Wkstropp— Fortified Headlands Sf Castles, S. Coast of ' Munster. 91 



Some of our forts -were utilized by Daces, Welsh, or Normans, like the 

 Doonegalls, Dunabrattin, and Baginbun ; but it was not the Norse or Danes 

 but " new coming nations this island shall rule that in outlying head- 

 lands abode ere the fight" of Clontarf in the "Weird Sisters' Song" of 1014. ' 

 Records and buildings show that occupation continued down to the sixteenth 

 (nay, to the eighteenth) century ; indeed, there is a farmhouse inside Dun- 

 deady, and lighthouses in several of the forts. Dunanore at Smerwick was 

 made in 1579 2 ; the outer works of Ballingarry in Kerry in 1638 s ; early 

 adaptations, as at Dunbeg in Corcaguiny ; and later ones, mostly of the 

 fifteenth century, at the castles of the Dangan on Achill, 4 lJunlicka, and 

 Cloghansavaun, Co. Clare, 5 Leek, Doon, Pookeenee, Bally bunnian, Browne's 

 Castle, Berriter's Castle, and Binncaheragh in Kerry, 6 and a swarm of castles 

 in Cork. These being the undeniable facts, it is folly to call for a theory of 

 " the race that built the forts," or " the fort-building period." 



" The race that built the forts " — the fort distribution in space forbids 

 an answer : on the Ural Mountains in Bussia ; on the spurs of the Danube 

 valley ; in Bosnia, Hungary, Switzerland, France, down to the Alpes 

 Maritimes ; all over the British Isles ; nay, in the New World in the spurs 

 of the Ohio valley 7 — countless races made these most obvious of defences. 



Pour lists have been published. The first in 1879 by G. M. Atkinson in 

 his preface to " The Ogham Inscribed Monuments of the Graedhil," 8 a careless, 

 short, and confused list — "Dunmore, Dunbeg (Kerry), Dunworly, Dun- 

 cathair (Dubhcathair, Aran), Knockadoon, Donour, Dunmanus, Dunabratton 

 (Waterford)," and the Old Head — " all on the southern coasts " of Ireland. 

 The second, an avowedly tentative list by Professor Macalister in 1898, in 

 " An Ancient Settlement in Corcaguiny," 9 gives the Big and Little Doon, 

 Dooneendermotmore, Doonpower, Doonsorske, Portadoona, and Portadooneen 

 in Cork. He omits the others with medieval castles. I gave a list in 1902 in 

 "Ancient Ports of Ireland" 10 with eighteen names, and another in 1906 11 with 

 twenty-seven. How far even the last falls short of the reality will be 

 seen at the end of these studies. As it is, the group of the single section of 

 the coast here given comprises in itself as many sites. 



1 " Burnt Nial " (Niala Saga), ed. Dasent, 1900, p. 328. 



2 " The historic material is collected and the Fort del Oro described in Journal Roy. 

 Soc. Antt. Ir., vol. xl, pp. 193-203. 



3 Ibid., pp. 115, 119. 4 Proc. R.I. Acad., vol. xxix, pp. 29-32. 



5 Journal R. Soc. Antt. Ir., xxxviii, pp. 44, 221, 222. 



6 Ibid., xl, pp. 20, 24, 26, 29, 110, 206 ; xlii, p. 210. ■ Ibid., xxxviii, p. 31. 

 8 p. 101. 9 Trans. R.I. Acad., vol. xxxi, p. 209. 10 p. 126. 



11 R. Soc. Antt. Ir., vol. xxxvi, p. 241. 



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