CASTLES OF IRELAND [Illustration: _Frontispiece._ ADARE CASTLE.] Castles of Ireland Some Fortress Histories and Legends BY C. L. ADAMS ILLUSTRATED BY REV. CANON LUCIUS O’BRIEN [Illustration] LONDON ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 1904 INTRODUCTION 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.