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232 The roof was formed of slabs in two rows, the lower projecting as brackets and the upper stretching across beyond the walls on each side. In plan, therefore, it was identical with theBirra's house, though longer and larger. But from the mode in which it was constructed, it was evidently more modern,—the most modern, in fact, of all the chambered sepulchral tumuli yet discovered in Ireland.

Nothing was found in the chamber: it had been rifled before, but by whom and at what period there was nothing to show. At 9 or 10 feet below the summit, but still 6 or 7 feet above the floor of the chamber, a bronze monument was found with a Runic inscription on it, which, with the assistance of the Danish antiquaries, the General decides to belong to the ninth century (852?). The one question is, is it coeval with the building of the tomb or its destruction? The name Domnal, or Domhnall, being Irish, and the position in which it was found seem to prove that it belongs to the period of the raising of the mound, not to that of its being rifled; and if so, this grave approaches the age to which Maeshowe in the Orkneys may belong.

The circumstance, however, which interests us most at present is the similarity of the Greenmount Chamber to the Lady Birra's tomb. Being locally so close to one another, and so like in plan, they cannot be very distant in date, though the more southern is, from its megalithic character, undoubtedly the more ancient of the two. If we allow two or three centuries it is a long stretch, though even that takes us far away from any connexion with the monuments at Lough Crew, and barely allows of it following very close on those at Bruah na Boinne.