THE ROCK MONUMENTS OF THE COUNTY OF

DUBLIN.

BY HENRY O'NEILL, ESQ.

In the summer of 1851, I availed myself of some spare time to study the antiquities of the county of Dublin, and among other vestiges of by-gone times, I have examined those extraordinary remains called cromleacs, or druids' altars; I have taken their dimensions, and compass bearings, and made sketches of them. The facts I have collected have led to my concluding, that these monuments are sepulchral, an opinion which is supported by J.J. A. Worsaae, respecting similar remains in Scandinavia. That author's work I had not seen till after my views were formed, a fact which I mention, because to me it seems to be an additional probability that the idea of those monuments being sepulchral is correct.

These remains are known in the county of Dublin, by the name of druids' altars; sometimes, but rarely, by that of cromleac. In examining this or any similar topic, the investigation must be conducted irrespective of any name, which is often but the expression of some olden theory, lost to literature, but preserved orally. Any one who has attended to the way in which the peasantry catch up the stray opinions of learned disquisitionists, will see the truth of this observation, and estimate its value. Literary antiquaries have devoted much time to the question of the purpose for which these gigantic works were raised, and, misled by names, have followed an ignus fatuus, with, of course, the usual consequences, being lost in a literary quagmire. How little regard is to be paid to mere names, may be known from the fact that, besides the two very opposite ones of cromleacs and druids' altars, by which they are known in the county of Dublin, similar monuments have various other names in other localities-for instance, in the county of Kilkenny, one is called the stone of the champion, another the goat's stone, another the ass's manger, another the grey stone; names purely local and so far differing from those used for such monuments in the county of Dublin, that they indicate no opinion as to any common object which their founders may have had in erecting them. We must therefore look beyond mere names, and, by a careful examination of the remains themselves, endeavour to ascertain the purpose for which they were constructed.

The appellation, cromleac, is never applied to the primitive rock monuments of this country by the unsophisticated amongst the Irish peasantry. By them they are almost uniformly termed leaba, beds, or graves, or leac, stones [of memorial]. The word cromleac was introduced from Wales by Vallancey and his school,

and, when merely used as a conventional term, is unobjectionable. The name, druid's altar, is founded on the baseless theory entertained by some writers that these structures served as altars for the human sacrifices said to have been offered by the druids to the Pagan deities of Ireland, and should be studiously avoided.-EDS.