Westkopp — Types of the Ring-Forts and similar Structures. 397 



cahers, but is a doubtful criterion of age, being found at the entrances in 

 the very ancient and large forts of Moghane and Turlogh Hill in Clare, the 

 upper work of the remarkable cliff-fort of Doon, near Dingle, and the facing 

 of the entrances in the earth-works of Dunbeg in Fahan, and other Kerry- 

 forts. It occurs in some late-looking ring-walls and their annexes, in fences 

 round dolmens and the bases of early huts. It is even found in modern, 

 dry-stone walls, fencing villages among the Berbers, and in the bawns of 

 Ballinalacken and other late peel-towers. The south wall of the Dooneen 

 is 12 feet high and 6 to 8 feet thick, forming a revetment to the hill- side, 

 which may account for its comparative thinness. The south-west corner is 

 carefully constructed, and nearly a right angle ; the wall here is 5^ feet high, 

 defended outside by the sunken way. At 50 feet from it was a postern, a 

 rock-cutting, 6 feet wide, leading down through the crag ridge, such as we 

 find at Cahercashlaun in the Burren, in a natural cranny.^ There is a hollow, 

 with several lintels, in the sharply curved south-east corner, perhaps a 

 souterrain or sallyport, such as we have noticed at Creevaghmore caher and in 

 some earth -forts. 



The north side is fairly preserved for about 24 feet in the middle reach ; 

 it, too, has a postern, 3 feet wide, rebuilt, but the inner posts seem in situ. 

 Large blocks, set in the ground, run westward along the ridge from the end 

 wall, and are each in a continuous curve : so it is probable that the fort 

 extended westward ; if this be so, it is more than probable that the present 

 west wall and the slab veneer to the south were afterthoughts of the same 

 period as the central enclosure. No entrance is traceable in the west wall. 



An irregular enclosure (unlike any house-foundation of the later centuries 

 and still more unlike early house-sites,^ as at Ballyganner and elsewhere) 

 crowns the rock-ridge inside the rampart, 45 feet from the east end. It is 

 roughly 67 feet long and 30 feet wide over all (59 feet by 23 feet inside, and is 

 divided at 21 feet from the west wall. A tapering enclosure, 9 feet long, 

 outside the east end, encloses a pit, probably a souterrain. The main walls 

 are faced by the largest slabs in the caher, one 7 feet long. 



The other forts near it are simple, low, earthen rings, often without 

 fosses. 



^ Also in Kildreelig caher, Kerry, described by Mr. P. J. Lynch, Journal Roy. Soo. Ant. Ir., 

 vol. xxxii., p. 328. 



^ There were usually a number of houses in a caher, so we see by the foundations in Burren, 

 by the " Tripartite Life of St. Patrick " ; the 1675 partition deed of Cahermacnaughten, and the 

 13th Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Records of Ireland, p. 71, which latter mentions at 

 Larhoe, Co. Tipperary, "twelve cottages compassed within a great ditch" in 1577. 



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