Westkopp — Larger Cliff Forts of West Coast of Co. Muijo. 27 



more than 25 feet. Another remarkable fact is that, save in the eathairs of 

 Moghane and Turlongh Hill in Clare, and the Cahercarberys on Kerry Head,' 

 I have never seen such evidence of systematic overthrow save where the fort 

 was used as a quarry. Here at Forth this was not the case ; the great lintels 

 lie close to the defaced gates, and the marsh is strewn with the large slabs of 

 the wall. If it was a great work arrested almost as soon as it was commenced, 

 this could hardly be so ; and I incline to believe that the remains are the only 

 record of some remote great tribal tragedy where a colony, possibly of sea- 

 rovers, was exterminated and their fortress carefully overthrown lest it 

 should be used for other enemies. 



Destructions of forts are, of course, very common in early Irish literature, 

 and down to comparatively recent times, as in the " Oath Finntraga," where 

 we read of the crowding into three forts near Fahan of the inhabitants and 

 their domestic animals and their destruction by fire. In the " Cathreim 

 Conghail Clairinghnigh,"^ however, we have a striking case of the extermination 

 of an invading band and the demolition of their fortress, the Cathair of 

 Muirn. Conghal bids his men " destroy this cathair, that it may never be 

 inhabited after us, and that the world may not be harried from it any more." 

 It lay on the seashore, and Conghal sails away with the booty. Earlier in 

 the same story, which may date from the time of the Norse wars, we read 

 how Niall comes in his chariot to Dundabeann^ (Sandle Mount), and sees its 

 grianan and palace burning, the great cathair destroyed, and blood-stained 

 bodies on its chief posts. The occupants of Muirn's cathair, too, were all 

 slain and enslaved, and the jewels distributed. So also in actual history we 

 have such episodes as that in A.D. 869, when " Dun Main, in the west of 

 Ireland, was demolished, and an extraordinary and indescribable slaughter was 

 effected there."* The Norse plundered the promontory fort of Dun Sobhairche 

 in 933.^ 



The Niala Saga,^ in telling of the song of the Weird Sisters before the 

 Battle of Clontarf in 1014, makes them prophesy of Ireland : — 



" Now new-coming nations that island sliall rule 

 Who on outlying A««(??(mrfs abode ere the fight." 



The site was in many ways desirable for invaders, having suitable creeks 



'Journal Koy. Soc. Antiqq., Ir., vol. xxv., p. 224, and vol. xl., p. 123; aXso Y'loc . sti pra , 

 vol. xxvii. (c), p. 218. 



- Irish Texts Society (ed. Mac Sweeney), pp. 57, 145. 



3 This fort is also described in the " Mesca TJlad." 



4 " Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill " (ed. Todd Rolls Series), p. 33. 

 = Chronicon Scotoruni (ed. Hennessy). 



6 "Burnt Nial," Sir G. Dasent's translation (ed. 1900), p. 328. 



B.I.A. PKOC, VOL. XXIX., SECT. C. [5] 



