the unfounded name “Rath Oirthir.” Even the Great Ring is not marked. (6) A trace of terracing in the same field. (7) Another artificial pool. (8) A well, which in wet seasons still floods the Luganeany, as in 1836. (9) An old paved hollow way 2′ to 4′ deep and from 6′ to 8′ and 10′ to 12′ wide in parts. It runs from St. Catherine’s Roman Catholic Church to the next (10) The site of a cairn of stones (with an old hawthorn bush), called in 1836 “Cros Bunnamucnaide.” The name recalls (with the frequent confusion of r and n) that of Carn maccraide (another vanished cairn) at Tara. The “Cros” was levelled when the “garden” of an adjoining house was extended to include a section of the old road.
The remains at Donaghpatrick are so close to those in Oristown, and their tradition so closely connected, that they may be included in this survey.
(11) A fine earthwork; I at first regarded it as residential, but from its plan resembling Skeirk and other mounds[1] evidently sepulchral and ceremonial, it is probably a Síd mound. The eastern part has been barbarously levelled and the whole planted with trees and laurels, now almost impenetrable. The Tripartite Life names a rath, or curia, near the church; Jocelin calls it an arx, and the Register of the Abbey of St. Thomas in Dublin, in the early thirteenth century, calls it curia. Seven prisoners were “crucified” at “the violation of Domnach Phadruig” in A.D. 745; it is unlikely that these were of the clerical establishment. It has a rounded mound about 20′ higher than the main fosse to the north. A shallow, curved fosse separates this from a crescent-shaped platform between 140′ to 150′ across, but its east side is levelled. It was fairly clear in 1899 when I planned it, but is too overgrown
- ↑ There are conjoined mounds in the óenach groups of Tara, Monasteranenagh, Óenach Culi and Temair Erann. The “mote” at Navan has a crescent annexe and is perhaps ceremonial like the fort near Lismore, Co. Waterford.
