Tuagh Snaighte--Chip Axes.

PLATE IX.

REPRESENTS feveral tools of brass found in our bogs, called by the antient Irifh Tuagh-fnaighte, or Chip Axes, from the Chaldeétuach to strike, whence the Arabic Tufh, an Axe. Multitudes of these instruments are daily dug up in Ireland. In this plate and the next, I have given the drawings of every fpecies I could collect. Some are in the College museum, but the greateft collection is in the poffeffion of the Rev. Mr. Archdall. Some were ufed with handles, part of the wood adhering still to the bottoms of the fockets; and these had loops for the convenience of taking them off readily to be ground. These are all drawn of the fize of the originals.

Fig. 1. Has a fquare focket; this resembles fig. 2. taken from a drawing in the chief d'Ouvre d'un inconu; fome peafants digging in Normandy, found as many of thofe in one fpot, as loaded a horfe. Monf. Dela Roque, the Antiquary, was prefent,

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fent, he thinks they were Roman; for, fays he, in his letter to Mr. Hearne," you have juftly obferved thefe are neither arrow heads, or British axes, or the heads of Roman Catapults; they are neither Gaulish, Saxon or Danish, nor yet facrificing hatchets; and you justly conclude, that although these instruments. were not military arms, they were carried by the Roman foldiers for the exprefs purposes of afhlering and chiffeling the ftones, with which they faced the intrenchments of their camp.'

Fig. 5, and 8. Are gouges or femi-circular chiffels; the small one has no loop, nor has the fmall flat chiffel; these were for flight work, and had fufficient holding on a wooden handle. Montfaucon, properly claffes all these with implements used in in architecture.

With submission to Mon. Dela Roque, Mr. Hearne and Dr. Plot, thefe inftruments are not Roman; they are neither Gaulifh, Saxon or Danish, nor British or Welfh; but the manufacture of an antient people that poffeffed these islands and the Continent, long before the Romans were a nation, or the Welsh arrived in Britain. For, as the ingenious Dr. Haviland obferves, the migration of the Gomerites, (the ancestors of the Welsh) into Europe, is not related as planting colonies, and furnishing them with inhabitants, but as a warlike expedition, as an invafion and irruption. They are reprefented as conquerors, fubduing and driving the former inhabitants out of their poffeffions, or where there was room enough, incorporating with them; and,

Differt. on the peopling of Britain. Archeol. V, 1.

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as is always usual with conquerors, compelling them to obferve their laws and cuftoms; to learn and fpeak their language, and take their name. This feems to Mr. Haviland, to be the cafe of Britain and the neighbouring continent. They were invaded and fubdued, and obliged to take the names of their conquerors, and to quit the original name of their family; which, being by the filence of history wholly loft, was abforbed in the appellation of Celts, Gauls, Germans, &c. who having gotten poffeffion of the country, afterwards affumed the claim to be the aborigines of it; whilft these who were really fo, might be induced to refign willingly their pretenfions to it, and to change their names out of a vànity, either of being thought the defcendants of the eldest branch of Noah's eldest son, rather than a younger; or elfe from imagining the appellation of a conquering, more honourable than of a vanquished nation And he further obferves, that Javan and his family, came into Europe about four hundred years at least, before the Gomerians began their migration; a period fufficient for ftocking all the fouthern and western parts of Europe with inhabitants; he then proves them to have migrated from Thrace and Italy to Britain, agreeable to the antient Irish history, explained in the Preface to this work. These are the people, thefe great Welsh antiquaries Lhwyd and Rowland, discovered by the names of places to have exifted in Britain before the Gomerites; and thefe are the people, thrust by the Welsh into Mann, Ireland, and the Highlands of Scotland; destroying their records and monuments of antiquity, aud leaving them to cut each

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