272 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



once mentions the motes, not as bnilt in Ms day, but as having been 

 made before 838, by Turgesius, "wbo " erected castles; . . . they were 

 surrounded -yrith deep ditches, and very lofty, being also round, and 

 most of them having three lines of defence."^ If his contemporaries 

 made similar structures at all the places where motes and Norman 

 castles exist, his silence is very unaccountable ; if the pre-existing 

 motes were, like the raths and cahers of earth and stone, utilized by 

 the Kormans, his silence speaks very plainly indeed. The evidence 

 of Jocelin also tells against the exclusively Norman origin of our 

 greater motes. He was a monk of Fumess, and wrote in the time, 

 and at the suggestion, of Thomas, Archbishop of Armagh (1181-1201). 

 He probably compiled his work before 1186, as he does not allude 

 to the translation of the remains of the three Patrons, at Down, in 

 that year. He mentions "a work called a rayth," i.e. "a wall," 

 and other earthworks ; but his one allusion to a mote is to attribute 

 it to the fifth century or earlier. He tells how the hostage of Dichu 

 was starved and ill-treated by his detainer, and of his liberation 

 by St. Patrick. The saint then placed the broken chains, as a 

 remembrance, "one in a place at Down, where now is erected the 

 church of St. Patrick ; and the other on a neighbouring mote (monti- 

 culus) surrounded by a marsh of the sea," which was still called in 

 Jocelin's day. Dun da leathglas.'^ Seeing how hastily made and 

 easily destroyed were the motes of Slane and Trim ; how the Eoscrea 

 mote was "run up" so hastily, that the leave of the Bishop of 

 Killaloe, on whose lands it stood, could not be obtained before its 

 completion ' (though only thirty miles distant from his see) ; we cannot 

 readily believe that even these motes were structui'es such as are 

 found broadcast all over Eastern Ireland in and outside Norman 

 territory, and rarely elsewhere even in the early English colonies. 



In view of the continuance of " fort "-making, both of the stone 

 caher and the ring mound with fosses, down to very late times, I am 

 theoretically incluied to believe in the late construction of motes in 



^ Ibid., " Topog.," ch. xxxvii. and xxxriii. 



2 Jocelin's " Life of St. Patrick, chapter xxxvii. : "In loco uM nunc in Dun 

 sedificata est ecclesia S. Patricii ... in monticulo vicino circumcluso palude 

 pelagi ... a catenis confractis vocabulum, scilicet Dun da leathglas, sortitus 

 est." See also "Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Down, Connor, and Dromore," 

 Dr. Reeves, 1847. Note that with Jocelin "rath" meant " rampart " ; and 

 "dun," "a mound or mote." 



3C. S.P.I., vol. i., No. 2760. 



