placed on the new coffin. Where burials take place at short intervals the results are best left untold, but such cases are rare. A consequence of this fearful overcrowding is that no old graveyard is free from coffin planks and plates, bones, and fragmentary or whole skulls.[1] Those who saw Quin "Abbey" before 1879 will remember the enormous heap of skulls, (even then, however, much diminished), heaped round a tree near the graveyard gate. At Tomfinlough the bones and skulls were neatly stacked in a recess, at Kilmacreehy they were heaped on a sort of side altar in the chancel, and in other churches (Coad etc.) I have seen single skulls staring out of holes in the wall.
Places for the burial of strangers and unbaptized children are common, and are usually killeens, old forgotten church sites, sometimes in a fort, sometimes at a well, or unenclosed in a field.[2] Those at Kilquane, near Ennis; Fomerla, near Tulla; Kyleeáne, near Barefield (with Doughnambraher stone); and Kilvoydane, near Spansil Hill, have basin stones. Some killeens, such as that between the forts of Mortyclogh, near Corcomroe Abbey, and that at Fortanne, have crept back into favour for adult burial, but several ancient churches at which bones are found have not been so used in traditional memory (e.g. Toomullin, Crumlin, Killonaghan, and Kilbract, round Lisdoonvarna; Templeline, in Carran; Temple-an-aird, near Carrigaholt; St. Senan's, on Mutton Island; Temple aed O'Connell, near Ruan; and several churches on Scattery and Iniscaltra). The church of Kilcashen was not remembered to have been a burial place before Eugene O'Curry's grandfather, Melachein O'Curry, in a pestilence about 1760, charitably collected the deserted unburied corpses "on carts and sledges," and buried them at the ruin on his farm.[3] Bodies were similarly buried during the Great Famine at the Lisheen, near Lough Fergus. Oughtdarra, near Lisdoonvarna, has the remains of a church of St. Sinnach MacDara,[4] where children under seven
- ↑ "See also vol. xxii., p. 56.
- ↑ For a list, with notes, see Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. vi., ser. iii., p. 129.
- ↑ Kilcashen, Ordnance Survey Letters (Co. Clare), vol. i., p. 369.
- ↑ A saint famous all round Galway Bay, but not found in the ancient Calendars. Some suppose him to be a Fox Hero, i.e. Sinnach mac Dara, Fox
