Westropp — The Ancient Forh of Ireland. 26!) 



theory, so far as English writers apply it to Ireland, is the fact of the 

 making of motes at Slane and Trim in County Meath, as mentioned in 

 "The Song of Dermot and the Earl." No mote remains at Trim ; and the 

 Slane mote was levelled soon after its construction in 1176. Slane 

 has a fine simple mote on the hill-top near the Abbey. But the " Life 

 of St. Patrick," by Murchu Macci Mactheni (who was a friend of 

 Aedh, Bishop of Sleibhthe, before 698, and which work is preserved in 

 the Book of Armagh, 807-812), mentions great earthworks and fosses 

 on the Hill of Slane, and evidently near St. Patxick's Camp. I{ow 

 the abbey is supposed, on early tradition, to occupy the site of 

 St. Patrick's foundation, and bears his name. The mediaeval castle 

 stood down the slope, near the Boyne, where the present castle 

 stands,^ and possibly there (and not at the Abbey) did Flemyng 

 make his mote. Mactheni says that, even in his day (some 500 years 

 before the Norman invasion), the Slane earthworks were attributed 

 by "a fabulous story" to the slaves of Eeccol Eerchertni, a pre- 

 Christian prophet of "Bregia."^ 



The Normans made a castle of earthworks, palisades, and a long 

 wall at Downpatrick or Dun da leathglas in 1177. But the Annals 

 of Tighernach, who died in 1088, mention " expugnatio Duin leath 

 glaise " under 496. The Annals record the storming of the same fort in 

 733. The "Annals of Ulster " mention it in 1009 : " Dun da leathglas 

 was burned both the fortress and a third of the town (the lay part) by 

 lightning." Under its other name Bathceltchair, it figures in the 

 pre-Norman " Book of Leinster," and the earlier Lives of St. Patrick, 

 its legendary founder belonging to the earlier heroic cycle of the Bed 

 Branch heroes.^ As will be noted, Jocelin of Eurness, before 1186, attri- 

 butes this fort to a period earlier than St. Patrick, and accurately 

 describes Dun da leathglais as a "neighbouring mote" (monticulus) 

 near St. Patrick's Church at Down, " surrounded by marshes of the 

 sea." 



The Normans built a castle at Knockgraffan, County Tipperary, 

 in 1192.* The place possesses a fine complex mote, with the ruins of 

 a stone castle in its bailey. But the fort of Grraffan is reserved to 



1 See the maps in the Down Survey, where the Flemyngs' Castle is shown in 

 detail. 



2 Mactheni (Ed., Eev. A. Barry, 1895), p. 19. 



3 " Book of Leinster," p. 118. 



* Ann. F. M., noticed in C. S. P. I. vol. i., No. 169, as granted toW. de Burgo, 

 1201-2. 



