Westeopp — Fortified Headlands and Castles in Western Co. Cork. 273 



long circuit behind Mizen Head, we come once more upon the coast. There 

 we get a striking view of the great rock islands of Caher, Illaunacaheragh, 

 and Illaunbirrane ; the gossamer-like bridge to the Mizen signal station is 

 seen across the farther chasm. 



Caher Island is accessible only from fallen masses of shore rocks and a 

 long, narrow wing up to its northern flank. Its name is only derived from 

 the townland of Caher, and I saw no trace of fortification or enclosure on 

 its sides. 



Oughtminneb. — Where the road dwindles to a laneway, at the little 

 stream and deep valley, south from the Three Castles, is a little boat cove 

 named Cooshacuslaan, at Oughtminnee. 



Its southern point is a bold, steep mass of upturned grey slate, a narrow, 

 almost parallel- sided, little headland. Small though it be, it was thought 

 worthy of fortification in early times. A scoop, or hollow, at one place was 

 filled, and revetted with well-laid horizontal masonry of moderately large 

 slate slabs. A. similar wall ran straight across the neck, but its most 

 palpable trace is the pier-like end next the stream rising from a ledge. 

 Dr. Fogerty first noted the revetment. It is a fort as small as Cooshaneimme 

 or the spur fort near Ballyvoony, in Co. Waterford, 1 and, like them, illustrates 

 "the fear that accompanied the early shore-dwellers " and led them to fortify 

 even so sorry a refuge as these ledges afforded. 



A walk through barren, rounded, craggy knolls brings us to a valley 

 with a little reedy lake, blue as turquoise, and jewelled with pearly sea-gulls 

 on our visit. Facing us, at first hardly distinguishable from the crags, we 

 see three turrets and a long range of wall from the cliff to the lough, and 

 round the north shore of the latter, and its outflow to the farther sea. 



Evidently the lake has constantly diminished in size owing to the 

 deepening of the stream-channel that drains it at the north-east end. The 

 valley shows the older shores, and, so far as I can judge, the original fortress 

 presupposes a water-level perhaps 6 to 10 feet higher when the early wall 

 was built. The fort-makers ran a nearly straight reach of wall from the 

 south-west cliff to a rocky bluff projecting into the lake, and probably 

 beyond the lake along the stream. The enclosed space was the " Dun of the 

 Lake," or Dunlocha. The later castle-builders erected a tower in the line of 

 the old rampart on the highest knoll. A still later generation of builders 

 entirely remodelled the place, demolished the old wall to its foundation, 

 cutting fosses and making a mortar-built wall across the shortest reach from 

 the keep to the cliff, and a more irregular wall with turrets down to the 



1 Supra, vol. xxxii, p. 224. 



R.I.A. PROC, VOL. XXXII., SECT. C. [43] 



