DWELLINGS AND FORTS.

The ordinary dwellings of prehistoric times were, we may easily imagine, of too perishable a nature to leave any permanent traces, consisting, as they must have done, of rude structures of logs and wattles, or of loose stones and turf. Such frail huts, or, at all events, those of the chief men of the tribe, were huddled together within those circular ramparts, traces of which yet crown so many eminences. Though many of those intrenchments are possibly older than the advent of the Celts, it is by the Celtic names dun, rath, and caer that they are now mostly known. They consist, according to the nature of the soil, of earth or of uncemented stones, or of a mixture of both. It seems as if almost every commanding eminence in the country had at one time been occupied as a place of defence.

In countries where caverns abound, there is evidence that these were used as places of shelter and concealment; in other situations, artificial subterranean refuges were constructed, many of which have been discovered. In Ireland and Scotland, where they have been chiefly observed, they are known by the names of earth-houses, Picts' houses, bee-hive houses, and weems (Gael. caves). It is difficult to distinguish many of these structures from the chambered mounds above described. The earth-house, in its simplest form, is a single irregularly shaped chamber, from four to ten feet in width, from twenty to sixty feet in length, and from four to seven feet in height, built of unhewn and uncemented stones, roofed by unhewn flags, and entered from near the top by a rude doorway, so low and narrow that only one man can slide down through it at a time. When the chamber is unusually wide, the side-walls converge, one stone over-lapping another, until the space at the top can be spanned by stones of four or five feet in length. In its more advanced form, the earth-house shews two or more chambers, communicating with one another by a narrow passage. There are instances in which one of the chambers has the circular shape and dome-roof to which archeologists have given the name of the 'bee-hive house.' Occasionally, as many as forty or fifty earthhouses are found in the same spot, as in the moor of Clova, not far from Kildrummy, in Aberdeenshire. They appear to have been almost invariably built in dry places, such as gravelly knolls, steep banks of rivers, and hill-sides. They are generally so near the surface of the ground, that the plough strikes upon the flagstones of the roof, and thus leads to their discovery. The object most frequently found in them is a stone quern, or hand-mill, not differing from that which continued to be used in remote corners of Scotland within the memory of living men. Along with the quern are generally found ashes, bones, and deer's horns; and more rarely

small round plates of stone or slate, earthen vessels, cups and implements of bone, stone celts, bronze swords, gold rings, and the like. Occasionally, the surface of the ground beside the earth-house shews vestiges of what are supposed to have been rude dwellinghouses, and folds or enclosures for cattle. This, with other things, would indicate that the earth-houses of Scotland and Ireland (for they are found also in that island) were put to the same purpose as the caves which, as Tacitus (writing in the second century) tells us, the Germans of his day dug in the earth, as store-houses for their corn, and as places of retreat for themselves during winter, or in time of war. Some earth-houses have been erected on the natural surface of the soil, and have been buried by a mound heaped over them.

An advance on the bee-hive house is the Pictish tower or 'burgh, which abounds in the north of Scotland. The best example of this class of monuments is Burgh-Mousa, on the island of Mousa, Shetland (see page 1). It is composed of flat slabs of clay-slate, which have been easily piled together in a compact mass without the aid of mortar. In exterior figure, the tower is round, inclining inwards about half-way up, and then bulging out near the top. Near

the foundation, its circumference is 158 feet, and it measures about 40 feet in height. On the side next the sea, there is a doorway, and that is the only exterior aperture. Entering the doorway, we find the wall sixteen feet thick, and looking upwards, feel as if we were at

the bottom of a well, for the circular interior has no flooring, and the top is open to the sky. Opposite the doorway, there is an entrance to a passage and stair, which wind upwards, within the thickness of the wall, to the summit of the building. At different places, there are recesses, or galleries, leading off from the stair, lighted by apertures to the interior; such dismal holes being all that we find in the way of apartments. It is customary to speak of an outer and inner wall; but the two walls, if we so distinguish them, are so firmly bound together by the stair and otherwise, as to afford a united resistance to assault. Obviously, the structure was used as a retreat in case of attack from foreign enemies, against whom missiles could be showered down from the species of battlement formed by the top of the well-knit walls. These structures are believed to be anterior to the_incursions of the Northmen, but whether they reach back to the Bronze Age cannot be determined.

It is striking to find in the island of Sardinia the ruins of numerous edifices of almost identical appearance and structure. These nuraghe, as they are there called, are 30 or 40 feet high, with two or three stories of domed chambers connected by a spiral staircase. Although 3000 of them exist, none are perfect. Nothing

is known of their purpose, or when or by whom they were built. Skeletons and other marks of sepulchral use have been found in them; but this may have been secondary to their original purpose.

