornment discovered. No 

 articles of bronze, which must have been a very expensive 

 material, occur, and but few of iron, these almost exclusively in 

 Souterrains known from other evidence to have been occupied 

 up to later times. All articles found consist of bare necessaries 

 of life, of the cheapest material and description, supporting the 

 inference that the Cave dwellers were of the poorest and lowest 

 class of the people, undoubtedly of the older and conquered races 

 subjugated in the gradual advance and domination of the later 

 Gallic or Celtic invaders. Not only so ; but I think it 'can be 

 argued that they were of small stature. We are told that the 

 invading Celts were of large physique and contrasted in this 

 respect with their predecessors. I think that no one who has 

 crawled through the passages of an average Souterrain could be 

 * See 0"Cuiry"s " Manners and Customs," vol. II., p. .3.j. 



