[ 186 ] 



VII. 



TYPES OF THE EING-FOETS REMAINING IN EASTERN CLARE 

 (KILLALOE, ITS ROYAL FORTS, AND THEIR HISTORY). 



By THOMAS JOHNSON WESTROPP, M.A. 



Eead June 26, 1911. Published AtJOuST 12, 1911. 



In two previous papers' we have more than once had occasion to study forts 

 to which the evidence inclined in favour of the great age of the structures. 

 There can be little doubt that the " great Clare gold find " (which came to light 

 near the foot of the hill girt with the triple ramparts of the great fort, or 

 rather town, of Moghane) was the plunder of the chief fort of eastern Co. Clare. 

 If so (and the remains give every mark of vast age, in the decay and collapse 

 of the walls, and in ring-forts of a type attributed to the early days of our era 

 having been also built across their lines), the stronghold may date back to the 

 sixth or seventh century before Christ. The isolated finds, such as the bronze 

 socketed celts and other implements found in a fort at Eaheens and elsewhere, 

 prove very little, but may favour the origin of certain lesser forts being also 

 of the Bronze Age. The connexion of a first-century chief with the name of 

 Magh Adhair, in the legends reaching us from the later tenth century, give a 

 not incredible date to the place and mound specially connected with his name, 

 but the subject calls for scientific excavation. 



In this section I have to follow up the history of a far later group of 

 structures, but as simple and primitive in type as the forts of Tara or Rath- 

 eroghan. Hitherto, the best e^adence we found for a ring-fort of the 

 comparatively late period was for that of Tulla, about 610. Now we must 

 come down more than 200 years to reach what seems the earliest assignable 

 date for any of the Killaloe forts. 



The interest of this present paper is historical rather than structural, for 

 the forts were the chief seats of the kings of that great Dalcassian line who set 

 their mark everywhere on the history of the West for a thousand years. They 

 and the history of their owners commence after the gloom and silence of the 

 seventh and eighth centuries ; for, though it may be owing to the wars with the 

 Norse in the ninth century that the history of the preceding period is so 

 obscure, that time is the well-head of many a stream of events that is stni 



' Proc. xxvii. (c), p. 217 and p. 371. 



