rare in Britain. Two or more
trumpets have often been found together; eight were found at
Dungannon, County Tyrone, in 1713, and thirteen or fourteen near Cork
in 1750. The Irish trumpets may be divided into three types--(1) in
the shape of a horn, open at both ends, having the mouth-piece and
trumpet cast in one piece; (2) of similar shape, but closed at the
narrow end, with an aperture for the mouth at the side near the closed
end; (3) also horn-shaped, but with a long straight tube attached to
the narrow end of the carved portion, the upper end of the tube having
four rivet-holes, to which another tube or mouth-piece may have been
fixed. There are references in classical authorities to the trumpets
used by the Celts. Polybius, describing the defeat of the Celts by the
Romans at the battle of Telemon, B.C. 225, speaks of the innumerable
horns and trumpets of the Celts (Gaesatae, Insubres, Taurisci, and
Boii).

Dr. F. Behn, of the Mainz Museum, has recently written an account of
the music in the Roman army, in which he has brought together much
information about the early bronze trumpets; and he includes a short
description of the Irish type.[48] The Irish trumpets, which are
furnished with the straight tubular piece, much resemble the Roman
lituus; and, as a whole, the Irish type is very closely allied to the
lituus and carnyx, the difference between the lituus and carnyx being
that the expanded end of the carnyx takes the form of some fantastic
animal's head. Trumpets have been found in the Dowris hoard, with
socketed spear-heads, and other objects of the late Bronze Age, and
they must be dated to that period; on this account the Etruscan
lituus can hardly have been derived from Irish trumpets; so that it is
probable that the Irish trumpets, like those of Gaul, were derived
from the south.

[48] Die Musik im roemischen Heere "Mainzer Zeitschrift," 1912, p. 36.

[Illustration: PLATE X. Bronze Trumpets. _p. 88._]

[Illustration: Fig. 75.--Mould for casting a sickle, found at
Killymeddy, Co. Antrim.]

SICKLES

[Illustration: Fig. 76.--Bronze sickles.]

Socketed bronze sickles have been found fairly frequently in different
parts of Ireland. Those in the National Collection have generally been
referred to the late Bronze Age. These sickles are all very small, and
it has been thought that the Irish, like the Gauls, cut only the ear
of the corn, and burnt the stalk. A recent find of moulds in