[Illustration: Fig. 61.--Upper surface of Quern from the Crannog of Drumsloe. About one-ninth the real size.]
In the centre of the crannog of Drumgay, county Fermanagh, there was a large block of stone punctured with a cross, and another resembling it was discovered many feet deep, in the centre of the pagan carn of “The Miracles,” in the same district. Similar figures are inscribed or punched upon rocks and upon the sides of natural, or partly artificial caves, as at Loch na Cloyduff, _The Lake of the Dark Trench or Diggings_, and the “Lettered Cave,” in the cliffs of Knockmore, “_Great Knoll_,” county Fermanagh. Within the precincts of well-authenticated pagan tumuli, as at Dowth, cross patterns have been found, accompanied in several instances by “scorings,” at present unintelligible. On the base of a sepulchral urn, preserved in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, the cross is displayed, and the figure of a cross within a circle occurs on an urn discovered at Broughderg, county Tyrone. Mr. Albert Wray has described some spoon-shaped objects of antique bronze, all decorated with the figure of a cross similar in design to the symbol as observable upon the earliest Irish quern-stones. The bronze articles in question exhibit a style of workmanship which has invariably been associated with pre-Christian times in both Britain and Ireland; whilst in the latter country discs and thin plates of gold belonging to the same period have been found presenting a cross-like ornamentation. At Drumgay, at Lough Eyes, at Roughan, and at Drumsloe, _the Ridge of the Host_, were cross-inscribed querns. Drumsloe lake, now almost drained, is situated within a short distance of Ballinamallard county Fermanagh. Interesting objects, now dispersed or lost, have been there from time to time turned up on the site of a crannog, the traces of which are now nearly obliterated, and the curious quern or _bró_, of which the accompanying cut is a facsimile, is one of the few remaining relics authentically connected with the locality. The quernstone measures one foot six inches in diameter.[110]
[Illustration: Fig. 62.--Upper surface of Quernstone from Roughan Lake. One-eighth the real size.
Fig. 63.--Quernstone from Lough Eyes. About one-tenth the real size.]