394 



the following : — " Twenty-one churches in ruins, ten castles, twelve 

 large stone crosses, fifteen oratories, nine penitential stations, and 

 twenty-nine miscellaneous antiquities" (ibid. p. 137). 



Dr. Smith, who published his " Antient and Present State of the 

 County of Kerry," in 1754, alludes to the number of ecclesiastical 

 ruins as evidence of the existence of a much more numerous population 

 in remote times than existed in his day. He writes : "It contains no 

 less than twenty parishes, which shows that this barony was formerly 

 better inhabited than at present ; each parish having had its respective 

 church, most of which were very large, as appears by their ruins" 

 (p. 172). Again he remarks : "In the southern division are also large 

 tracts of mountain, which have formerly been cultivated up to the top. 

 Several of them, which are but poor barren rocks, have great numbers 

 of old inclosures and marks of culture on their sides, which are now 

 neglected ; and this is a further circumstance that tends to prove that it 

 hath been better peopled formerly than at present" (p. 173). 



In a paper read before the Eoyal Irish Academy, Nov. 8th, 1867, 

 I hazarded a conjecture, that from the fact of the Ogham monuments 

 being principally localized in the counties of Kerry, Cork, and Water- 

 ford, and particularly along the sea-board of these districts, the proba- 

 bility is, that the character was brought into our island by a colonizing 

 people who landed on our south-western shores. Further investigation 

 has strengthened that opinion, and I am more than ever disposed to 

 award that honour to the Scoti, or Clanna Meledh, and not to the Tuath 

 De Dannans, to whom the writer in the Book of Ballymote attributes the 

 invention of these letters. It is fatal to the claims of the latter that 

 not a single inscription has been found in those localities looked upon 

 as the special seats of their power — not one on the celebrated field of 

 Magh-Tuireadh, where the Firbolgs are represented as receiving their 

 last and crowning defeat, which gave the sovereignty of the island to 

 " the Mythic race." 



On the contrary, in the very spot assigned by tradition, and our 

 native annals, as the landing-place of the Scoti, they are sown broad- 

 cast, while they are also found along the line of their probable occupa- 

 tion. 



This will appear in a very remarkable degree by an examination 

 of the accompanying map (PI. XXVIIL), upon which I have coloured 

 the districts where Ogham monuments have been found. It will be 

 seen that they are clustered round the harbours of Ventry, Dingle, 

 and Smerwick ; one on the outermost isle of the Blasquets, one on 

 Dunmore Head; they are found along the southern shores of the 

 barony — one in Glen Pais ; they reappear about Castlemaine — and 

 Kilorglin, in the neighbourhood of the Killarney lakes, about Ken- 

 mare ; there is then a considerable hiatus, when we find one at Bal- 

 lycrovane, near Castletown Berehaven, county of Cork; one at 

 Bantry ; another hiatus, and we find them about Macroom, and Ban- 

 don, and in considerable numbers at the north side of the Lee river 

 as far as Middleton ; here again we have another gap, until they 

 re-appear on the other side of the Blackwater at Grange, Ardmore, 



