Tipperary, 45. Tyrone, 27. Waterford County, 21.

West Meath, 36.

Total, 1080.

Wexford, 34. Wicklow, 13.

This census was made A.D. 1704.

Waterford City, 6. Town of Youghal, 1.

"In 1720 a charity sermon was preached at all the churches in Dublin for the poor weavers, by order of the Government, and the money gathered was as followeth, viz.:

St.

"St. Andrew's, £60. St. Audoen's, £45. St. Bridget's, £43. St. John's, £12. St. Catherine's, £19. St. Mary's, 115 168. St. Michael's, £10. St. Patrick's Cathedral, £40. St. Paul's, £21 78. 11d. Peter's, £104. St. Luke's, £21. St. Luke's, £21. Christ Church Cathedral, £40. St. Werburgh's, £53 10s. 3d. St. Nicholas Without, £10. St. Nicholas Without, £17. St. James's, £10. St. George's, £6. Privy Council, £100. Chanc. lady, £100. Lady Connolly, £50. Bish. Dublin, £100. The Dissenters, £160. Play-House, £73. Total, £1227 148. 2d." (sic).

It is remarkable that, according to this list, the collections in both the Dublin Cathedrals were exactly the same, viz. £40. Here is another very curious item from this old record :—

"Mary Allen was burnt at St. Stephen's-green, for drowning one of St. James's Parish children," July, 1722.

Again, "Mr. Ford, one of the Fellows of Trinity College, was shot by one of the Scholars, February 7th, 1734."

"The first powder and ball put into the magazine, Phoenix Park, September 2nd, 1738."

Towards the end of 1767, "a breakfast was given to the friends of the Marquis of Kildare, at the Rotunda, in the New Gardens in Dublin, of which the following is the bill of fare":"100 rounds of beef; 100 neats' tongues; 100 sheep's tongues; 100 baked pies; 100 sirloins of beef; 100 geese roasted; 100 turkeys roasted; 100 ducks roasted; 100 pullets roasted; 100 wild fowls; 1,000 French loaves; 2,000 large prints of butter; 100 weight of Gloucester cheese; tea, coffee, and chocolate, in abundance; 2,000 saffron cakes; 4,000 plain cakes; 50 hams; 2,500 bottles of wine; and a most splendid pyramid of sweetmeats in the middle of the dessert in the centre of the room, likewise a great number of stands of jelly, and a curious fountain playing, handsomely ornamented with ivy," etc.-COURTENAY MOORE (Canon), M.A., Hon. Provincial Secretary for Munster.

Forts near Bodyke, County Clare.-There are a number of antiquities remaining in Ireland, like the raths and lisses, which are neglected because of the vast number of specimens which remain. It is well to collect from time to time a few notes on the more typical examples. This I endeavour to do in the case of a few forts in the neighbourhood of Bodyke. A large number of earth forts surround this place, which lies

near the edge of Kilnoe parish, part of the ancient Hy Ronghaile. The most noteworthy of these lie in the townlands of Clonmoher and Caherhurley. The district figures but little in ancient history; and its later remains have been nearly levelled. Kilnoe Church cannot be traced in the overgrown graveyard. Coolreagh Castle is only represented by a lofty ragged fragment of wall, featureless, save for the downput of a garderobe. Of Caherhurley Castle, only the fragment of one angle remains on an abrupt rock, which has been half quarried away. A few cut stones only remain in Killanna graveyard. The name Bodyke is understood to mean Teige's hut, but does not appear in old records.

The fourteenth-century rental of Maccon, grandson of Lochlain, the son of Cuvea Macnamara, chief of Clancuilean (who died in 1306, Lochlain having been executed by his enemies at Loch Colmin, near Sixmilebridge, in 1313), mentions several of the lands in this neighbourhood: Cluanacoille, now Cloncoole or Callaghan's Mills, Cluana

Mothair, or Clonmoher, Cuiluiriada, now Coolready or St. Catherine's, Caitir Urthaile of the Clan Haisneisis, now Caherhurley, and the three Culriabhachs, or the Coolreaghs.

The forts generally lie on the ridges. There are two in Coolreaghbeg: one levelled since 1839, the other a large, low ring-mound with a shallow fosse. Nearer Bodyke, on other ridges in Coolreaghmore, are three wellpreserved raths, the one nearest to the village bearing (as it did at the time of the Down Survey) the name of Liscockboe;' two more lie on the long ridge of Clonmoher, which call for some description.

The more western is called Lugalassa, a fine high earth-fort which commands all the approaches to Bodyke from the west. From the large blocks which remain, and the great steepness of the sides, it was probably faced with large dry stone masonry, and was girt with a wall 14 feet to 20 feet thick; the level platform measures 139 feet east and west, and 132 feet north and south, the platform being 11 feet above

1 It is also named in 1617 and 1632 with the alias name of Dromscare or Dromscale, being then, and in 1655, a separate townland. The ridge is still Dromscale

the bottom of the fosse, which is 25 feet wide. Outside this is a steepsided ring, 5 feet to 9 feet high, and 16 feet thick, the fort being over all from 200 to 210 feet in diameter. It has a fine view in all directions, being on the highest point of the ridge, and the outer ring is thickly overgrown with thorns, the entrance being from the northern side.

Lackareagh or, as it is called, Clonmoher fort, lies eastward from Lugalassa. Its garth is only raised about 3 feet above the fosse, and is 150 feet in internal diameter. It is girt with a high steep-sided ringmound, 14 feet thick, and 4 feet to 9 feet higher than the garth; outside this is a fosse 11 feet and 12 feet wide; through its western segment winds a bohereen; and round it is a ring, 6 feet thick, and 4 feet to 6 feet high. The fort is a veritable garden of blue-bells or fox-gloves, according to the time of the year.1

Caherhurley stands at some distance to the east of Bodyke on a long ridge falling steeply to a little river on the south, and commands a fine view of the dark high hills of Slieve Bernagh, the highest ridge in Clare. In the opposite direction it overlooks Lough O'Grady and Scariff, and beyond them and the mass of hills, forming the outposts of Slieve Aughty, to the north.

