ly 2 feet wide, expanding to 3-1/2, for about 3 feet only from
the inner end." Still more restricted is the "rath-cave" of Ballyknock,
in the parish of Ballynoe, barony of Kinnatalloon, County Cork. "The
cave is a mere cutting in the clayey subsoil, and is roofed with flags
resting on the clayey banks of the cutting, of which the length is about
100 feet, and the height and width from 3 to 3-1/2 feet, except that the
width to a height of 2 feet is hardly a foot at the N.W. turn, 23 feet
from the N.E. end, and at a point 27 feet from the S.E. end.... Right
below the aperture ... was a short pillar-stone, deeply scored with
Oghams ... [and] many of the roofing slabs were seen ... to be inscribed
with Oghams, some large and others minute."[96]

"This class of structures deserves a careful study," observes Captain
Thomas, referring to the souterrains of the north-west of Scotland;[97]
"for the room or accommodation afforded by this mode of building is
exceedingly small when compared with the labour expended in procuring
it; besides, the doorway or entry is often so contracted that no bulky
object, not even a very stout man, could get in ... But what are we to
think when the single passage is so small that only a child could crawl
through it?"

[Footnote 94: On the very topmost course of all, the gallery dwindles
into such insignificant dimensions that not even a dwarf (as one would
naturally understand that term) could creep along it. Scott cannot have
meant this very extremity. With regard to it, I should be inclined to
say that it was merely the necessary finish of the gallery, not intended
to be used any more than the spaces beside the eaves of a house.]

[Footnote 95: The tendency to "idealisation on the part of the narrator"
is referred to, in this connection, by Mr. Joseph Jacobs, at p. 242 of
his "English Fairy Tales" (London, D. Nutt, 1890).]

[Footnote 96: _Jour. Roy. Soc. Antiq. Ireland_, 1891 (Third Quarter), p.
517. It is not inappropriate to add that one of these inscriptions
reads: "Branan, son of Ochal," and that the decipherer (the Rev. Edmond
Barry, M.R.I.A.) identifies this latter name with "the name of a King of
the Fairies of Connaught (_Ri Side Connacht_)": _op. cit._, pp. 524-525.
The Ardtole souterrain is described in the Journal of the same Society
(July-October, 1889, p. 245), by Mr. Seaton F. Milligan, M.R.I.A.; and
the one in Sutherlandshire is referred to by Dr. Joseph Anderson (at p.
289 of "