of earth and stones to
which the archaeologist sometimes finds difficulty in attributing an
artificial origin there linger among the common people tales of the city
that once stood on the spot; of its walls, its castles, its palaces, its
temples, and the pompous worship of the deities there adored. Just as, in
Palestine, the identification of Bible localities has, m many instances,
been made complete by the preservation among the Bedouins of the
Scriptural names, so, in Ireland, the cities of pagan times are now being
located through the traditions of the humble tillers of the soil, who
transmit from father to son the place-names handed down for untold
generations.

Instances are so abundant as to defy enumeration, but a most notable one
is Tara, the greatest as it was the holiest city of pagan Ireland. Now it
is a group of irregular mounds that the casual observer would readily
mistake for natural hills, but for ages the name clung to the place until
at last the attention of antiquaries was attracted, interest was roused,
investigation made, excavation begun, and the site of Tara made a
certainty.

Not all ancient Irish cities, however, escaped the hand of time as well as
Tara, for there are geological indications of great natural convulsions in
the island at a date comparatively recent, and not a few of the Irish
lakes, whose name is legion, were formed by depression or upheaval, almost
within the period of written history. A fertile valley traversed by a
stream, a populous city by the little river, an earthquake-upheaval lower
down the watercourse, closing the exit from the valley, a rising and
spreading of the water, an exodus of the inhabitants, such has undoubtedly
been the history of Lough Derg and Lough Ree, which are but reservoirs in
the course of the River Shannon, while the upper and lower Erne lakes are
likewise simply expansions of the river Erne. Lough Neag had a similar
origin, the same being also true of Loughs Allen and Key. The Killarney
Lakes give indisputable evidence of the manner in which they were formed,
being enlargements of the Laune, and Loughs Carra and Mask, in Mayo, are
believed to have a subterranean outlet to Lough Carrib, the neighborhood
of all three testifying in the strongest possible manner to the sudden
closing of the natural outlet for the contributing streams.

The towns which at one time stood on ground now covered by the waters of
these lakes were not forgotten. The story of