Westropp — Earthtvorks and Bing- Walls in Co. Limerick. 39 



and to eliminate irrelevant material for the history and origin of Shanid 

 Castle as a Geraldine appanage from a record of fact. 



Shanid in Elizabethan times enjoyed the reputation of being " Desmond's 

 first and most ancient house of Castle Shenet," as Pelham writes in 1580. ' 

 Three years later the great Desmond EoU (mil) notes " two old ruinous 

 castles of which one is situated on the top of a very high mount, and is 

 girded with a barbican, which, with the castle, has almost fallen."- Presumably 

 this happened by a natural collapse of the unstable ground on top of the mote. 



The remains consist of two earthworks,' a rath of normal type, and a high 

 mote, with a bailey, very Norman in arrangement.^ Probably these were two 

 Irish forts, raised and modified by the early Geraldines. The massive simple ring- 

 tower is probably of the early thirteenth century, and it is hard to fancy how, 

 had all the mote been thrown up after 1199,^ it could have been consolidated 

 enough to bear the weight so soon. The Tower possibly rested on an older 

 mound, which the Geraldines had capped with new earthwork. The bailey, too, 

 is singular. Though there was plenty of room for a larger one on the fairly 

 level summit between the rath and the mote, it runs down a steep slope, with 

 a perverseness more characteristic of Irish fort-makers than of Norman 

 designers ; yet the characteristics imply, I think, an undoubted Norman origin. 

 In various earthworks elsewhere in Ireland we have absolutely certain evidence 

 that high platform forts were gradually raised, and that high-ringed forts 

 were filled up inside to make such an example as the rath of Shanid. This 

 took place in Irish districts as well as in the Norman settlements, and such 

 modiiications should always be looked for and, if present, be described. The 

 perfect preservation of the Shanid mote and rath gives no evidence, except, 

 perhaps, at the eastern edge of the mote summit, which may imply that the 

 raising stopped short of that segment, but may eqiually have been crushed 

 down and broken by the fall of the walls and the removal of the debris. 



1 Carew Cal. Papers, 1580, p. 236. 



^ Public Rec. Office, Dublin, mem. 11, " Duobus veter. etruinos. castell. quorum unum 

 situatum sup. culmine mentis altissim. et circuit, barbicano quod cum castello fere 

 cecidit." 



^ See plan on Plate IV. 



^ The occurrence of two forts on a hill is common in Ireland. I find an apposite case in 

 France (Cal. of Documents France, p. 359). Aug., 1142, " The two Castle motes of 

 Mount Barbe, i.e., the greater and the lesser." "Two raths that were on a tulach " are 

 named in the Agallamh (Silva Gadelica, ed. late S. H. O'Grady, vol. ii, p. 216). 



" A mote and bretasche were made at Roscrea so late as 1245 (Cal. Doc. Ireland) ; but 

 such structures were long made and used. Wooden castles were taken in Co. Clare, 

 1558 (Carew mss., Cal. I, p. 276). The palisaded mote of Ballysonau, Co. Kildare, was 

 stormed in 1648 (Journal R. S. Antt., 1856-7, p. 111). So late as 1654 the people of 

 Ardscull petitioned for a grant to fortify the mote there (Journal Kildare, 1896-9, vol. ii, 

 citing General Order Book, Public Rec. Oflice). 



