Wkstropp — Fortified Headlands fy Castles, 8, Coast of Minister. 117 



rested on corbels barely 4 feet higher ; the interspace was vmlighted : it may 

 have been a store ; these lofts were reached by ladders, as in the turrets at the 

 Old Head. The vaulted roof above the upper story is as unusual as the rest 

 of the structure : it rested on two pointed arches, between which was a very 

 small ope, a ventilator rather than a light, looking northward, but useless for 

 outlook. The interspaces were spanned by stone slabs ; the south-east corner 

 is broken, with most of the top of the east wall. The roof is flat, and there 

 seems no access to it. A wall runs westward on the cliff. The neck extends 

 for 50 feet behind the gate, where it widens to about 60 feet. At 26 yards 

 back is a low ledge, with a fenced enclosure in the north-east corner of the 

 garth. I saw no hut-sites inside. 1 



Old Head, Olderness, Dun Cearmna (0. S. 137).— The Old Head of 

 Kinsale is the largest and longest promontory of the section of coast 

 which we examine here and has the chief castle. The oldest legends 

 told how, in a remote past, which later chronologists dated as a.m. 3667 

 (B.C. 1533), or A.M. 3501 (b.c. 1699), two kings, Cearmna and Sobharc, 

 reigned in Erin, 2 and built at its opposite extremities Dun Cearmna and 

 Dun Sobhairche or Dunseverick in Antrim. The Four Masters waver 

 and some 3 support the assertion of the so-called " Annals of Clonmacnois " 

 that the latter fort was built by Eremon about B.C. 1390. Keating 4 tells 

 how Cearmna, who had slain his predecessor, fell in battle by Eochaidh 

 Fabharglas, the blue-speared; at the fort, as some say. All we can deduce 

 is, that early bards regarded the promontory-fort as remotely prehistoric, 

 and with its sister fortress and Cathairchonrui (as the Triads attest) held it 

 one of " the three (chief or oldest) forts of Erin." 5 



Another legend strikes one as more tangible than that of the brother 

 kings. In Cormac's Glossary 6 we read how Nede macAdnai the poet 



1 Plans, Plate X. Giolla Coemain dates them B.C. 1380 in L.L. 



2 "Annals Four Masters," vol. i, p. 44; p. 490 (ed. O'Donovan) under a.m. 3667. 

 "Ann. Clonmacnois " (ed. Rev. Denis Murphy), p. 32 ; "Ann. Ulster," vol. i, p. 368; 

 Chron. Scotorum. " Keating's History," vol. ii, Book i, sect. xxv. Diin Cernmae is named 

 as .a limit in Ann. Ulster uuder 857. There was, however, another less celebrated 

 Dun Cearna or Dun Bre (perhaps in Leinster), not to be confused with the Cork fort. 



3 Book of Ballymote, f. 23, says that Dun Sobairce and Diin Cearmna were built 

 in the time of Eremon ; the list in the Ann. Four Masters omits them. 



4 " History of Ireland" (ed. Irish Texts Soc. vol. ii), vol. i, sect. xxv. 



6 R. I. Acad., Todd Lecture ser., vol. xiii, p. 5. The only other early allusion to a 

 promontory-fort on the south coast of Ireland known to me is Oilean Brie (or Danes' 

 Island, Co. Waterford, Journal, R.S.A.I., vol. xxxvi, p. 251), fixed as the bounds of 

 East Munster in the second century by the race of Oilill Olom (Keating's "History 

 of Ireland," Irish Texts edition, vol. i, sect, iii, p. 127). Evidently the three forts in 

 the Triads were selected as prominent outposts of each of the three coast-lines. 



u Three Irish Glossaries (ed. Whitley Stokes), pp. 38, 39. 



