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II. 



ON CEETAIN TYPICAL EARTHWOEKS AND RING-WALLS IN" 

 COUNTY LIMERICK. 



By THOMAS JOHNSON WESTROPP. 



Plates III ai^d IV. 



Read Notf.mber 30, 1915. Published Mabch 16, 1916. 



The study of early Irish forts on any kind of scientific system was hardly 

 known in Ireland a quarter of a century ago. This may seem a startling 

 misstatement, till we see that isolated general descriptions (usually 

 accompanied by some universal theoiy, and rarely even approximately full 

 and accurate) alone recorded the few forts described in accessible publica- 

 tions. In theory a baseless fabric (supposed to be vouched by a poem written 

 1000 years after the supposed date of the events it records), as to the stone 

 forts being all the work of a little tribe of Firbolgs, alone held the field — the 

 earth forts, of course, were " Danish." A few people remembered that the 

 originator of the Firbolg theory, O'Donovan, had the sound common sense 

 to make many exceptions to it, but most persons gave it a universal applica- 

 tion. Generalization was impossible ; some twenty stone forts, two or three 

 promontory forts, and a small number of earthworks alone were described, 

 some most incorrectly ; hardly a correct plan had been published. The great 

 work of Lord Dunraven only describes two types of stone forts, and does not 

 give a single accurate plan. For earthworks, a foreign antiquary could find 

 little but the old-fashioned, and not always correct, views and plans of 

 Wright's Louthiana and a few plans of earthworks, like Tara and Usnach, 

 in the publications of this Academy and of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, 

 under its various titles. The only efforts to utilize comparative archaeology 

 were vague comparisons of our ring-walls with the city forts of Etruria and 

 Greece. Rarely do we find even a hint in Irish papers on the forts that 

 similar structures remained in Great Britain ; none of our antiquaries strove 

 to study what was being done on the Continent. A large class regarded 

 round towers, early churches, and stone forts as the peculiar property and 

 glory of Ireland, and resented any attempt to describe the forts of other 

 countries. Much of the unprogressive character of Irish archaeology springs 

 from its exponents taking no trouble to keep up to date (by reading the 



K.I. A. PBGC, VOL. XXXIII., SECT. C. [2] 



