annals.  Mead was made from honey, and beer from malt; and these were, probably, the principal liquors at the early period[260] of which we are now writing.  As to the heath beer of Scandinavian fame, it is probable that the heather was merely used as a tonic or aromatic ingredient, although the author of a work, published in London in 1596, entitled Sundrie Newe and Artificial Remedies against Famine, does suggest the use of heath tops to make a “pleasing and cheape drink for Poor Men, when Malt is extream Deare;” much, we suppose, on the same principle that shamrocks and grass were used as a substitute for potatoes in the famine year, when the starving Irish had no money to buy Indian corn.  But famine years were happily rare in Ireland in the times of which we write; and it will be remembered that on one such occasion the Irish king prayed to God that he might die, rather than live to witness the misery he could not relieve.

[Illustration:  MOULD FOR CASTING BRONZE CELTS.]

It would appear that butter was also a plentiful product then as now.  Specimens of bog butter are still preserved, and may be found in the collection of the Royal Irish Academy.  The butter was thus entombed either for safety, or to give it that peculiar flavour which makes it resemble the old dry Stilton cheese, so much admired by the modern bon vivant.  A writer in the Ulster Archaeological Journal mentions that he found a quantity of red cows’ hair mixed with this butter, when boring a hole in it with a gouge.  It would appear from this as if the butter had been made in a cow-skin, a fashion still in use among the Arabs.  A visitor to the Museum (Mr. Wilmot Chetwode) asked to see the butter from Abbeyleix.  He remarked that some cows’ heads had been discovered in that neighbourhood, which belonged to the old Irish long-faced breed of cattle; the skin and hair remained on one head, and that was red.  An analysis of the butter proved that it was probably made in the same way as the celebrated Devonshire cream, from which the butter in that part of England is generally prepared.  The Arabs and Syrians make their butter now in a similar manner.  There is a curious account of Irish butter in the Irish Hudibras, by William Moffat, London, 1755, from which it appears that bog butter was then well known:—­

    “But let his faith be good or bad,
    He in his house great plenty had
    Of burnt oat bread, and butter found,
    With garlick mixt, in boggy ground;
    So strong, a dog, with help of wind,
    By scenting out, with ease might find.”

A lump of butter was found, twelve feet deep, in a bog at Gortgole, county Antrim, rolled up in a coarse cloth.  It still retains visibly the marks of the finger and thumb of the ancient dame who pressed it into its present shape.

Specimens of cheese of great antiquity have also been discovered.  It was generally made in the shape of bricks,[261] probably for greater convenience of carriage and pressure in making.  Wax has also been discovered, which is evidently very ancient.  A specimen may be seen in the collection of the Royal Irish Academy.  According to the Book of Rights, the use of wax candles was a royal prerogative:—­