250 Original Articles. [April, 



as remarkable as the Pile Works, was the Crannoge. This word, ori- 

 ginally signifying in Irish a wooden house, is used in that country to 

 designate an island artificially raised above the surrounding water, 

 protected by piles, and not unfrequently heightened by wooden plat- 

 forms over a foundation of stones. On two of the Swiss lakes, Lake 

 Bienne* and Lake InkwyLf remains of this kind have been dis- 

 covered ; and in Scotland, at Carlinwark Loch, Kirkcudbright, a 

 similar discovery was made with the usual accompaniment of a single- 

 tree canoe. These canoes were good-sized logs, felled by stone axes, and 

 hollowed partly by the same means, partly by fire. They were blunt- 

 ended, as may be seen from several discovered in Ireland, Scotland, 

 and Switzerland. Crannoges have also been found in the Loch of Leyes, 

 Kincardineshire ; Lochriaben, Dumfries ; Loch Doon, Ayr ; Loch 

 Winnock, Renfrew ; Dhu Loch and Loch Quien, Bute ; in several 

 small lakes in Nairn and Galloway, and apparently at Duddingston 

 Loch, Midlothian. 



Frequent mention of such buildings is found in the Book of the 

 Four Masters, and other early native chronicles of Ireland, and these 

 numerous allusions seem justified by recent discoveries. Attention was 

 first called to these structures in 1837; 150 cart-loads of bones were 

 taken from one spot at Lagore, on Lake Gobham, in County Meath. 



Since then nearly fifty others have been examined in the counties 

 of Roscommon, Leitrim, Cavan, Monaghan, Limerick, Meath, West- 

 meath, Down, King's County, and Tyrone. The piles of these build- 

 ings were from four to nine inches in diameter, usually in a single row, 

 placed in the form of a circle or ellipse, cut with a hatchet of some 

 kind and interlaced with wattles, and sometimes mortised with cross- 

 beams. The remains discovered in these situations show that they 

 were in many cases inhabited during the early period designated by 

 the Stone Age, though history and some of the relics betray that they 

 continued to be used to a much later period. Sir Phelim O'Neill was 

 besieged in one of the wooden islands on Lake Roughan, near Dun- 

 gannon, as late as the time of the Civil Wars under Charles L, and 

 he could not be dispossessed until boats were brought from Charle- 

 mont to enable the besiegers to approach the island. The earliest 

 historical notice of such a dwelling refers, strangely enough, to the one 

 first discovered of late years. In the same work of the Four Masters 

 mentioned above, it is stated that the island at Lagore was plundered 

 and burnt to the ground by a chieftain of Meath, a.d. 848. Most of 

 these places exhibit traces of having been occupied for a long period. 

 They are strongly fortified with wood and stone, and usually com- 

 pletely separated from the shore, though some have causeways remain- 

 ing. To the same cause which led to the building of Crannoges in the 

 Irish, Scotch, and Swiss lakes, we may attribute the early settlement 



* At the Steinberg, near Nidau, in the northern part of the lake, there is a 

 Crannoge of between two or three acres in extent belonging to the Bronze period. 

 Bousseau's retreat, Peters Insel, and the little island close by it, owe their origin 

 to this cause. 



t Described by M. Morlot. This lake has a muddy bottom, entirely free from 

 stone, except the rubble brought by human agency to make this Crannoge. The 

 portions of pile still remaining are of chestnut, black and shining as ebony. 



