Chapter 6.

Knocksedan

presents the deserted remains of a once good inn and a large brick mansion, now inhabited by a Mrs. Aungier, overhanging a pretty glen watered by a winding rivulet.

Here is a very remarkable circular moat, from which the locality derives its name, Knocksedan, i.e. the bill of the quicksand. It is elevated about 50 feet over the river, and commands a most extensive view. Ware, in reference to this object in his time, says, “Numbers of human bones are now to be seen lying promiscuously in this mount, which was opened for gravel some years ago by the orders of Mr. Blair, on whose land it stands. Some curious gentlemen,” he adds, “about two years ago discovered in it a human skeleton of a monstrous size, which measured from the ankle bone to the, top of the cranium eight feet four inches, so that, allowing a proportionable extension from the ankle to the sole of the foot, and for the skin and flesh covering the cranium, as well as for the space occupied by the cartilages between the several bones in a living body, the person, to whom this body belonged, must have been not far short of nine feet high. The scull in the most solid part was better than a quarter of an inch thick, and the bones of the big toe were each of them two inches long, and three inches and a quarter in circumference. The dentes molares, or grinders, were also enormously big, and the tibia above 20 inches long.

[332] The position of the head was to the north and south, and all the bones except the teeth were in a crumbling and decayed condition. [Antiquities of Ireland, p. 150.] He conjectures that these remains were deposited there after the battle of Clontarf. There are two similar mounts within half a mile of this place.

These funeral mounts, so much resembling the raths, and equally numerous over the country, are by the Irish Annals, particularly those of the Font Masters, ascribed to the very highest antiquity. Indeed, they are “modelled after such a manner as wisely and effectually to answer the ends for which they were first designed, defying the injuries of the weather, and all the usual assaults of devouring time. They are raised on a large base, and gradually diminish as they advance upward, until at length they terminate at the top in a fiat surface, and in the whole have the appearance of a cone. They differ in their dimensions and heights, according to the quality of the person for whom they were raised, as they do also in the materials composing them, some being made of earth only heaped together, and others of small, round paving stones with sand or earth mixed, and piled up in a high cone covered with a coat of green sod.” [Ib. p. 135.]

As they were often thrown up over those who fell in war, they became commemorative of places where battles were fought. The practice of raising such monuments over the dead, is one of the many aboriginal principles, which adhered to the different societies that diverged from the confusion of Babel; [333] such was the tomb of Patroclus, as described in the 23rd book of the Iliad, such were the barrows of Achilles Antilochus, Peneleus, Ajax Telamon, AEsytes, &c., such were the mounts mentioned by Herodotus as raised over the Scythian kings, such those described by Strabo as constructed by the Myrsians and Phrygians over the dead, such the monument of Dercennus who governed Laurentum before the arrival of AEneas in Italy, such the royal mounts noticed by Lucan, such the pile erected over Damaratus the Corinthian, as recorded by Plutarch in his life of Alexander, such the tomb on the banks of the Wolga mentioned by Adam Olearius in his travels into Muscovy and Persia, and the tombs in Westphalia and Friesland described by Keisler in his Northern Antiquities, and such were the funeral piles of earth erected by the Danes over their kings and heroes, and which, during the long establishment of that people in Ireland, became mixed with the corresponding memorials of the natives.

About the glen of Brackenstown and in its woods, the botanist will find *rosa arvensis, *white trailing dog-rose; *tilia Europoea, *common lime tree; *ranunculus auricomus, *goldylocks; *stachys palustris, *marsh woundwort; *geranium rotundifolium, *round leaved crane’s-bill; *ulex Europoeus, *common furze, the best fuel for heating ovens; *carex remota, *remote sedge; *carex pendula, *pendulous sedge; *carex pseudo-cyperus, *bastard cypress sedge; *polypodium aculeatum, *prickly polypody; *meruleus umbilliferus, *a delicate and minute species of mushroom; *agaricus elephantinus, [334] *which, when in perfection, is almost white, when cut becomes red, and when left to gradual decay becomes as black as if burned into charcoal; various other species of the *agaricus, *or mushroom; *boletus bovinus, *cow-spunk, the young plants of which are eaten as a great delicacy in Italy; the Russians, Poles, and Germans, also account them a dainty; *boletus igniarius, *touchwood spunk, used for tinder in some parts of England as also in Germany, while the Laplanders burn it round their habitations to keep off the gadfly from the young reindeer, and the natives of Franconia are said to beat the inner substance into the form of leather and sew it together for garments; *boletus olivaceus, lichen olivaceus, *and *scrophularia aquatica, *water figwort, in the wet ditches.

More immediately near Knocksedan grow, *silene inflata, *bladder catchfly; *tilia Europoea, *common lime tree; and the *prunus cerasus3 *wild cherry tree. The cherry tree obtained its name from having been brought into Europe from Cerasus, a city of Pontus, by Lucullus the Roman General, after his conquests in Asia, and was, perhaps, the only substantial fruit of the Mithridatic war.

At Knocksedan, a bold bridge of a single, tall, narrow arch is erected over the glen. At one side of it a bad bridle road, but carried over a terrace that prettily overhangs the continuation of the glen already alluded to, crosses the rivulet by a worse than Al-Sirat bridge, and, passing by an ancient mill, leads into the holy solitude of [335]

Ch. 7. Killeigh.