.. Avowedly malignant ceremonies have been performed at two, if not three, places in East Clare. At Carnelly, near Clare Castle, at an unknown period remote even in 1840, "a black cock, without a white feather," was offered to the Devil on the so-called "Druid's Altar," two fallen pillars near an earthen ring beside the avenue, --to avenge the sacrificer on an enemy, but in this case it brought an equivalent misfortune on the sacrificer himself.

The Duchess de Rovigo, an heiress of the last Stamer of Carnelly, used the story, combined with irrelevant family legends and pseudo-archaeology, in a poem dated 1839, but I obtained it, as given above, from a more reliable source, her mother, in 1875 and 1882, as well as from my brothers and sisters, who heard it in "the forties".

When I was at the dolmen near the house at Maryfort in 1869, an old servant, Mrs. Eliza Ega (nee Armstrong), said to me, -- "Don't play at that bad place where the dhrudes (druids), glory be to God! offered black cocks to the Devil!"

The third [fort in the area] is much defaced but of greater note. It is called Doonmeeve on the maps, but Doonmihil and Dooneeva, locally. There are two segments of curved fosses coming out at a slope near the shore; they are cut through drift, and when a block of shale was met with it was neatly cut to the slope of the bank. the inner is dry, but a water runnel courses down the outer one. They are 6' to 10' deep and wide at the bottom in parts, the inner 28', and the outer 20' wide at the top. The bank between these is 22' wide at the top. It probably enclosed a space on the cliffs, and could hardly be a promontory fort whose promontory was washed away by the unresting sea. Bronze implements have been found on the shore at the foot of the cliff which bounds its enclosure.

A very curious tradition as told us in the neighbourhood. A certain man, in not very remote past years, began to dig up the space inside its trenches, before he had been long at work he fell down and lay to all appearance dead. News was brought at once to his wife a reputed "wise woman," who was evidently equal to the emergency. She rushed to the nearest fairy spot, did magic, and ran to Dooneva to her apparently lifeless husband. She then addressed herself to the unseen inhabitants of the fort and imperiously ordered them to bring back her husband at once. Rapidly as the deceased brother of the unvirtuous de Birchington, of Ingoldsby, the insensible man sat up and recovered complete strength, while a stick was carried off in his stead. After all the story in its facts, apart from their deductions, may very well have happened, and even the charms may have been done in as good faith as many others worked to our personal knowledge.

From that spa-town [Lisdoonvarna] we go eastward, crossing the river valley, and seeing on a bold bluff a lofty mound - a reputed "fairy hill."

Lissateeaun, Lis an tsidhean, the fairy fort, lies in a townland called Gowlaun, from the "fork" (Gabhal) of the stream. It is a mote-like mound, shaped out of the natural bluff, but raised and rounded so as to form a high flat-topped platform sufficiently imposing as seen from the road bridge to the east. A shallow fosse runs round it on the side of the plateau in a semicircle. There are no other mounds or hut sites, nor is it easy to fix its actual height, as it runs into the natural slopes. The summit lies about 400 feet above the sea.

Its resemblance to a burial mound may have helped its reputation as a sidh, but it very probably was, if not in origin, at least in use, a true lis or residential fort, as its name implies. Sidhean in Co. Clare living usage, by the way, implies rather a passing gust or whirl of wind in which the fairies travel. It is a prophylactic usage to bow or take off your hat as the gust reaches you.

The fort is reputed to give its name to the Castle of Lisdoonvarna, "the fortified fort of the gap." The gap is the river gully, and the levelled ring wall at the head of the slope to the north is Caherbarna.