There are two entrances with raised mounds across the fosse. The fort was evidently once stone-faced; but a lime-kiln in the fosse accounts for the removal of all the stonework, including even the houses. It seems to have had a ring-wall now reduced to its foundations, outside of

which was an annular space with a bold earth-rampart 12 feet thick, and high. Outside this a deep fosse 12 feet to 18 feet wide, and an outer raised ring 8 feet to 10 feet thick. There are the foundations of at least three houses in the garth, which is about 180 feet in diameter, the fort being about 230 feet over all, and greatly overgrown with thorns, sloes, and furze, especially in the southern segment.

There are, so far as I am aware, forty-four forts in the parish of Kilnoe.

I have to thank Colonel O'Callaghan Westropp (Member) for much help in planning these forts described in this note.-T. J. WESTROPP, Vice-President.

It is noted, and a plan given, in Proc. R. I.A., Ser. III., vol. vi., p. 443.

Notices of Books.

[NOTE.-The work marked thus (*) is by a Member of the Society.]

*A Social History of Ancient Ireland.—Treating of the Government, Military System, and Law; Religion, Learning, and Art; Trades, Industries, and Commerce; Manners, Customs, and Domestic Life of the Ancient Irish People. By P. W. Joyce, LL.D. (Trin. Coll., Dub.), M.R.I.A.; one of the Commissioners for the Publication of the Ancient Laws of Ireland. (Longmans, Green, and Co., 1903.) Price, 218., net.

SINCE Eugene O'Curry wrote his interesting but uncritical book on the Manners and Customs of the Irish, much has been done to elucidate the subject. Numbers of records then read with difficulty in single manuscripts have been published and critically studied, statements compared, and dates approximately fixed. Volumes of notes on the ancient structures, and lesser antiquities of Ireland, volumes of notes on the antiquities of Germany and France corresponding to those on our shores, are now accessible to scholars. Despite of all this, difficulty still lies in the path, and dogs the steps of all writers on Irish History and Archæology. Few, if any, of the nations of Western Europe are richer than Ireland in the relics and records of their native past, its topography, language, and remains; but few have been the labourers in these fields, and of these, few have approached or carried out the work in a scientific spirit.

Dr. Joyce, who first helped to set the study of Irish place-names on a rational basis, has since then carried on his work in different directions, but in the same excellent spirit as at first. He now adds to our indebtedness a History making even on its title-page a bold and large promise-how far fulfilled we endeavour to show in this notice.

So difficult is the task, and so many questions still arise, both on field archæology and on the date and nature of many of our documents, that it is no slight on Dr. Joyce to say that several statements in his book remain matters of dispute. Doubtful points are inseparable (in our present state of knowledge) from any complex work. In fairness to a book which we value (while holding several opposite views), we feel justified in passing from such criticisms, which, unless more fully discussed than present space would allow, might only prove misleading; so we give rather a notice of the vast field opened up in the volume before us

than a criticism. The want of such a book has long been felt, and, without further preface, we may note the excellence of the printing and copiousness of the illustration, and pass to its contents.

The author limits himself as much as possible to the "historic period," on the vague limit of which "we stand near the outer margin of the fog, and observe and delineate the people as they emerge from darkness and twilight."

Dr. Joyce finds traces of national growth "slow and methodical, duly subordinated from the highest grades of the people to the lowest." He accordingly opens his work on the extremely complex system of monarchy which prevailed. So definite were the marks of rank, that it is stated that even St. Patrick modelled his household on that of the nobility, even to the extent of keeping a champion" or "strong man," who among the laity was mainly employed to avenge any insult offered to his patron, but whom the pacific saint employed to carry him over streams.

We cannot go at much length into the fascinating picture of royalty "as it ought to have been "; the ideal, though only an ideal, was a mark of nobility in those who created it. Had monarchy got the strength in Ireland which it acquired elsewhere, a very different history might have come down to us, instead of the blood-soaked records of meaningless little civil wars which deface our Annals for nearly a thousand years. Dear indeed must learning, art, and religion have been to the people who preserved even a shadow of these through the fearful ninth and tenth centuries; but it is sad to read of as many raids of Irishmen on their fellow-countrymen as of those made by the Norsemen.

Warfare naturally takes an important place in the work. The native records retain echoes of the strife which we hear from distant foreign sources, the poems of Claudian, and the Histories of the wars of Theodosius and Stilicho. St. Patrick himself was one of "mány thousand men" captured and brought to slavery by Irish conquerors. Whether (in view of the Silchester Ogham) we are to regard the Ogamic inscriptions in Wales as proofs of Irish invasion and settlement need not be discussed here. It is not as conquerors and oppressors that the Irish are best known in history.

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Dr. Joyce's happy knowledge shows itself incidentally in interesting lights on the names of his heroes and heroines. Very suggestive in its coincidence is his equation of the names of the first and latest recorded queens regnant in Britain-Boadicea Buadac Victoria. The "professional lady-soldier" is almost confined to the ancient Irish. Such was Cuchullin's teacher in arms, Scathach-Buanand. It was only as the "Faith" gained a firm position in Ireland that the women (697) and the clergy (803) were set free from military service. The picture of the "Hospital" or "Asylum" for worn-out warriors (if not wholly mythical) marks an advanced view of national responsibility as yet hardly realised. Very chivalrous, too, is the non-usage of armour; the Anglo-Normans, however,