The name Dunluce is a combination of the two most generally used Irish words to express a military stronghold _dun_ and _lios_, and may be translated "strong fort"; and strong it must have been in olden times, when cannons were either unknown altogether, or principally remarkable for the noise they made, and the greater danger they were to those who used them than to those they were used against. The name of this place is spelled _Dúnlis_ or _Dúnlios_ in ancient annals. The earliest mention of it by the Four Masters, and in the "Annals of Loch Key," is under the year 1513. It does not appear to be mentioned in any of the other Irish annals, unless it is mentioned in the "Annals of Ulster"; but as they have been as yet translated only down to the year 1375, the question cannot be yet decided. It is remarkable that so little is known about the early history of such a remarkable place as Dunluce Castle. No trustworthy statement as to when and by whom it was built has, so far, come to light. It was in the possession of the Mac Quillins, spelled _Mac Uidhlin_ by the Four Masters, in 1513. It then, by conquest or in some other way, passed into the hands of Sorley Boy, one of the Scotch McDonnells, who kept it until 1584, when it was besieged and taken by Sir John Perrott, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. Fifty thousand cows, and all his land in Antrim County, of which he had an immense quantity, were taken from Sorley Boy. But he repaired to Dublin, made his submission to Queen Elizabeth, and was reinstated in his possessions in Antrim, but we are not told if he got back his cows. Dunluce seems to have become a ruin early in the seventeenth century, and is becoming more ruined every day, for it is not in the nature of things that the sea is not gradually undermining and weakening the rock on which the ruins stand, exposed as it is to the wrath of the stormiest ocean probably in the world. It is said that long before Dunluce was abandoned, the kitchen and its staff of cooks were swallowed up on a night of a fearful gale of wind. This could only have happened by part of the rock foundations of the castle having been washed away by the sea. The gap in one part of the walls would seem to indicate that some such catastrophe did occur.