Part I.—From Loop Head to Carrigaholt

From Loop Head to Carrigaholt

In examining the Cliff Forts in the neighbourhood of Kilkee, we are constantly brought into contact with ring-forts of a kind far more numerous, and, perhaps, on that account less esteemed, than most of the other classes of our antiquities. After long waiting to publish notes collected in this almost isolated district for over some thirty years, I venture now to do so, and to offer this paper at once as a continuation of others on the Clare forts in general, and of that on the promontory forts of “Irrus,” I have eventually to supply another paper dealing with the churches and castles of this district, and perhaps a few of the forts round the creek of Poulnishery and elsewhere. No claim to completeness is made; it would be a weary labour and a tax on our readers if we did more than allude to many of these forts, so much does the type conform to a standard pattern and even to similar dimensions. But we are careful to give as typical a series as possible, selecting the best-preserved examples of each form of earthwork. Human interest being so rarely connected with these structures, we take advantage of the rich folk-lore attaching to the forts at Loop Head to collect and publish the legends more fully than has been hitherto done. As of all the mention of forts in the early Lives of the saints, the mention of Dun Mechair is interesting, we can only regret our failure in definitely locating it among the forts evidently near its site.

Cuchullin’s Leap, Loop Head
(From the north-east)