compact stone wall about twelve feet high. The central chamber,
made of huge irregular pebbles, is about twenty feet from ground to
roof, communicating with the outer air by a flagged passage.
Immense pebbles, drawn from the County of Antrim, stand around it,
each of which, even to move at all, would require the labour of
many men, assisted with mechanical appliances. It is, of course,
impossible to make an accurate estimate of the expenditure of
labour necessary for the construction of such a work, but it would
seem to me to require thousands of men working for years. Can we
imagine that a petty king of those times could, after his death,
when probably his successor had enough to do to sustain his new
authority, command such labour merely to provide for himself a
tomb. If this tomb were raised to the hero whose name it bears
immediately after his death, and in his mundane character, he must
have been such a king as never existed in Ireland, even in the late
Christian times. Even Brian of the Tributes himself, could not have
commanded such a sepulture, or anything like it, living though he
did, probably, two thousand years later than that Eocaidh Mac
Elathan, whenever he did live. There is a _nodus_ here needing a
god to solve it.

Returning now to what would most likely take place after the
interment of a hero, we may well imagine that the size of his tomb
would be in proportion to the love which he inspired, where no
accidental causes would interfere with the gratification of that
feeling. Of one of his heroes, Ossian, sings--

"We made his cairn great and high
Like a king's."