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THE DUN OF DRUMSNA. 



A Frontier Fortification between the Kingdoms of Aileagh 



and Cruaghan. 



By W. F. de V. KANE, MA. 



Read Decembek 14, 1914. Published August 17, 1915. 



Plate XXIX. 



The earliest historical or quasi-historical literature referring to the centuries 

 immediately preceding the arrival of St. Patrick, after whose advent the 

 extant oral traditions and bardic tales were collected and preserved to 

 posterity by scribes, testifies to long-continued struggles for supremacy 

 between the kingdom of Uladh, with its two royal residences of Aileach in 

 Derry and Emania (Armagh), against the kingdom of Connacht, ruled from 

 (Iruaghan in Roscommon, often allied with the rulers of Laighen (Leinster). 

 Until the fourth century, when the Milesians of Tara are said to have 

 successfully encroached northward over the Royne frontier of Uladh, the 

 northern kingdom had held its own successfully against all comers, even 

 when the other four-fifths of Ireland were leagued together against it. 



But in the year a.d. 332, if the annals are correct, just 100 years before 

 the advent of St. Patrick, Emania was captured, and the military power of 

 Uladh broken. 



The defensive works which I purpose to describe are situated on the old 

 frontier between the territory of Aileach and that of Cruachan. They were 

 evidently designed to prevent incursions into Roscommon from Leitrim at a 

 point where the River Shannon was more or less fordable. 



There are several Irish words, components of place-names, which indicate 

 a ford. The most common is the prefix " Ath," and its wide distribution 



