The accidental discovery of the great historical crannog of Lagore, in the county Meath, already referred to, presents the first, and probably the most important, treasure-trove of earliest iron implements. In A.D. 848 an Irish chief, with his Danish allies, plundered this island fortress and burnt it; whilst in 933, nearly a century later, the place again suffered a similar fate at the hands of another marauder. Nothing more was heard of it till the date of its disinterment, about the year 1840. The latest period, therefore, to which the majority of the antiquities so plentifully found within and around this stronghold may be referred, is somewhere between the eleventh and earliest half of the tenth century. This approximate date is about the historic limit in which the so-called “Iron Age” may be allowed to have reached back in Ireland. How long it had previously existed there must be matter of conjecture; but it is almost incredible that its natives should have been far behind their neighbours in the art of metallurgy; and we know that Cæsar[82] found the Britons acquainted with the use of iron. It can only be surmised that, at some very remote period, bronze as the prevailing material gave way to iron, but the period of transition may probably be counted by centuries.[83]
_Weapons and Tools._--In nearly all Irish crannogs, more especially in the larger sites, weapons of war and of the chase have been discovered in abundance, consisting chiefly of arrow- and spear-heads, swords, daggers or skeans, knives, and axe-heads. The numerous fragments of artificially fashioned bone found in and around crannogs plainly demonstrate how much that material was utilized by their inhabitants; many tips of the antlers of deer contained in the collection of the Royal Irish Academy and in that of the Royal Historical and Archæological Association, have evidently been sawn from the original branches, and employed in forming handles for swords, knives and daggers; some are ornamented, whilst others are pierced with a hole at one extremity, having evidently been fabricated for a distinct purpose, for spear- or javelin-heads, &c.; these were attached to handles or shafts, by means of the sinews of animals, or thongs of skin. Amongst primitive races the transition from tool to weapon is slight; the same article must, in many cases, have served the double purpose. Arrow- or spear-heads have been found of bone, horn, flint, bronze, and iron; they are usually of small size. Figs. 12 and 13, from Lough Ravel, county Antrim, represent (half-size) flakes fashioned into arrow- or spear-heads. Fig. 14 is a flake of basalt (full-size) from Toombridge, in the same county. Fig. 15 is a flint implement from the recently discovered crannog of Lisnacroghera.[84]