Browne — Ethnography of Carna and Mweenish, Connemara. 533 



abounds in loose blocks very suitable for their construction. The only- 

 ancient habitations discoverable are the fortified islands. That in 

 Lough Bola has been noted and sketched by Mr. Kinahan, but he 

 informs us that the engraver took unwarrantable liberties with his 

 sketch, and the structure, a small islet fortified with a strong wall of 

 dry stones, certainly presents a very different aspect at the present 

 day.^ 



The Lough Skannive dwellings were first described by Colonel 

 Edgar L. Layard in 1896.^ After commenting on the above view of the 

 Lough Bola ' crannoge,' and describing it as " small and nearly round, 

 and the walls so low that an ordinary man standing in a boat can look 

 over them," he goes on to describe the one in Skannive, so far as we 

 could judge from the nearer shore, very accm^ately. It is locally called 

 "the Castle," and is roughly oval in plan, 50 to 70 feet across; there 

 is a small ' dock ' for canoes on the side farthest from the nearer shore. 

 The walls are of dry stone, rising about 10 feet above the ordinary 

 water level and going down a few feet below it ; they are 3 or 4 feet 

 thick and overgrown with brambles, rowans and other plants ; the 

 face is backed up with loose stones and slopes slightly inwards. 



Parther up the Lough is another dwelling; the builders took 

 advantage of a group of rocks which they walled up in places ; it is 

 also closely overgrown. 



Others in a dilapidated state remain in Lough Sheedagh, near the 

 lower end of Skannive and Eeamnacally Lough, less than a mile from 

 Carna Hotel. 



On the moor near Loughs Sheedagh and Skannive are some " stone 

 mounds "; tradition varies among the fishermen as to whether they are 

 the graves of the men who built the "castle" or of the ubiquitous 

 soldiers of the dreaded Cromwell. 



VII. HiSTOKY AND CoNCLTJDING ReMAEES. 



The history of this district may be described in a very few words 

 as simply that of a very remote and thinly populated portion of lar 

 Connaught, the territory occupied by the OTlaherties and allied 

 tribes after they had been driven westwards out of the more fertile 

 districts — the Barony of Clare — by the IS^orman invaders. Beyond the 



^Journal, R.H.A.A.I., 1872, p. 11; Journal, R.S.A.I., vol. xxvii., 1897, 

 p. 373, p. 438. 



-Journal, R.S.A.I., vol. xxvii., 1897, p. 373. 



