A Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland

By P W Joyce

1906

DRESS AND PERSONAL ADORNMENT

Short rough classified List of the Gold Objects in the National Museum, Dublin.

More than 30 crescents of the first type (fig. 149); five of the second (figs. 150, 151); five of the third (fig. 153).

Seven hollow balls for the hair (fig. 165).

Great numbers of bracelets and rings of various shapes and sizes (figs. 139, 140, 141).

A number of long thin blight plates and ribbons (see p. 415).

About 150 of those open rings called bunne-do-at (figs. 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, and 159).

About 50 very small open rings without the ats or buttons (mentioned at page 477, below ).

About a dozen thin circular plates with patterns, all with two holes for fastening (fig. 160).

About two dozen torques of different sizes (figs. 147, 148).

A number of small ornamental beads for necklaces, of various shapes (figs. 142, 143, 144, 145, 146).

An open spiral, 2 1/2 inches long and 1 inch in diameter, with nine spires, formed of one square wire.

Besides these there are a number of small objects not classified.

(The total weight of all these articles is about 590 oz., which is twelve or thirteen times the weight of the collection of gold antiquities, from all England and Scotland, in the British Museum. See pp 399, 400.)

Models.—In 1854 an immense collection of gold articles were found in a stone cist under a small clay mound near Quin in the County Clare, most of them slender delicate rings of the kind called bunne-do-at. In one glass-case of the National Museum there are gilt-brass models of a portion of this find, consisting mainly of about 100 bunne-do-ats, and five crescents of the third type.

END OF CHAPTER XVIII.