Eigse Paged 2004 - National University of Ireland

SETTLEMENT IN MEDIEVAL IRELAND 31
to push it back as far as the ninth century. The earliest precisely dateable
occurrence is found in the Annals of Ulster for the year 1011.
According to this entry, Flaithbertach Úa Néill attacked Dún
Echdach, now Duneight in Co. Down, burnt the fort (dún) and
destroyed its baile. 32 As Flanagan notes, baile here appears to represent
some kind of settlement, and indeed the verb brissid ‘breaks’
can hardly be used in relation to a unit of land. 33 However, the
remaining examples cited by Flanagan cannot be safely dated any
earlier than this. In the glossary attributed to Cormac mac Cuilennáin
(d. 908), baile glosses ráth. 34 However, this particular gloss occurs in
a block of entries which is found only in the longer versions and
appears to be later than the original. 35 Indeed, the term ráth would
hardly have required any explanation even in the twelfth century
when it frequently appears in the literature with reference to ancient
settlements, so the gloss can scarcely be any earlier than the thirteenth
or fourteenth century. 36 Flanagan also cites an instance from
the poem beginning A Marbáin, a díthrubaig. 37 Murphy dates the
poem to the ninth century, although previous editors had placed it in
32
The Annals of Ulster I (to 1131 AD), ed. Seán Mac Airt and Gearóid Mac
Niocaill (Dublin 1983) s.a. 1011. 6.
33
Flanagan, ‘Common elements: baile’ 9. Mac Airt’s translation of baile in this
instance as ‘town’ almost certainly misrepresents the size and nature of the settlement
that is likely to have stood here. Buchanan draws attention to traces of a nearby
unenclosed settlement which he tentatively equates with the baile mentioned in the
Annals of Ulster (R. H. Buchanan, ‘Rural settlement in Ireland’ in Irish geographical
studies in honour of E. Estyn Evans, ed. Nicholas Stephens (Belfast 1970) 146-
61 (at p. 149). Doherty (‘Vikings’ 327), building on a suggestion by T. E. McNeill,
Castles in Ireland: feudal power in a Gaelic world (London 1997) 10, that the motte
and bailey at Duneight may be somewhat earlier than the Anglo-Norman period, has
recently suggested that baile could here be translated ‘bailey’. There is no other evidence
for the specific application of baile to such a structure, but it could have been
used of a bailey in the broader sense of ‘settlement’.
34
Kuno Meyer, Sanas Cormaic: an Old-Irish glossary, in Anecdota from Irish
manuscripts V (1913) 99 §1117.
35
See Paul Russell, ‘The sounds of silence: the growth of Cormac’s Glossary’
CMCS 15 (Summer 1988) 1-30.
36
Gregory Toner, ‘Settlement and settlement terms in medieval Ireland: ráth and
lios’ Ainm 8 (1998-2000) 1-40 (at pp 4-6).
37
Edited by Kuno Meyer in ZCP 3 (1901) 455-457; idem, King and hermit: a colloquy
between King Guaire of Aidne and his brother Marban (London 1901);
Kenneth Jackson, Studies in early Celtic nature poetry (Cambridge 1935); Gerard
Murphy, Early Irish lyrics (Oxford 1956) 10-18; James Carney, Medieval Irish lyrics
(Dublin 1967) 66-72: Ruth Lehmann, ‘Guaire and Marban’ ZCP 36 (1978) 96-111.