Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/68

46 and at Launceston. At the former and latter Norman walls took the place of the palisading; but at Lydford a keep was erected on the tump, but the line of earthworks was never walled. In Ireland and in Scotland such camps abound; they are there due to Saxon and Danish invaders. In Ireland they are called motes, in England burhs. They afforded the type on which the Normans constructed their castles.

3. A much more common form of camp in Devon and Cornwall is one that is circular or oval, and consists of concentric rings of earth, or earth and stone mixed, with ditches between.

There is, however, a variant where a headland is fortified, either one standing above the sea into which it juts, or at the junction of two streams. There it sufficed to run defensive banks and ditches across the neck of the promontory.

This description of camp or castle is usually supposed to be Celtic.

In Ireland such a camp is a rath. The same word is employed for similar camps in a portion of Pembrokeshire.

Every noble had a right to have a rath, and every chief had his lis or dun.

A lis was an enclosed space, with an earth-mound surrounding it, and was the place in which justice was administered. Lis enters into many place-names in Cornwall, as Liskeard, Lesnewth, Listewdrig, the court of that king who killed S. Gwynear and bullied S. Ewny and the other Irish settlers ; Lescaddock, Lescawn, Lestormel, now corrupted into Restormel.