260 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
But, as I may venture to suggest, the hollows under notice may 
have been associated in some way with other than mere funeral or 
sepulchral ceremonies. They, as already remarked, are numerously 
found in the immediate vicinity of many of our oldest Christian estab- 
lishments. In connexion with each primitive church is generally a 
well of a class which there is every reason to believe was in ante- 
Christian times in Ireland considered sacred. "With the water of 
many of these founts St. Patrick, and other pioneers of the Paith, 
baptized their converts. Hence the estimation in which certain 
springs are held with us to this day. It is very interesting to notice 
how frequently a hulldn-^tonQ is found close to, or within a short 
distance of, a well. There would seem to be a close connexion 
between them, and one is usually considered by our country people 
as sacred as the other. May not the buUdn, in common with the 
fount, have at times suggested a site to the early church builder ? and 
may not it, like the well, have served some end sacred in the imagi- 
nation of our pagan forefathers ? Be this as it may, two, at least, of 
our most remarkable hulldns would appear to bear marks of their 
having, like certain of the wells, been consecrated to Christian pur- 
poses. (See Plate XYII., fig. 3.) That this idea may not appear to 
be overstrained, I beg to exhibit a drawing and rubbing made from 
a hitherto unnoticed inscription which occurs upon a fine hullan rock, 
or boulder, situated in the immediate vicinity of the extremely ancient 
church of Kill-of -the -Grange, near Monkstown, Co. Dublin. It reads 
DOM, and may be considered to stand for domini, or domino ; or, pos- 
sibly, for the words deo optimo maximo. Scribings of this class are 
thus alluded to by Dr. Petrie in a letter addressed to the late Earl 
of Dunraven, and partly reproduced in the valuable work on inscrip- 
tions found in Ireland, edited by Miss Stokes : — 
" "With reference to the antiquity of your incised Kerry crosses, I 
do not know what I can add to the simple expression of my opinion 
that I consider them unquestionably of the fifth, or at the latest sixth, 
century; and perhaps I should add that such cross-inscriptions, as 
well as the letters dns, dni, dno, or dns, dni, or dfio, which so often 
accompany them — abbreviations of dominus, domini, domino — are 
almost peculiar to the ancient territory of Kerry and its islands, in 
which such remains, like its Ogham inscriptions, are so common, 
and in which I cannot but believe that Christianity was first 
planted." 
The letters engraved on the Kill-of -the- Grange luUdn are, as will 
be acknowledged by experts in such matters, perhaps as old as any 
