Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-tsvsl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-29T21:37:52.955Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Two Celtic bronzes from Lough Gur, Limerick, Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

Abstract

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Notes
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1950

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 191 note 1 Our Fellow Professor Sean O'Riordain, well known to be an authority on the district, has kindly interested himself in the matter. He writes: ‘There is an island (in Lough Gur), Bolin Island, which is evidently mainly artificial, in fact a stone-built cranndg. A larger island, Garret Island, has on it the remains of a medieval castle. Other islands existed in the early 19th century, but are now part of the mainland as a result of the lowering of the water-level of the lake by draining. No excavation of which there is formal record was done in 1850, but Lough Gur was a happy hunting-ground for collectors about that time. On the whole your in- formation appears to fit Bolin Island best; its excavation would not be easy.—P.S. I have looked up The Farm by Lough Gur (Mary Carbery, Longmans, 1937Google Scholar) where there is a description of the finding of a wheeled vehicle, but it can hardly be said to fit the finding of a chariot.’ (I agree: the cart was shafted, and had solid wheels. C. F.)

page 191 note 2 Our Secretary, Mr. R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford, was very helpful.

page 191 note 3 Destroyed, on one of the bronzes.

page 191 note 4 There were seven nail-holes on each of the bronzes; only three of the fourteen survive complete.

page 191 note 5 A Find of tie Early Iron Age from Llyn Cerrig Bad, Anglesey, National Museum of Wales (1946), pp. 23 and 92: pl. xxGoogle Scholar.

page 192 note 1 Vol. xxix (1949), pp. 81-3.

page 192 note 2 There are other developments in these fittings, One at least of the known pole-tip sheaths can only have been used for parade. This is the Ist-century A.D. sheath in the Stanwick hoard at the British Museum. It is paper-thin, of golden bronze deco- rated with delicate scroll-work in relief, 2·8 in. long and 1·65 in. wide, but with a hole to carry a heavy pin 1·2×0·34 in. in section.

page 192 note 3 The phallic type here represented—circular shaft, roll, dome, and central ring—is present on the continent in the stone column at ‘Irlich in the district of Koblenz, a region full of Celtic graves In old times the stone was said to be a “Morderstein”, i.e. it gave sanctuary to a murderer who touched it. On the dome [are] the remains of a moulded ring’ (Jacobsthal, , Early Celtic Art, pl. 11, 12 and p. 166)Google Scholar. On pp. 8-9 Jacobsthal remarks: ‘there is positive proof that the stone is Celtic and descended from Etruscan models.… The Celts became acquainted with these tomb phalloi in Etruscanized north Italy.’ A decorated parallel in Ireland is the Turoe stone, County Galway.

page 192 note 4 In Dr. Adolf Mahr's Presidential Address, P.P.S. (1937), p. 405.

page 192 note 5 Loc. cit., p. 411.