Clare Island Survey — History and Archaeology. 2 11 



2. CLAEE ISLAND (Plates I-VI). 



Clare Island, or more properly " Cliara," forms part of Kilgeever Parish 

 and Murrisk Barony in the County of Mayo. It was one of the most con- 

 spicuous islands of that beautiful coast, and to all appearance was a suitable 

 and even desirable place for an early settlement. Sheltered to the north by 

 its huge mountain, and abounding in creeks, with a sandy beach, abundant 

 water supply, and, at one time, thick forests, 1 it certainly seemed more likely 

 to have attracted early settlers than the unsheltered Mullet or the bare 

 rocks of Aran ; but such was not the case. Inishbofin and the Mullet and its 

 surroundings have sandhill settlements and monuments ; Achill abounds in 

 megalithic structures; but so far as I am aware none are found on Clare 

 Island ; one Bronze Age spear-head alone attests the presence of man at that 

 period, while nothing, so far, seems to have reached us from the Stone 

 Age. Inishbofin, with its huge cliff-forts, has numerous huts ; Inishturk its 

 fine ring- walls; others occur in Achill, but none in Clare Island. The 

 Islands of Tony, Inismurray, Ardoilean, the three Aran Isles, the 

 Magharees, even the great stack of Skellig, were the resort of monks and the 

 scene of piratical attack ; nothing similar is recorded of Clare Island. From 

 the historian's standpoint the record of the island is nearly a blank. This is 

 not altogether wonderful when we consider what impenetrable tracts of bogs, 

 mountain, and oak forests lay between it and the ancient kingdoms of inland 

 Mayo. The natural barriers continued in Connemara, and, if the learned 

 monks of the Aras ever recorded anything about the far distant Isles of Mod, 

 Cliara, and Achill, the destructive Norse raids must have swept it away. 



The ancient buildings are equally disappointing ; no great ring-fort, like 

 Inismurray Cashel, or Dun Aengusa, is found in the group with which we 

 now deal. There were several large cliff-forts : Dun-Kilmore in Achillbeg, 

 Dunnahineena.and Dunkeen, or Dunmore,in Inishbofin ; some small but strong- 

 ring- walls in Achill ; an alleged site at a hillock in Clare Island, and the 

 Doon of Inishturk. The predominant remains are of fortified rock platforms 

 like Dane's Island in "Waterford on a smaller scale f these are not very usual 

 on the Irish coast compared to the entrenched or walled headland. Up the 

 west coast I recall only Darby's Island and Ballingarry in Kerry and 

 Illaunadoon in Co. Clare ; 3 but here we have Dunallia, Duntraneen, Duncloak, 



1 The remains of a very extensive forest of large trees lie not far from Oogbeg. " Derry " also 

 occurs more than once in the place-names Derraghyemon, Derraghgarriff (Garbh), and Derreen at the 

 back of Knocknaveen. 



- Described in Journal Roy. Soc. Ant. Ir., xxxvii, pp. 252-4. 



3 Ibid., xl, p. 17, p. 117, and xxxviii, p. 42. 



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