XXXV. A Description of the Sepulchral Monument at New Grange, near Drogheda, in the County of Meath, in Ireland. By Thomas Pownall, Esq; in a Letter to the Rev. Gregory Sharpe, D.D. Master of The Temple

Thomas Pownall Esq.

doi:10.1017/S0261340900015782

XXXV. A Description of the Sepulchral Monument at New Grange, near Drogheda, in the County of Meath, in Ireland. By Thomas Pownall, Esq; in a Letter to the Rev. Gregory Sharpe, D.D. Master of The Temple

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012

Thomas Pownall Esq.

Article contents

Extract
References

Get access

Extract

The sole object I had in view when I first sat down to write, I was to give you an account of a very singular and curious monument of antiquity at New Grange, in the county of Meath, in Ireland; and I meant to have confined this account to a mere description of particulars. But when I came to consider these particulars under reference to the general customs of times more remote than the highest antiquity this monument can be supposed to boast; that consideration opened a field for disquisitions of a much more general and extensive scope.

Type: Research Article
Information: Archaeologia , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , 1773 , pp. 236 - 275

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261340900015782 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1773

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

^{page 239 note [a]} This Druid circle now stands on the brink of a stone quarry; and the labourers were at work close under it; so that in a year or two it may be undermined, and thrown down.

^{page 239 note [b]} See Plate XIX.

^{page 240 note [c]} .

^{page 241 note [d]} Isaiah, chap. xxiii. ver. 13.

^{page 243 note [e]} If colonies of these Eastern merchants and people had been settled in Britain, as there were in Iberia, we might somewhere or other have read of the remains of such colonies and people, or have marked the traces of their language in these isles. There are in Spain to this day the remains of some of those colonies who speak the Phœnician language.

^{page 247 note [f]} It is not merely from the etymology of the words Dodona and Selloi, that this temple, and its priests and prophetic oaks, may be proved to be originally a Celtic establishment, latterly adopted by the Greeks; but history confirms the fact. It will however be sufficient here to say, that in the Celtic language Dodona signifies God's-hill, Duw-dun; and Selloi signifies Seers, or those who foresee things afar off.

^{page 251 note [g]} Letter to Mr. Rowlands, at the end of Mona Antiqua.

^{page 253 note [h]} The reader will find, in a postscript to this letter, some account of the removing of these immense masses of stone; and of the method which I supposed to be used by the antients, as I collected that method from Herodotus.

^{page 261 note [i]} .

^{page 265 note [k]} Monum. Dan. lib. i. c. vi.

^{page 266 note [l]} Monumenta Sueo-Gothica, Lib. I. p. 215, 217.

^{page 266 note [m]} King's-High-Carn.

^{page 268 note [n]} Greaves's works, vol. I. p. 130.

^{page 269 note [o]} Book ix. c. 36.

^{page 269 note [p]} Dr. Molyneux says, two entire skeletons, not burnt, were found on the floor in the cave, when first it was opened.

^{page 270 note [q]} Homer, Iliad ψ. ver. 245—248.

^{page 273 note [q]} . Euterpe, c. 125.

Article contents

XXXV. A Description of the Sepulchral Monument at New Grange, near Drogheda, in the County of Meath, in Ireland. By Thomas Pownall, Esq; in a Letter to the Rev. Gregory Sharpe, D.D. Master of The Temple

Extract

Access options

References

Save article to Kindle

Save article to Dropbox

Save article to Google Drive

Reply to: Submit a response

Your details

You have entered the maximum number of contributors

Conflicting interests