Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/166

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extremely valuable volume by Mr. Wakeman, the well-known Irish antiquary, is a reprint, with additions, of his memoir in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland for 1886, and is the extra volume of the Society for last year.

In the Preface, Mr. J. Mills gives a sketch of the literature on the island, including a letter by John O'Donovan (1836), extracted from the unique collection of MS. volumes in the Royal Irish Academy.

Inismurray lies four miles from the coast of Sligo, and appears to have been singularly fortunate in being comparatively free from the attacks of the Northmen of old, or the tourists of to-day; but some twelve years ago (1880-82) it fell into the hands of the Board of Works, and now is one of the numerous examples of the unsatisfactory manner in which the ancient monuments of Ireland are treated by that public body in whose charge they are placed. The following are some of the deeds alleged by Mr. Wakeman to have been perpetrated by the conservators (!).

The south-western wall of Teach-na-Teinidh ("The Church of the Fire") has been almost entirely rebuilt, and a windowless gable added (it is known that there was a window there). This church is so named from the sacred perpetual fire from whence all the hearths on the island, which from any cause had become extinguished, were rekindled. "It would appear that archæology has suffered an irreparable loss by the disappearance from the church of a most remarkable flagstone called Leac-na-Teinidh, 'The stone of the fire.' The slab is said by several of the natives of the island to have been broken and utilised as building material by the reconstructors of the gable just referred to. It was, I believe, the only relic remaining in