Wkstropp — Earthworks and Ring-vjalls in County LimericJc. 467 



children not to have a liag or leaclit over them." " Fert of one door for a man 

 of science, Fert of two doors on a woman : cnocs (mounds) on distinguished 

 foreigners."' So the suggestion that these may be women's graves in 

 origin, and, perhaps, used for ceremonial rites, gets some support from our 

 old literature. The poem adds " a token of pillars on a widower," but it were 

 going too far to claim this character for the pillar at Gush. The nearest 

 equivalent to the Cooloughtragh " mote " is at Knockainey, where three low 

 conjoined forts remain, not far to the north-west of the well-known cairn. 

 There can be little qiiestion that these were ceremonial and connected with 

 pagan traditions of Aine, Eogabal, and Ferfi (or Uaiuidh) the people of the 

 sidli. The Cooloughtragh mote is most unlike the conjoined house-rings in 

 other parts of Munster, or the ring-forts beside them. Two have slabs, near 

 one is a low pillar, and one has a slab structure. If they represent the graves 

 of the four heroines in the poem, as I think most probable, we may regard 

 the group, like ihat of Knockainey, as ceremonial.- So consistent is the plan 

 of this complicated structure that, save in the south-west annexe, the whole 

 might have been the work of one period. When we look at their narrow, 

 low works and shallow fosses, and then at the deep and high works of their 

 neighbours, Mortellstown Caher, Kilfinnan, and Dun Claire, they seem of 

 an older age and a different tradition, and most probably were for some 

 purpose connected with ceremony or religion, being quite unlike the other 

 burial mounds of the same group. 



" Circle " and " DoLiiEX." — The very curious remains on the lofty sum- 

 mit above Dun Claire must now be noted. I was unable to visit them, but, 

 thanks to long discussion with my friend, the late Dr. George J. Fogerty, E.N'., 

 aided by the careful plan and lucid notes made by him and his nephew, 

 Mr. J. N. Wallace, and his excellent photographs,^ I will venture diffidently 



' Book of Lecan, f . 258, familiar through its citation in Keating's " Three Bitter 

 Shafts of Death." 



^ Ceremonial and sepulchral, perhaps ; the sons of Eochaidh Feidledh were buried in 

 a Mur (ring-wall) at Croaghan ; Aengus in a Cashel at Brugh na Boinn. Tlachtgha was 

 buried in a dun ; Carmen had seven mounds where the dead were lamented. Adamnan 

 {circa a.d. 680) mentions a cairn within a wall. The Agallamh names a fort, within it a 

 colossal sepulchre. Tephi was buried between the two conjoined forts at Tara, 

 (Dindshenchas). Keating alleges that tumulus burial was abolished by Eochaidh Aireanih, 

 B.C. 80, for grave burial. We hear of a group of three tulaths (Silva Gadel., vol. ii, 

 pp. 121-124), connected with the Tuatha De Danann on Genu Febrat, perhaps the 

 tumuli or rings of Cash itself, while Tirechan names a burial " fossam rotundam." 



G. Keating (" Three Bitter Shafts of Death "; says of pagan burials that a small rath 

 was raised round the corpse with a leacht, or a caii-n, or an earthen rath without a 

 monument. Sii- Richard Colt Hoare regarded the disc barrows as women's graves. See 

 also "British Barrows" (W. Greeun-ell, ed. 1877, pp-3, 4); Archreologia (xliii, p. 293), 

 "South Watshire," p. 21. 



^ Journal North Munster Arch»ol. Soc, vol. ii, p. o. 



R.I. A. PROC, VOL. XXSIII., SECT. C. [65] 



