Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/382

354 the Bronze age, just as the habit of using crannoges is also a survival. The same remark applies also to the round beehive huts of the Orkneys and the North of Scotland. The relation of "cloghauns" to the raths or forts, which abound in Ireland as well as in Britain, is shown by an appeal to the habits of the Irish in the sixteenth century. "So late as that time," writes Sir William Wilde, "the native Irish retained their wandering habits, tilling a piece of fertile land in the spring, then retiring with their herds to the booleys, or dairy habitations (generally in mountain districts) in the summer, and moving about where the herbage afforded sustenance to their cattle. They lived, as Spencer describes them in the reign of Elizabeth, 'on their milk and white meats' (curds, cheese, with meal, and probably calves' flesh, etc.), and returning in autumn to secure their crops, they remained in community in their forts or entrenched villages during the winter. The remains of thousands of these forts or raths still stud the lowlands of every county in Ireland, notwithstanding the thousands which have been obliterated. They are earthen enclosures, generally circular, and varying in extent from a few perches to an acre or more, and afforded protection to the inhabitants and their flocks against the ravages of beasts of prey with which the country then abounded, or against the predatory incursions of hostile tribes either in war or during a cattle raid. A breastwork of earth from four to eight feet high surrounded the enclosure, being the material ready at hand, and the most easily worked, and was probably surmounted by a stake fence. In some a ditch surrounded the earthwork. Upon some of the plains, as well as the hill-sides, stone fortresses