[ 318 ] 



XIIT. 



STONE CHALICES, SO CALLED. 

 By E. C. R. ARMSTRONG. 

 Plate XXI. 



Read February 11. Ordered for Publication February 13. 

 Published March 30, 1907. 



On page 132 of Sir William "Wilde's catalogue of the Stone Antiquities 

 in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy is found the following 

 statement: — "Among the stone ecclesiastical antiquities may be 

 classed a vessel, supposed to be a chalice." An illustration of this 

 vessel is given on the same page. 



This statement is also made in W. F. Wakeman's " Handbook of 

 Irish Antiquities," both in the early 1848 edition, and in the third 

 edition edited by Mr. John Cooke, where it will be found on page 356. 

 Again, Miss M. Stokes describes this same vessel as a chalice in her 

 " Early Christian Art in Ireland," page 69. The first doubt raised as 

 to this statement is in a paper printed in the Journal of the "Waterford 

 Archaeological Society for the third quarter of 1906, written by the 

 Rev. P. Power, on " Four or Five Stone Chalices from Early Church 

 Sites in the Decies." 



Father Power mentions in his paper a conversation he had with 

 Mr. Coffey, of the National Museum, in which the latter gave as his 

 opinion that stone vessels of this kind, generally called chalices, were 

 not in fact chalices at all, but lamps, and, when found on church sites, 

 probably used for ecclesiastical purposes. 



Father Power, arguing from the weight of one of the objects he 

 was describing in his paper, has come to the conclusion that these 

 objects are not chalices. 



Being interested in the matter, I spoke to Mr. Coffey about Father 

 Power's paper ; and he told me he thought the subject was capable of 



