52 
THE ARAN ISLANDS. 
Mar., 1891. 
ray, and it requires a little examination at first to convince 
oneself that a new and strange species has not been dis¬ 
covered. 
Many of the references I have now to make to the earlier 
history of Aran are taken from an account compiled by 
Martin Haverty from the reports in the Freeman s Journal of 
an excursion to Aran by the Ethnological Section of the 
British Association in the year 1857. 
The earliest reference to the pre-Christian history of Aran 
is to be found in the account of the battle of Moyturey, in 
which the Firbolgs, having been defeated by the Tuatha-de- 
Danauns, were driven for refuge to the islands off the west 
coasts of Scotland and Ireland. It is probable that the date 
of the erection of the Doo Caher, or Black Fort of Aran was 
shortly after this period. This battle is supposed to have 
taken place considerably more than 1,000 years before the 
birth of Christ. At all events, this structure is evidently of 
much older date than the other forts which I shall presently 
mention, and the date of which can be fixed pretty definitely 
as the first century of the Christian era, and which were built by 
the same sept of Firbolgs, who about this time were driven 
out of the Scottish islands by the Piets or Chrithmians. The 
Firbolgs, under their cliieftans Conchovar, iEngus, and Mil, 
the three sons of Uamore, returned to Ireland, the country of 
their ancestors, and settled fora time in Leinster. They were, 
however, compelled to relinquish the land they held there by 
the exorbitant rent exacted for it by Cairbre, the king of Tara— 
by the way, this shows how history repeats itself, and that the 
grievances of to-day were the grievances of twenty centuries 
ago—and crossed the Shannon into Connaught, where a great 
part of the population still belonged to their own ancient race. 
Here they were well received by Queen Maeve, who granted 
them the Islands of Aran, where they immediately fortified 
themselves in great stone duns or forts, which must at that 
time have been almost impregnable, and the remains of which 
are, at the present day, probably the grandest ruins of the 
kind to be found in the world. The names of those chieftains 
are still to be found in the names of Dun iEngus, Dun 
Conchovar, and Muirveagh Mil, or sea plain of Mil. I need 
hardly say that the early facts of Irish history are no more to 
be accepted without the proverbial grain of salt than those of 
other countries, but there seems to be at all events some 
foundation for most of the statements which I have now made. 
The authorities for these statements are to be found in 
O’Flaherty’s Ogygia and Jar-Connaught, and in an Irish 
MS. tract, by McFirbis, on the Firbolgs, who refers to the 
older authorities. 
(To be continued.) 
