ighty-eight feet. The masonry is composed of flat-bedded stones of the
slate rock of the country, which show every appearance of being
quarried, or carefully broken from larger blocks. There is no appearance
of dressed work in the construction; but the slate would not admit of
this, as it splinters away under the slightest blow. Still the building
is an admirable example of constructive masonry; it is almost impossible
to dislodge any fragment from off the filling stones from the face of
the wall. A competent authority has pronounced that these structures
cannot be equalled by any dry masonry elsewhere met with in the country,
nor by any masonry of the kind erected in the present day.[245] Some
small stone buildings are also extant in this part of Ireland, but it is
doubtful whether they were used for ecclesiastical or domestic purposes.
The crannoge was another kind of habitation, and one evidently much
used, and evincing no ordinary skill in its construction. From the
remains found in these island habitations, we may form a clear idea of
the customs and civilization of their inmates: their food is indicated
by the animal remains, which consist of several varieties of oxen, deer,
goats, and sheep; the implements of cookery remain, even to the knife,
and the blocks of stone blackened from long use as fire-places; the
arrows, which served for war or chase, are found in abundance; the
personal ornaments evidence the taste of the wearers, and the skill of
the artist; while the canoe, usually of solid oak, and carefully hidden
away, tells its own tale how entrance and exit were effected. One of the
earliest crannoges which was discovered and examined in modern times,
was that of Lagere, near Dunshaughlin, county Meath. It is remarkable
that Loch Gabhair is said to have been one of the nine lakes which burst
forth in Ireland, A.M. 3581. The destruction of this crannoge is
recorded by the Four Masters, A.D. 933, giving evidence that it was
occupied up to that period. In 1246 there is a record of the escape of
Turlough O'Connor from a crannoge, after he had drowned his keepers;
from which it would appear such structures might be used for prisons,
and, probably, would be specially convenient for the detention of
hostages. In 1560 we read that Teigue O'Rourke was drowned as he was
going across a lake to sleep in a crannoge; and even so late as the
sixteenth century, crannoges were declared to be the universal system of
defence in