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Catalogue of Antiquities, etc., vol. i. p. 351) says--and his opinion is the result of all the investigation that is practicable in the matter--
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When, and how, the Irish people discovered metals and their uses, together with the art of smelting and casting, has not been determined by archaeologists; but a few remarkable and suggestive facts on the subject may be mentioned. Manuscripts, themselves five or six hundred years old, and purporting to give information handed down from the most remote antiquity, make frequent mention of the knowledge and use of metals among the ancient Irish. Thus the old annalists say, that
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a woody district in Wicklow, east of the River Liffey, supposed to coincide with the present well-known auriferous tract in that county. Indeed, it is most probable that gold was the first metal known to the Irish, as well as to all people in early stages of civilization, as, besides its glittering quality, it is almost the only metal found in a native state upon the surface, and consequently obtainable without the art of smelting. Dr. Boate writes:
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I believe many will think it very unlikely that there should be any gold mines in Ireland; but a credible person hath given me to understand, that one of his acquaintances had several times assured him that out of a certain rivulet, in the county of Nether-Tirone, called Miola, he had gathered about one dram of pure gold. We also know from the celts, and other articles in these metals which have been preserved, that the ancient Irish possessed {553} copper, which they were able to convert into brass and bronze; and also that they had silver, tin, lead, and iron. The Irish version of Nennius mentions, as the first wonder of Ireland, that Lough Lein--the Lake of Killarney--is surrounded by four circles, viz.,