Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 edition. Excerpt: ...survey of the country under Captain Stotherd and Lieutenants Greatorex and Chaytor, R. E. If, then, it can be satisfactorily concluded that this earn is the The Tomb of Ollamh Fodhla. tomb of Ollamh Fodhla, the internal evidence for which being the sculptured stone-chair, or judicial seat, the question is settled; and all doubt as to the identification of the ancient cemetery, whose name and history had become lost in the various changes and troubles through which the country passed during the long lapse of upwards of 3,000 years, from the days of Ollamh Fodhla to our own time, must at once disappear. "We may, indeed, fairly conclude that we have disintombed from the relics of time the last resting-place of one who, in this island, was a great pioneer in the civilization of his fellowmen at a period when the actions of the human race, in most other parts of the world, were probably governed by no better laws than the impulses of animal passion, dictated on the spur of the moment. The preceding view, from a slightly north-westerly aspect, is engraved from a photograph taken by Charles William Hamilton, Esq., in September, 1865, while the original explorations were in progress. The upright stones seen on the left must not be mistaken as belonging to Ollamh Fodhla's tomb, being the boundary stones of the remains of an adjoining earn. The original shape of this earn still remains comparatively perfect, Ground Plan of Ollamh Fodhla's Tomb. consisting of a conical mound of loose stones, nearly all apparently fragments of the native rock, Lower Silurian grit. It is thirty-eight and one-half yards in diameter at the base, having an elevation of twenty-one paces in slant-height from base to summit. A retaining wall, consisting of thirty-seven...