It stands unrivalled, both in design and execution, among all the specimens found in the British isles.

This valuable remain was discovered in the cutting of a railway, in a small stone chamber, at Knockneconra, near Bagnalstown, county Carlow.

Burned bones of an infant, or very young child, were found in it, and it was inclosed in a much larger and ruder urn, containing the bones of an adult.
Possibly, suggests Sir W.Wilde, they may have been the remains of mother and child.[166] [Illustration: GOLD HEAD-DRESS, R.I.A.] The collection of antiquities in the Royal Irish Academy, furnishes abundant evidence that the pagan Irish were well skilled in the higher arts of working in metals.

If the arbitrary division of the ages of stone, bronze, and iron, can be made to hold good, we must either suppose that the Irish Celt was possessed of extraordinary mental powers, by which he developed the mechanical arts gradually, or that, with successive immigrations, he obtained an increase of knowledge from exterior sources.

The bardic annals indicate the latter theory.