the Baginbun stone, and presumably without any intention to deceive, though it has, as a matter of fact, both before and more especially since his death, deceived many antiquaries; that consciously or unconsciously he modified in a slight degree some of the letters so as to increase the resemblance to the Baginbun inscription; that Du Noyer, in 1863, copied the Fethard Castle inscription under a misapprehension, thinking that he was copying the ancient inscription which he was told was very similar to that at Carew; that there is no evidence to support the view that Major Lymbery, or his brother, cut the Baginbun inscription, but, on the contrary, there is good evidence, practically inconsistent with that (From an Untouched Rubbing by Mr. Goddard H. Orpen, 29th June, 1904.) view, to show that the inscription was in existence at least as long ago as 1834; that, in fact, the antiquity and genesis of the Baginbun inscription stands where it did before its antiquity was questioned, and, for my part, I see no reason to alter the view I have already published, which connects it immediately and synchronously with the long stay of Raymond le Gros at Baginbun.' NOTE ADDED IN THE PRESS. THE fact that there are five letters or characters on the Baginbun stone not to be found on the original, at Carew, has to be accounted for. These supernumerary letters might, of course, be put down to defective memory on the part of the supposed illiterate copyist; but this seems hardly 1 See Journal, 1898, p. 159. likely. I think it more probable that they were added after the inscription was cut by some idle, not to say mischievous, person. There are some indications that this was done. Of these supernumerary letters, the first three are at the ends of lines, and might, of course, have been added. It will be observed, too, that the spacing between them and the copied letters is somewhat greater than that between the copied letters themselves, and that they are not quite so regularly in line. It may also be said of these three letters that they help to square up the copied lines. Again, if we suppose the stop found in the original under the third letter of line 1 were incorrectly reproduced in the copy between the third and the fourth letter of line 3, there would have been room for the letter shaped like a Greek A to be placed over it; and, lastly, the fifth supernumerary letter might easily have been inserted before the two final characters. Unless, then, we are to assume a rather remarkable set of coincidences, the fact that these letters might have been added to the inscription, as originally copied, is presumptive evidence that they were so added. Miscellanea. The Ballindangan Gallaun, County Cork.-I am not aware that any notice of this gallaun has ever appeared in print. My attention to its existence was first called by Corporal Oscroft, R.E., who was recently doing survey work for his department in the district. I inspected it twice in the month of July this year. It stands in a field close to the Mitchelstown and Fermoy railway, near Ballindangan level-crossing, in the townland of Nutgrove. The Gallaun faces north and south, and is 10 feet 9 inches in height, 5 feet in breadth, and about 1 foot 6 inches thick. It inclines to the south, at an angle say of twelve degrees, and I take it that this inclination is an indication that it is not very deeply embedded in the ground. The southern face of the Gallaun is deeply furrowed and fissured, especially towards the top; but it bears no trace of anything but atmospheric influence and ice-action. It is a limestone conglomerate. There are no human inscriptions on it of any kind; no letters or symbols. My friend, Mr. Irwin, of the Bank of Ireland, kindly accompanied me on my second visit to the place, and photographed the Gallaun, taking views of the southern face and west side. An old woman, who lives close by, says that a number of years ago a farmer called Keeffe, the grandfather of the present tenant, was ploughing up the field, in which the Gallaun stands, when the plough struck a flat stone; he removed this, and found underneath it an earthenware urn containing some human bones; these, for pious and reverential reasons, he replaced in the ground under the stone, and their position is now forgotten. The story altogether is more or less indefinite, no date being given; but it seems worthy of record as a piece of local tradition connected with the Gallaun field. Another townland in the district is called Kilgullane, i.e. "The Church of the Pillar-stone." See Joyce, p. 343.-COURTENAY MOORE (Canon), м.a., Hon. Provincial Secretary for Munster. Stone Celts and a Food Vessel found in the County Monaghan.A short time ago I had the pleasure of looking through Mr. Robert Day's collection of Irish Antiquities at Cork. Two stone celts and a vessel of pottery particularly attracted my attention; and Mr. Day readily gave me permission to publish them. A label on one of the celts stated that it and the other celt were found "20 feet beneath a bog," on the property of Captain Stopford, at Lislea, near Clones, County Monaghan, in an ancient "fire-place resting on marl, and near them two food vessels of baked clay," one of which Captain Stopford had also given to Mr. Day, with the celts, in 1866. The celts are of a class of stone commonly called greenstone, and are both fine specimens in good condition. The forms are shown in figs. 1 and 2, p. 273. The vessel (fig. 3, p. 273) is of a coarse, grey clay, mixed with numerous particles of stone. It is blackened in parts on the outside, and much blackened on the inside. Mr. Day could give me no information about the second vessel, and it does not appear to be now possible to obtain any particulars of the find, so that we cannot say whether the "fireplace" mentioned on the label was a hearth or a burial. The vessel is, however, of considerable interest. Its association with the two stone celts, of large size, and good form and finish, indicates that it belongs to a good period of the Stone Age, before degeneration had set in, or the use of stone was relegated to the more backward parts of the country. The form is, moreover, typically neolithic. A common feature of neolithic pottery from all kinds of sites on the continent, caves, grottos, lake-dwellings, and sepulchres, is the rounded bottom. Among others, examples from the Dolmens of the Morbihan may be compared with the present specimen.' It likewise resembles the pottery recently discovered by Dr. Thomas H. Bryce in the Stone Age cairns of Arran (Scotland). The ornament on several of the vessels figured by Dr. Bryce, which consists of scratched or impressed lines, arranged in alternate, horizontal, and vertical groups, presents also an analogy to that on the Irish vessel. The lines on the latter have been impressed by a toothed tool, a form of decoration characteristic of the Stone Age, and in the form of the grouping of the lines we may perhaps see the suggestion of a string net or ties of string. Possibly a survival in the form of ornament of a more primitive method of moulding pottery in a basket or net, such as was practised by the American Indians.-GEORGE COFFEY, Fellow. Church of the Daughter of "Zola" (Ecclesie filie Zole).—In the Rev. Rich. Butler's edition of the "Register of All Hallows'," Dublin, published by the Irish Archæological Society in 1845, there is a statement made on p. ii, founded on the document given in full on p. 50, that in about the year 1166 Dermott M'Morough, King of Leinster, "conferred on his spiritual father and confessor, Edan, Bp. of Louth, for the 1 Musée de Kernuz, Dolmen de Er-mar, Dolmen de Parc-Néhué, Dolmen du Conguel: La Poterie aux époques Préhistorique et Gauloise en Armorique,” Paul du Chatellier, pl. 7, figs. 1, 3, 12, 15. 2. Proceedings " of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (vol. for 1902), figs. 12, 32, 33, 36, &c. 3 Cushing-Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology," p. 493. |