Westropp — Early Italian Maps of Ireland from 1300-1600. 365 



establishing a trading company at Ardglas, and see the remains of its extensive 

 fortified " factory," ' we no longer wonder at the appearance of the other-time 

 obscure little place on the maps after 1450. 



I am but too well aware how scantily I can deal with such details. Being 

 (I believe) the first of its kind in Ireland, I lay this before the Academy, 

 hoping the result, though imperfect, may induce younger men to specialize in 

 the subjects passed over so slightly here, and sure that it will at least add 

 a helpful aid to the study of topography and Irish names in the text of the 

 portolans. 



2. Types of the Maps. 



Of course the old maps of Ireland are very defective save as a list of 

 harbours.^ What their predecessors were we do not know. The portions 

 relating 'to the Mediterranean and the outer coasts of France, Spain, the 

 Low Countries, and even southern England were far more advanced. The 

 Mediterranean part is fairly accurate in Edrisi's maps; and St. Louis is 

 said to have used a portolan in his crusade in 1270; but the earliest dated 

 portolan known to us is that of Petrus Vesconte in 1311, though those of 

 Carignano and the anonymous Pisan cartographer are at least five to ten 

 years earlier. As we noted, Haldingham shows little or no acquaintance 

 with our island comparable with his successors fifteen years later. His 

 predecessors were, if possible, less helpful : take for example, the map possibly 

 eighty years earlier in an early " edition " of Giraldus Canibrensis, where we 

 find a carrot-shaped Britannia and a somewhat hour-glass-shaped Hibernia with 

 no names, even of the chief towns or features. Such maps were only valuable 

 as marking a vague desire for maps and topographical information. It was 

 evidently in the reign of Edward II that the foreign knowledge of Ireland 

 began, and (we may say) ended, till about 1450. None of the early maps 

 are more than diagrams, save in one particular — Clew Bay. They omitted 

 the great bays of Galway, the Shannon's mouth, Dingle, Kenmare, Cork 

 Harbour, Carlingford, Strangford, Belfast Lough, and the Foyle. They placed 

 the " corners " of Ireland at the Isle of Tirconnell (? Torry), Rachrin, the 

 Saltees, and Dorsey. Misled by the sharp trend of the coast northward from 



' " The Making of Ireland and its Undoing," Mrs. A. Stopford Green (ed. 1909), p. 15. 

 Dalkey also seems a ease in point. 



^ For all this see Nordenskiold's Periphis, p. 16 ; Jomard's Monuments de la Geographie and 

 Choix des documents geographiqu^es (Paris, 1883) ; and Les origines de la cartograpkie de V Europe 

 septentrionale (Paris, 1888) ; Joseph Fischer, s.j., The Discoveries of the Norsemen (transl. 

 B. H. Soulsby, 1903), gives a long catalogue of extant portolanos and bibliography ; and Ferdinand 

 Ongania gives photographs of seventeen of these maps. See also Konrad Kretschmer, The Italian 

 Portolans of the Middle Ages. 



