A Study of the Fort of Dun Aengusa in Inishmore, Aran Isles, Ireland: Its Plan, Growth, and Records (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

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Excerpt from A Study of the Fort of Dun Aengusa in Inishmore, Aran Isles, Ireland: Its Plan, Growth, and Records

The facts that the fort had attracted the notice of the learned for over two hundred years, while its compeers lay undescribed till the middle of the last century; and that on the revival of sound archræology it was studied and most impressively described by some of our greatest scholars - Petrie, O'Donovan, Ferguson, and Dumaven - all told in its favour. None other of the forts - not Tara, Emania, or the Grianan of Aileach - was so honoured.

It needs justification to bring forward a paper on it at present. May I, as one of the few who noted and sketched it over thirty years ago, ere its restoration, bring before the Royal Irish Academy an attempt to record its architectural history and its present condition? No one, I believe, has as yet described it in detail since its far too thorough "restoration" in 1884, or endeavoured to decide what of its present features are ancient, what warrant there may have been for the restored work, or what the remains have to tell to scientific antiquaries. In all this there seems, not only an excuse, but a necessity, for another essay; so I may venture to give the results of work done in 1878, and many subsequent occasions, without incurring invidious comparisons with great predecessors in the same field of study. In this spirit I lay these notes before the members of the academy.

We must commence with an oft-told tale - that of "the sons of Umór." In the revival of Irish nationalism under King Brian, before that great monarch's tragic death in 1014, his bard, Mac Liag, is said to have versified a legend, probably derived from a far remoter past. The period was one of restoration; law and order, arts and learning, forts, churches, and towers were being restored everywhere; and, among other matters, an attempt was made to recover all that survived the dark and destructive ninth century; and in these compilations of "tribal lays" and historic poems lies most of our knowledge of the "beginnings" of the Dalcassian realm. These beginnings were obscure beside the mythic glory that rested on Tara, Eman, or Rathcroaghan; but the Dal gCais (descendants of the banshee-wooer Oilioll Olum) and the Corca-modruad (sprung from Fergus Mac Roigh and the great Queen Maeve) must have longed to hear what befell their ancestry "in the beginning," and now they no longer lacked a bard. The legend that centres at Dun Aengusa related to the period before the tribe of Fergus settled on the hills of Burren over three centuries before Lughad, Conall, and Enna, the conquering Dalcassian Princess, on the edge of recorded history (A.D. 360-400), added the southern fringe of Connacht to North Munster, from which it eventually usurped the name Thomond.

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