Bernard — The Ruin of the Grianan of Aileach. 417 



not one stone has been loosened, and, in my opinion, if not disturbed, 

 it will last for ages. 



The outer casing is batterrd a little more than two inches to the 

 foot. The men in rebuilding this had nothing to guide them but the 

 eye, and took the greatest possible pains to imitate the structure and 

 inclination of the original, by carefully laying headers here and there 

 in each row, with a view to insure the stability of the building. 



I declined to give my consent to any alteration of the old masonry, 

 which had got out of position, until an attempt was made to see if it 

 would bear superincumbent weight. To our great disappointment it 

 would not, and we had no other alternative than to have it re-arranged 

 in three places at the south-west (the side of the prevalent winds), 

 where it had been almost reduced to the foundation. 



At first we made the entire structure uniform in height, but look- 

 ing at it from a distance it was found unsightly. This apparent want 

 of proportion was occasioned by the irregularity of the ground on 

 which it is built ; so, to compensate for this inclination, we raised the 

 wall a few feet higher on the southern than on the northern portion. 

 The circle, including the coping-stones, averages 17 feet 3 inches in 

 height. To bind our work into a complete unity we had to gather 

 around the hill about 700 or 800 loose stones — certainly not more, if 

 so many — and to split from the adjoining rocks, cropping up through 

 the heather, 181 coping-stones. These are supposed to serve instead 

 of those removed by King Murdoch O'Brien in 1101, to build the 

 parapet wall of his castle in Limerick, as a retaliation for some insult 

 the Northerns offered to the Dalcassians 200 years before. John 

 Bovaird and William Barr, both alive, while working at the building 

 of Mannerstown bridge, saw a few brought down for coping it. These 

 were the only ones ever known to have been removed; indeed it would 

 be a work of supererogation, as well as much injury to horses, carts, 

 and harness, and at best these are not, and I believe never were, well 

 adapted for the severe work experienced in ascending and descending a 

 rough stony uncultivated hill. The men themselves ridicule the idea 

 of stones having been removed for building purposes, as they have 

 more than once remarked, that they have already too many stones on 

 and about their farms. Another proof — quarries are on every hill-side 

 in the neighbourhood. Moreover, I examined the homesteads around, 

 and could not bring myself to think that there existed in any part of 

 them material brought from the stone circle, for none presented the 

 worn appearances of those on the hill, stripped as they were of their 

 angularities by age and frequent tossing. 



Before proceeding further, I wish to note here the accurate mea- 

 surements supplied by the Ordnance : — "Circular apex of hill 5£ acres 

 contained within the outermost inclosure ; within the second, 4; within 

 the third, about 1 ; and within the cashel, about \ of an acre." 



When excavating the centre we came on a few of the foundation 

 stones of the small building that was in the centre of the cashel; they 

 were partly laid on the rock and floor, and not sunk below the surface. 



