Castles of Ireland
Some Fortress Histories and Legends
9781465647931
281 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The Castles of Ireland are far too numerous for any single volume to contain their separate histories, and all that I claim for the present work is that it includes epitomised accounts of those of chief interest, as well as some regarding which I had special facilities for collecting information. It is, I also believe, the first collection of such records, and therefore I hope but the forerunner of similar works which may be issued in the future, so that the time will yet come when all these interesting relics of a troubled and stormy past may be classified and chronicled, and the present obscurity in which the history of so many of them is shrouded be entirely cleared away. The number of ruined castles in Ireland is always a matter of surprise to visitors from the Sister Isle, and perhaps they help us, of less stirring days, to realise more fully the continual state of warfare in which our ancestors must have lived than printed records can ever do. These castles range in dimensions from the few blocks of protruding masonry on the green sward, which mark the foundation of a ruined peel tower, or the scarcely traceable line of wall which was once a fortified bawn, to the majestic ruins of castles like Adare with its three distinct and separate fortifications one within the other, or royal Trim, deemed strong enough to be a prison for English princes. Yet in the majority of cases little or nothing is known locally about the builders, owners or destroyers who have left us these picturesque, if somewhat sad, mementoes of their warfaring existence. Three items of information will in all probability be supplied to the enquirer—that they were built by King John, occupied by the Geraldines, and demolished by Cromwell in person, and indeed if the hill from which the bombardment was carried out is not shown to the stranger his informant is lacking in the general art of story-telling. In some cases the origin of the castles is boldly attributed by tradition to the Danes, thereby unconsciously introducing the much wider controversy as to whether such stone fortresses were known in Ireland before the landing of the Normans at Wexford in 1169. Be this as it may, it was only subsequent to this date that they were built in any number. Both invaders and invaded relied chiefly on these strongholds for obtaining supremacy in their constant struggles. Grants of land were generally given with the condition of erecting a fortified residence. It was only when the introduction of gunpowder rendered such buildings untenable in war, that they were very generally deserted for more comfortable dwellings, and jackdaws alone keep watch to-day from many a crumbling battlement that once echoed a sentinel’s tread, and bovine heads protrude from the doorways from which mailed knights rode forth to battle.
