Remains, &c., found at Loughavilly, Kilnamaddo, and the Miracles.]
_The Miracles._--At a place bearing this singular name, and situated near the village of Monea, turf-cutters in the year 1875 came upon the remains of a hut occupying the centre of an artificial island which stood in the middle of what had formerly been a small lake. Unfortunately the timbers and beams with which it was constructed were carried off before anyone skilled in archæological matters had seen them _in situ_; but the posts represented (plate XLVI., figs. 11, 12, and 13) were evidently angle-posts, resembling those in Kilnamaddo, and, like them, not exhibiting the bruised appearance produced by stone hatchets. There were pieces of iron slag, quantities of burnt wood, a well-formed crucible, sharpening and grinding stones, a stone or pounding instrument (_ante_, p. 74), and a beautifully-formed, highly-polished, axe-head, and a chisel of stone. Amongst the “finds” were numerous articles of bronze, which are now dispersed, and cannot be traced; but from the description given of them by the workmen they were probably fibulæ. There were also several oaken paddles, of which one is now in the Museum, R. I. A.; the dimensions of another were seven and a-quarter inches in length, the breadth of the blade being three inches; the handle terminated in an oval expansion measuring two and a-half inches across. Single-piece canoes have, from time to time, been discovered in the neighbourhood.[213]
_Rossole Lake._--In the neighbourhood of this sheet of water (_ante_, p. 49) there lingers a tradition of a “buried city” lying in its depths; therefore, in the event of drainage, it is more than probable a crannog site might be disclosed to view.
During the working of the Commission for the Arterial Drainage of Ireland, six crannogs were disclosed in this county; four of these sites have not been identified.
_Lough Fea._--A stockaded island in this lake (discovered in 1843) is described in Shirley’s _Dominion of Farney_.