Westropp — The Fort of Dun Aengiisa in Inishmore, Aran. 41 



(of the passage) ; all tlie wall seems very shaken here. There was a sort of 

 terrace roviiid the insule (sketch), and slopes, or steps, up to the top, which is 

 dangerous and loose. There is a square platform of rock. The fort is not 

 a bit like Grose (the view in Grose's ' Antiquities of Ireland '], but like 

 'Dunraven'; you can hardly get through tlie pillars. There are lots of 

 rabbits in the stones." The following was written probably the month 

 after our visit : — " Dun Engus, which rises with three tiers of walls. . . . 

 The outer wall is insignificant; then you come to a chevmuo defrise of jagged 

 pillar-stones ; behind this is a low middle rampart ; next the great inner wall 

 in which, through a square-headed door, we entered the interior — a level 

 rocky piece of ground with an oblong raised platform of rock, 2 or 3 feet high, 

 and so squared as to look artificial. The Firbolgs were certainly no savages : 

 the smooth-faced walls, well-built door, clever clwvmix de /rise, and flights 

 of steps on the interior " show this.' 



APPENDIX C. 



Published Accounts before 1880. 



For completeness it may be well to give a short account of the previous 

 descriptions in print. 



EoDERiCK O'Elahekty (1684-6). — " Ogygia," p. 175, "Dun Aengus, ingens 

 opus lapideum sine coemento . . . supra altissimam maris crepidinem, 

 e vastae molis rupibus erectum." " hiar Connaught," p. 76, " On the 

 south side stands Dun Engus, a large fortified place on the brim of a 

 high clift, . . . being a great wall of bare stones without any mortar, in 

 compass as big as a large castle bawn, with several long stones erected 

 slopewise against assault.- 



Edward Ledwich, LL.D. (1797). — In Grose's "Antiquities of Ireland," 

 Introduction, p. iv, and in his own work of the same name, he follows 

 " Ogygia," and gives a delusive view done not from nature but from the 

 description. He regards the fort as a mandra or monastic enclosure. 



John OTlaherty (1824). — In Transactions Royal Irish Academy, 

 xiv., p. 135, he adds nothing to his predecessors'' accounts of the fort, 

 even omitting any allusion to the abattis. 



' The sketch-plan shows the north-west steps, east teiTace, and gateway in the inner ring; the 

 middle wall with north-east and north gates, the fiagnieut, the ahattis all round the wall, and the 

 outer wall. 



- Its only " measure," " which might contain 200 cows," of course refers to the inner fort. 



' Though devoting much space to futile theories on tlie non-existent " relics of druids, open 

 temples, altars, stone pillars, sacred mo\int3 of fire-worship, miraculous founts, and evident vestiges 

 of oak groves." O'Donovan writes of this author with much bitterness in " 0. S. Lettei-s." 



R.I. A. PROC, VOL. XXVIII., SECT. C. [6] 



