284 Griddle or Greidell Ine or Een. [Sess. 



To these old Sennachies we owe a debt of gratitude for 

 perpetuating through the centuries the memory of the events 

 that happened in the long, long ago. 



Eugene O'Curry published the first edition of his Lectures 

 in 1824, and since then much has been discovered of which 

 he was unaware. He was a great Celtic scholar and Pro- 

 fessor of Irish History and Archaeology in the Catholic 

 University of Ireland. The edition of his Lectures, published 

 in 1873 and edited by Prof. W. K. Sullivan, Ph.D., also 

 a well-known Celtic authority, brings, with an introduction 

 and appendices, the work of O'Curry pretty well up to date. 

 No student of the archaeology and history of Ireland can 

 afford to dispense with a careful study of the writings of these 

 authors. 



Dr Joseph Anderson, of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, 

 wrote me on January 29, 1910, with reference to Greidell 

 Ine or Een. He says : " There is no possible question that 

 the monument you have described is a rare example of a 

 sepulchral construction of the late Stone or early Bronze Age, 

 many centuries before the dawn of the historic period." 



In O'Curry, vol. i. p. cccxxxi, the following appears : 

 " Among the superstitious practices prohibited in the Anglo- 

 Saxon laws of Canute is one called ' Eyhrt.' " Can this word 

 be the same as the Irish word " Pert " ? Then, in the ' Laws 

 of Northumbrian Priests,' 48 : "If any one be found that 

 shall henceforth practise any heathenship, either by sacrifice 

 of Eyhrt, or in any way love witchcraft, or worship idols, if he 

 be a King's Thane let him pay x half marks, half to Christ 

 and half to the King." 



From these quotations from documents referring to the East 

 of England, the conclusion that one would naturally come to 

 is that the " Eyhrt " mentioned had regard to superstitious 

 practices or ceremonies connected with paganism. But it is 

 quite possible the term may have arisen specially in connection 

 with ceremonies or practices carried out in pagan times at a 

 Eyhrt. In any case, there seems to be no doubt that one kind 

 of fert in Ireland, of which we are told there are numbers, 

 was a burial-mound with a chamber enclosing a derc or cist. 

 If this is so, who can doubt that similar Ferts would also exist 

 in pagan times in Scotland, which was peopled at that early 



