Ballaqueeney-The inscribed stones are in the possession of Mr. Kelly of Ballaqueeney House, which is about five minutes' walk from Port St. Mary Railway Station. The Rev. E. B. Savage of St. Thomas' Parsonage, Douglas, gives the following particulars about them in a letter to Prof. Boyd Dawkins, dated May 20, 1886, and published in The Academy, July 10, 1886

"Yesterday I found, at a farmhouse near here, two stones with Ogam inscriptions. They were unearthed some years ago, when the railway was being made.' A field was denuded of some depth of gravel for ballast, and it turned out that this was the site of an old burial-ground. No. 1 was found in a grave made of slabs, and No. 2 formed the side-stone of a grave of a similar nature, but uninscribed, opposite. In the same set of graves were coins. Three, now in the Government Office, are said to be Anglo-Saxon, of three reigns in succession."

No. 1 is of a slatey nature, and broken into several fragments, so that it is impossible to take a good rubbing of it. When put together, the stone measures 1 ft. 8 ins. long by about 5 ins. square. It is kept on a shelf in the greenhouse." The inscription is on the slightly rounded angle, and Prof. Rhys reads it as follows:

BI VA

I D (0)

N A S MA

Анн

MUCO

I CU NAV

No. 2 is shaped like an ordinary milestone, and the inscription on the angle is read by Prof. Rhys thus (see next page):

1 In 1874, at the Chronk, a rising ground near Port St. Mary Station.

2 The inscription was discovered by the Rev. F. B. Grant in 1874, and was first published by Mr. William Neale in the Manx NoteBook, No. 12, Oct. 1887, p. 163.

Kirk Michael.—The church is about five minutes walk from Kirk Michael Railway Station. The collection of monuments with Runic inscriptions in the churchyard is well known, and has been illustrated in the Rev. J. G. Cumming's work on the subject. The two Ogam inscriptions are on the front and back of the cross erected by Mal Lumkun to the memory of Mal Mura, his foster (daughter), daughter of Dugald, whom Athisl had (in marriage).

This cross stands on the top of the wall, on the north side of the entrance-gateway to the churchyard. There are two separate Runic inscriptions on the back, where there is no ornament, running along the edges of the stone, on the right, left, and bottom sides. The Ogam inscription is in the

middle of the back of the stone. It is on a vertical stemline, and very rudely scratched. The Rev. E. B. Savage sent a drawing of the inscription to Lord Southesk, who published an account of it in The Academy, Nov. 26, 1887. Lord Southesk's reading is as follows, read

ing downwards from the left:

MUUCOMALL AFI UA MULLGUC

(Mucomael, descendant of O'Maelguc).

On the front of the stone is a cross of the usual

The

Celtic form, decorated with interlaced work. spaces on each side of the shaft of the cross, which runs down the centre of the slab, are figure-subjects. On the right, a man seated, playing a harp, and a man holding a tau-headed crozier; and on the left, a hound chasing a deer, and another man holding a tau-headed crozier.

Mr. P. C. Kermode discovered a complete Ogam alphabet scratched on the face of the stone, to which Prof. G. F. Browne calls attention in a letter to The

Academy, Oct. 18, 1890. It is 8 ins. long, and it runs in a vertical direction, starting just below the ring of the cross. It is read upwards, from the right.

All the inscriptions in the Isle of Man, with one exception, are either in late Scandinavian Runes with local peculiarities, or Ogams. The exception is a stone from Kirk Santon (now at Douglas), illustrated in Cumming's book on the Manx crosses. It is devoid of ornament, and is inscribed, in Latin capitals, AVITI

MONOMENTI.

Note.-The Ogam inscriptions illustrated on pages 38 and 40 are reduced to the scale of one-sixth full size, from rubbings taken by Prof. Browne. The long space between the MA and QI on the Ballaqueeney No. 2 inscription is occupied by a piece of quartz embedded in the slate, which prevented letters being cut on this part of

the stone.

Reviews and Notices of Books.

THE ANCIENT LAWS OF WALES VIEWED ESPECIALLY IN REGARD TO THE LIGHT THEY THROW UPON THE ORIGIN OF SOME ENGLISH INSTITUTIONS. By the late HERBERT LEWIS, B.A., of the Middle Temple. Edited by J. E. LLOYD, M.A., Lecturer in History and Welsh at the University College of Wales, Aberystwith. London: Elliot Stock. Price 21s.

