491 



the shallow wicker basket of an oval shape, and sometimes called a 

 sJcih, used in the South and "West for straining potatoes, and which very 

 closely resembles both in size and form this wooden shield; and there 

 can be very little doubt that wickerwork formed the basis of many 

 of the shields which in former days were covered with leather. 

 Spenser, in his " Yiew of the State of Ireland," in 1586, when de- 

 scribing the arms of the Irish, refers to ''their long broad shields, 

 made but with wicker rods, which are commonly used among the said 

 I^ortherne Irish, but especially of the Scots ;" and in another place, 

 ''likewise round leather targets," after the Spanish fashion, "which 

 in Ireland they use also in many places coloured after their rude 

 fashion." 



Walker, in his " Memoirs on the Arms and Weapons of the Irish," 

 says : — " On this subject I cannot promise much satisfaction. That the 

 shields of the early Irish were not made of metal may be safely inferred 

 from the circumstance of there being but a single instance of a metal 

 shield having been found in our bogs, so replete with almost every other 

 implement of war." 



It is related in Holinshed's " Chronicles," that the army led by 

 Hasculpus against Dublin, in the time of Henry II., had round shields, 

 bucklers, and targets, coloured red, and bound with iron, Eut, to go 

 back to much older times, we have, in the metrical description of the 

 battle of Moyteura Conga, — the details of which are, taking it with 

 all its imperfections, the most minute of any battle fought during 

 the Pagan occupation of Ireland, — an account of the dress and wea- 

 pons of the warriors, and especially of the uses of the shield. Thus, 

 in one of the personal combats between chieftains of the Pirbolgs and 

 Tuath-de-Danaan, it is said — " They first fought with swords till their 

 stout shields were all shattered, and their swords bent and broken, 

 and afterwards with lances." But one of the most remarkable notices 

 of the shield employed in that battle, which took place on. the old plain 

 of Magh l^m, extending from Knock-Maaha, near Tuam, to the foot of 

 Ben Leve, on the confines of Joyce Country, is the alteration of the name 

 of that memorable locality to Moy Tureadh. The Tuatha-de-Danaan 

 occupied the plain in front of Ben Leve, and probably extending from 

 Cong to Kilmaine ; and after some days' fighting, the Pirbolgs, who 

 were to the east, " rose out early the next morning and made a beau- 

 tiful sceU [or shell, a word which O'Bonovan, in his translation of the 

 poem for the Ordnance Survey, has queried a " testudo"] of their shields 

 over their heads, and they placed their battle spears, like trees of equal 

 thickness, and then marched forward in Turtha (?) of battle. The 

 Tuatha-de-Danaans, seeing the Tirbolgs marching forward in this 

 wise from the eastern head of the plain, exclaimed — ' How pompously 

 these Tuirthas of battle march towards us across the plain !' and hence 

 it was that that plain was called Magh Tuireadh, or the Plain of the 

 Tuireadh." 



Erom a very careful examination of this shield, I am inclined to be- 

 lieve that it was not covered either with leather or any metallic sub- 