Belonging probably to the same stage of civilisation as the monuments now spoken of, are those ancient city-walls or fortresses in Greece and Italy that have got the name of Cyclopean, from their

being fabled to have been built by the Cyclopes. They are composed either of large irregular masses of stone, having the interstices filled with smaller stones; or the blocks, without being squared, are so cut as to fit exactly into one another, and make a solid wall without mortar. The best known examples are those of Tiryns and Mycena in Greece, and Fæsulæ in Italy. Connected with the fortress of Mycena are subterranean conical vaults, reminding one of the 'bee-hive houses' of western Europe. They are believed to have been the tombs of famous chiefs.

Lake-dwellings.—A great addition has been made to our knowledge of the way of living in unrecorded times, by the recent exploration of the sites of ancient dwellings that had been built on small islands, or on piles, near the shores of lakes. The earliest notice of such lake-dwellings that has been observed is in the pages of Herodotus, who thus describes the dwellers on Lake Prasias, in Thrace. 'Their manner of living is the following. Platforms, supported upon tall piles, stand in the middle of the lake, which are approached from the land by a single narrow bridge. At the first, the piles which bear up the platforms were fixed in their places by the whole body of the citizens; but since that time the custom which has prevailed about fixing them is this: They are brought from a hill called Orbelus, and every man drives in three for each wife that he marries. Now, the men have all many wives apiece, and this is the way in which they live. Each has his own hut, wherein he dwells, upon one of the platforms, and each has also a trap-door giving access to the lake beneath; and their wont is to tie their baby-children by the foot with a string, to save them from rolling into the water. They feed their horses and their other beasts upon fish, which abound in the lake to such a degree, that a man has only to open his trap-door, and to let down a basket by a rope into the water, and then to wait a very short time, when he draws it up quite full of them.' The Lake Prasias of the Father of History seems to be the modern Lake Takinos, on the Strymon, or Kara-su, a river which, rising on the borders of Bulgaria, flows southward through Roumelia, and, after expanding its waters into a lake, falls into the Gulf of Contessa. It appears that the fishermen of this lake still live in wooden cottages built over the water, as in the days of Herodotus.

The attention of antiquaries was first drawn to this subject in 1839, by a discovery made in Ireland by Mr W. R. Wilde. The small lake of Lagore, near Dunshaughlin, in the county of Meath, having been drained, a circular mound, which had been an island in its waters, was observed to be thickly strewed with bones. As these were to be carted away for manure, it was found to be an artificial structure. Its circumference, measuring 520 feet, was formed by upright piles of oak about 7 feet long, mortised into oak planks laid flat upon the marl and sand at the bottom of the

lake. The upright piles were tied together by cross-beams, and the space which they enclosed was divided into compartments by oak beams, some of which had grooves, so as to allow panels to be driven down between them. The compartments thus formed were filled with bones and black peaty earth. Portions of a second tier of upright piles were observed rising from the first tier. The bones were ascertained to be those of several varieties of oxen, of swine, deer, goats, sheep, dogs, foxes, horses, and asses. Along with them were found a vast number of weapons, ornaments, and utensils, fashioned of stone, bone, wood, bronze, and iron. On reference to the ancient annals, in which Ireland is so rich, it was seen that, in 848 A.D., a hostile Irish chief 'plundered the island of Loch Gabhor' [as Lagore was then written], and afterwards burned it, so that it was level with the ground;' and that again, in 933 A.D., ‘the island of Loch Gabhor was pulled down' by the piratical Norsemen.

Mr Wilde's discovery at Lagore was followed by other discoveries of the same kind elsewhere in Ireland, so that in 1857 the existence of about fifty' crannoges' had been ascertained; and every succeeding year has seen an increase of the number. They shew several varieties of construction. The island at Lagore is a type of the purely artificial crannoge. But most frequently the crannoge was partly natural. An islet just level with the water, was raised artificially a foot or two above it. An islet too small to be a convenient habitation, or too easy of landing to be a place of defence, had its area artificially enlarged, or its banks artificially strengthened, generally by piles or stockades, but occasionally by heaps of stones. The accompanying wood-cut shews a section (on the scale of 1 inch to 20 feet) of the crannoge in Ardakillin Lough, near Stokestown,

in the county of Roscommon. The uppermost line marks the highest level of the waters of the lake; the middle line, the common winter level; the third line, the common summer level. The upper surface of the crannoge was formed of a layer of loose stones, surrounded by a wall, partly supported by piles. The stones rested on the natural clay, peat, and boulders of the island, in digging