IN estimating the value of this work it is but just to bear in mind that its author did not live to see it in print, and that the occasional obvious blemishes in matter and manner which it contains would probably have been removed had the final proofs passed beneath his eye. The Editor, in his brief Introduction, professes to have rectified "those slight inaccuracies of statement, or irregularities of style, which the author himself would have set right had he lived"; but too many instances of both still remain. The following awkward sentence on the very first page should not have been allowed to pass: "In this court" (that of the cantrev) "other matters of public interest, or which needed to be done notoriously, were settled." It is evident throughout the work that clearness of arrangement and lucidity of style were altogether lacking to its author.

The plan adopted has been that of dividing the book into two parts: the first devoted.to an examination of Welsh legal and social usages; the second to a similar inquiry into early English institutions, and their relation to the former. While not without its advantages, this method throws the student who may be desirous of following the parallelism which in the second division of his book the author is constantly insisting upon, into considerable confusion, by obliging him to refer backward to the pages in which the Welsh side of the question is set forth. Nevertheless, though form and method are important adjuncts in the treatment of so difficult an inquiry as that into the ancient Welsh laws, they are, after all, not so important as the matter itself; and if Mr. Lewis's results were such as to stand the tests of critical examination, it might be possible to overlook the defective manner in which they are presented.

The work is that of a man who had given much time and patience to the unravelling of the many complexities in the records of early Cymric institutions, and we feel sure that the author himself would have been the first to recognise the flimsiness and superficiality of the majority of the notices which his book has received. No more important, and, let us add, no more difficult task has ever been

undertaken than the one that is here attempted. That Mr. Lewis has succeeded in establishing his positions along a very extended line, and especially that he has been victorious in his direct attacks upon his opponents, cannot be conceded by an impartial critic; but we ought to be thankful that to change the metaphor-he has illumined several dark corners in the dense undergrowth of Welsh archaic legislation.

It is obvious that in an examination of primitive usages, a right appreciation of the value of the documents which purport to set them forth is of the first importance. An argument based upon extracts from an eighteenth century document having a smack of antiquity about it, but unsupported by earlier and perhaps contemporary evidence, cannot be considered conclusive as to the condition of things in the twelfth century; yet into this pitfall the author of this work has constantly fallen, notwithstanding his legal training and undoubted acumen. Not, indeed, that he started with foregone conclusions, but that whenever he met with an axiom making for his view of whatever portion of Welsh customary procedure he happened to be considering, he adopted it unreservedly, whether it was drawn from The Book of Chirk or that of Thomas ab Ivan of Trebryn. His conclusions are too often founded upon nothing more than the quicksands of the Moelmutic Triads, and, by consequence, are often found to crumble away at the breath of impartial criticism. Yet in reference to these very triads, of which no manuscript of earlier date than the commencement of the present century is known to exist, and the authenticity of which as being of the fifth or sixth century before the Christian era, no scholar can for a moment admit, the Editor of the present work states, "Until it can be shown that they are inconsistent with statements drawn from a better authority, the best course is, no doubt, provisionally to accept them." (Note on p. 36.) We are astonished at finding this canon of what may be accepted, and what rejected, in historical evidence, laid down by one who is himself a professor of history. According to this dictum, Defoe's History of the Plague, an avowedly fictitious work, should be taken for what it purports to be, since it contains nothing inconsistent with the circumstances which it professes to relate. It only needs a little consideration to render it manifest that a Welsh history written upon the principles enunciated by Professor Lloyd would be as monstrous a creation as some of the notorious productions of the last century. There is but one safe course for the writer who bases his work upon documentary evidence. If a manuscript can bear a searching examination from within and from without, and can advance a tolerably clear account of itself, it may be accepted as good testimony. If its credentials are as worthless as those of the so-called Triads of Dyfnwal Moelmud, it must be unhesitatingly rejected. It is good evidence for whatever facts it may contain, that are contemporaneous with the style and orthography in which they are recorded; beyond this its use cannot be admitted for a moment.