38 THE IRISH ARAN. 
driven for refuge to the islands off the west coasts of Scotland 
and Ireland. It is probable that the date of the erection of the 
Doo Caher, or Black Fort of Aran, was shortly after this period. 
This battle is supposed to have taken place considerably more than 
1,000 years before the birth of Christ. At all events, this 
structure is evidently of much older date than the other forts which 
I shall presently mention, and the date of which can be fixed pretty 
definitely as the first century of the Christian era, and which were 
built by the same sept of Firbolgs, who about this time were 
driven out of the Scottish islands by the Picts or Chrithmians. 
The Firbolgs under their chieftains Conchovar, A!ngus, and Mil, 
the three sons of Uamore, returned to Ireland, the country of 
their ancestors, and settled for a time in Leinster. They were, 
however, compelled to relinquish the land they held there by the 
exorbitant rent exacted for it by Cairbre, the king of Tara, and 
crossed the Shannon into Connaught, where a great part of the 
population still belonged to their own ancient race. Here they 
were well received by Queen Maeve, who granted them the Islands 
of Aran, where they immediately fortified themselves in great 
stone duns, or forts, which must at that time have been almost 
impregnable, and the remains of which are, at the present day, 
probably the grandest ruins of the kind to be found in the world. 
The names of those chieftains are still to be found in the names Dun 
7Engus, Dun Conchovar, and Muirveagh Mil, or sea plain of Mil. 
I need hardly say that the early facts of Irish history are no more 
to be accepted without the proverbial grain of salt than those of 
other countries, but there seems to be at all events some 
foundation for most of the statements which I have now made. 
The authorities for these statements are to be found in 
O’Flaherty’s “‘Ogygia and far-Connaught,” and in an Irish 
MSS. tract by McFribis on the Firbolgs, who refers to the older 
authorities. 
This is a convenient place in which to attempt some description 
of the duns or forts, which are more or less circular in outline, 
and built up of loose stones laid one on the other. The lime- 
stone of which they are constructed weathers and splits in more or 
