[1610.-A Coadjutor-Bishop appointed to Cashel.] 1621.- Magrath erects his own monument at Cashel. 1622, November 8.-Makes his (nuncupative) Will (proved 1624); which is printed in Lord Belmore's Paper, above cited. November 14 [or December].-Dies, aged about 100. Archbishop Magrath must have been a great traveller for the age he lived in. In early life he was much in Rome. He visited England in 1570, 1582, 1591, and 1600. He lived much away from Cashel in various parts of Ireland, such as his county, Fermanagh, where he was a landed proprietor. A difference of opinion exists as to whether the effigy of an Archbishop under the inscribed tablet erected by Miler while bedridden the year before his death, was really his own or an appropriated predecessor. Walter Harris and Grose seem to have been of the opinion that it was designed for him during his lifetime. On the other hand, Lord Walter Fitz Gerald considers the effigy auch earlier than Magrath's time ("Memorials," 1902), and that opinion is shared by good judges. The arms under the effigy, and at its head, are, however, unquestionably those of Miler, in one case divided saltire-wise by the cross and croziera curious arrangement. These arms are given in the Funeral Entries. [For details about the Archbishop's family and descendants, refer to Lord Belmore's Papers, cited above.] ON IRISH MOTES AND EARLY NORMAN CASTLES. BY THOMAS J. WESTROPP, M.A., M.R.I.A., VICE-PRESIDENT. As s we pass through the plains of central Leinster, or parts of Ulster, and the eastern counties of Munster, our attention is sometimes arrested by a lofty flat-topped mound. Sometimes it is bare, save for the rich greens ward, sometimes covered with brambles and those ragged bushes-which, as folk-lore asserts, grow out of the dust of the dead, blowing about" or "bosomed high in tufted trees." We look at it and pass by, few even caring to ask the name of the "old fort." We 66 might, indeed, ask in vain for more information, for among the many neglected branches of Irish archæology none is more neglected than the study of the motes. We might ask whether the mound was carved out of a hummock or escar, or was heaped from the plain by the labour of countless slaves. Was it a tomb or a fortress? Did it stand, like its congeners in eastern Europe," before the Olympiads, in the dew of the early dawn and dusk of time"? Was it made for a prehistoric hero, as legends asserted of Downpatrick mote-for Turgesius and his Norsemen, as Giraldus wrote-or only for a Norman subject of the Plantagenets? Let us try whether by groping into the past we may find an answer to any of these questions. "MOTES". "-The name "mote," or "moate," is often used for low earthen forts, and even for sepulchral mounds. In this, as in my two former Papers dealing with the subject,' I use it exclusively for the conical mound, circular, 25 to 60 feet high, with a flat or rounded summit, 40 to over 100 feet across, and girt with one or more rings and fosses. This I call a "simple mote"; when in addition there is a lower side platform, " annexe," "bailey," or "faitche," I call it a complex mote. A satisfactory nomenclature has yet to be evolved. If we trace back the Irish "mota," we find it to be a loan-word from the Norman, in whose tongue "motte," or "butte," meant earth or dust.3 The motes that could get into the eye became, when heaped up, the motes (whatever their origin and date) on which the Normans raised their bretasches," or wooden castles. The name is not derived from the moats, or fosses, or from the "mot," or counsel, of the place of assembly, but simply meant earth, or earth work, without any connotation of height, shape, or object; it could even mean the low "mound by which water was embanked." The usage of "mote" for a low fort, as Mr. Hubert T. Knox points out, is no new thing in Ireland. The Anglo-Normans applied it to any sort. of earthwork. "Mota" was sometimes used for a low earthwork, as at the Castle of Roscommon in 1279. Ath cliath chorrain got the name Baile an mhuta, the town of the mote, after 1300, though no high fort was there. The old translation of the Annals of Ulster "C" renders "the door of the rath" by "the mote doore." Moate, one of the possessions of Ballintubber Abbey, is called "le mothe" in Tudor Inquisitions, but no high mote remains there. Indeed, Mr. Knox (whose intimate 1 This Paper presupposes the sections on motes in "Ancient Forts of Ireland, being a contribution towards our knowledge of their types, affinities, and structural features" (p. 6, and sections 128-148, pp. 129-137). See also "Further Notes the same, "especially as to the age of motes in Ireland” (Proc. R.I.A., vol. xxiv. (c.), p. 267). on 2 O'Donovan adopts the word "faitche"-used in the Senchas Mór and various Annals for the green of a fort—to describe a bailey or annexe of a mote, but I think on no evidence, as the faitche is certainly (and is frequently named as) the appendage of a ring-fort. I, therefore, still use the non-committal term "annexe" as preferable to "faitche" and "bailey." 3 Cotgrave's " "French Dictionary" gives "motte' as "a clod, lump, round sod, of turf or earth, a little hill, the hill as a fit seat for a fort, the fort itself." In Dutch, "mot" means "turf or dust"; in Italian, "mire," and is either a heap or a hollow, as we use ditch" and "dyke" with opposite meanings. We find in Migne's "Lexicon " (1858) "Mota, eminentia seu tumulus, cui inædificatum castellummotte féodale, éminence naturelle ou artificielle dont le sommet porte un chateau, un tour, un donjon." Similarly "cruaich," in the description of the taking of Bunfinne Castle, means "tumuli terreni" (Revue Celtique, vol. xviii., p. 80). Migne also gives for "mota "" agger quo continentur aquae," i.e. the outer ring of the fosse. 5 T. Crofton Croker ("Fairy Legends," ed. 1862, p. 15) considers the word "moat" as unsuitably applied to Knockgraffan. We find the word in Meath applied to true motes, low forts, sepulchral tumuli (like Newgrange, Knowth, and Dowth), and little barrows. 6.44 Pipe Rolls of Ireland," An. viii. Ed. I. I owe my notes from this valuable source to the kindness of Mr. M. M'Enery, of the Irish Record Office. |