Annual Meeting. 115 



as his comparatively few followers were, with the deadly bow and 

 arrow, and clad in mail, of which the Irish had neither, he could 

 have defeated twice as many. There seems to be no reason to 

 think that de Cuurcy used the Mound for any length of time ; in 

 the interval between the flight of McDunlevy and his return, the 

 natural place for de Courcy and his followers to camp was the 

 deserted town round the church ; on the return of McDunlevy 

 with the army, de Courcy shut himself up in his fort, around 

 the land side of which the battle took place. After the battle, 

 the defeat of the Irish was so complete that probably de Courcy 

 had no further immediate need for the fort, never finished it in 

 detail, and had leisure to pursue adventures elsewhere. 



McDunlevy seems to have been forced to make the best of a 

 bad situation, and made peace with de Courcy, as we find indica- 

 tions a little later that he was in alliance with the latter in some of 

 his raids. It is probable that it was during the period after the 

 battle and during the peace with McDunlevy that de Courcy 

 erected the stone castle in the centre of the town, of which the 

 one corner tower, traditionally attributed to him, still remains. 



Some three miles almost due south of Downpatrick is 

 Castlescreen, also built by de Courcy prior to 1180. It is of 

 almost the same design as the Mound of Down, with motte and 

 bailey, but completed ; the oval platform of the motte measures 

 90' X 27' ; it is smaller than the Mound. About a quarter of a 

 mile to the east of it is the stump of a stone tower of very early 

 masonry, apparently the gate tower, of a later Norman castle, 

 where the stone tower takes the place of the early motte and 

 bretasch. 



During the progress of the excavations in the Mound I took 

 the opportunity of examining the site of the Cathedral of Down and 

 the surrounding ground. I was much struck with the black appear- 

 ance of the earth everywhere near the cathedral, contrasting so 

 strikingly with the natural virgin soil found on the Mound ; it 

 seems to be thoroughly permeated with soot and small fragments 

 of charred wood, in many places intermixed with bones. This 



