Log-houses were also used, and were constructed of beams and planks of timber, something like the Swiss chalet.  One of these ancient structures was discovered in Drumhalin bog, county Donegal, in 1833.  The house consisted of a square structure, twelve feet wide and nine feet high:  it was formed of rough planks and blocks of timber; the mortises were very roughly cut—­a stone celt,[246] which was found lying upon the floor, was, probably, the instrument used to form them.  The logs were most likely formed by a stone axe.[247] The roof was flat, and the house consisted of two compartments, one over the other, each four feet high.  A paved causeway led from the house to the fire-place, on which was a quantity of ashes, charred wood, half-burnt turf, and hazle-nuts.  So ancient was this habitation, that twenty-six feet of bog had grown up around and over it.  It is supposed that this was only one portion of a collection of houses, which were used merely as sleeping-places.  A slated enclosure was also traced, portions of the gates of which were discovered.  A piece of a leathern sandal, an arrow-headed flint, and a wooden sword, were also found in the same locality.

[Illustration:  STONE AXE.]

It is probable that wattles and clay formed the staple commodity for building material in ancient Erinn.  Planks and beams, with rough blocks of wood or stone, were most likely reserved for the dwelling-place of chieftains.  Such were the material used also for the royal residence in Thorney Island, a swampy morass in the Thames, secured by its insular position, where the early English kings administered justice; and such, probably, were the material of the original Palais de Justice, where the kings of Gaul entrenched themselves in a pal-lis, or impaled fort.

From the description which Wright[248] gives of Anglo-Saxon domestic architecture, it appears to have differed but little from that which was in use at the same period in Ireland.  The hall[249] was the most important part of the building, and halls of stone are alluded to in a religious poem at the beginning of the Exeter Book:  “Yet, in the earlier period at least, there can be little doubt that the materials of building were chiefly wood.”  The hall, both in Erinn and Saxon land, was the place of general meeting for all domestic purposes.  Food was cooked and eaten in the same apartment; the chief and his followers eat at the same time and in the same place.  On the subject of food we have ample details scattered incidentally through our annals.  Boiling was probably the principal method of preparing meat, and for this purpose the Irish were amply provided with vessels.  A brazen cauldron is lithographed in the Ulster Archaeological Journal, which is a most interesting specimen of its kind.  It was found in a turf bog in the county Down, at a depth of five feet from the surface; and as this bog has been used from time immemorial for supplying the neighbourhood