Coffey — 2\vo Finds of Late Bronze Age Objects. 123 



ornament (Plato XII.). There seemed to be no doubt that it was 

 horseliair ; but to remove any possible uncertainty, Dr. Scharff, Keeper 

 of the Natural History Department of the National Museum, kindly 

 made a microscopical examination of a fragment of it, and had no 

 hesitation in pronouncing it to be horsehair. It may be added that 

 it is uniformly black in colour, like ordinary black horsehair, so that 

 black appears to have been the original colour, and not due to the 

 staining of the bog. I mention this, as it may have some bearing on the 

 species of the horse. The information given Miss O'Connor left her 

 under the impression that, when found, this object lay on the cloth in 

 the form of a Maltese cross. There is, I think, reason to doubt that 

 this was so, or, at least, that it was intentional. The two fringe-end 

 pieces (Plate XII., figs. 1, 2) are single, but the remaining fragment 

 (fig. 3) is double. The fringe-pieces appear to liave been the two 

 ends of tliis double piece. The stuff is somewhat contracted and 

 creased just above the fringe, which gave me at first the impression 

 that they were the ends of a scarf ; but, on consideration, the creases 

 seem due to the pieces having been pinched between the finger and 

 thumb when taken out of the bog, and the pasty nature of the bog- 

 stuff, of which the creases were full, had glued them together when 

 dry. But, in the case of the third fragment (Plate XII., fig. 3), 

 the gathering at the top was evidently made for fastening or fitting it 

 in place, and the two pieces of which it is made probably hung partly 

 behind each other, and could not have been separated in the form of 

 the arras of a cross. Thus, either a large portion of the object has been 

 lost, or there has been a mistake in supposing it to have lain with four 

 arms like a cross. From the account of how the objects were found, 

 it is plain that the finders could have had only a hasty look at them 

 in the bog, and that they were tben partly disturbed. Miss O'Connor 

 says that in using the spade three of the pieces composing the horse- 

 hair ornament were injured. In a previous letter she states that one 

 man showed something in Ballycastle ' ' which from the description 

 must have been portion of this ornament." If the fragment shown in 

 Ballycastle was not quite a different piece, it may well have been a 

 portion of the fringe of the fragment (fig. 1) which has lost tbo 

 greater part of its fringe. 



The skill with which this horsehair ornament is made is beyond 

 praise, and throws an interesting light on the textile arts of the 

 period. The weaving of the horsehair is very even, and worked in a 

 chevron pattern. The fringe is formed of bunches of horsehair, closely 

 wound round for a short distance, then separated into lesser bunches 



