Fáilte Ireland

Chevaux-de-friseis a term used to describe the (normally stone) stakes placed upright in the ground outside the walls of early fortifications with the intention of making access more difficult for an approaching enemy, be he on foot or on horse back. The existence of this defensive technique outside prehistoric forts in Britain or Ireland was first mentioned in 1684 when Roderick O'Flaherty described the Aran Island fort of Dun Aenghus in hisOgygia(O'Flaherty, 1684, 175), and it has often been discussed since, among others by Christison (1898), Westropp (1901, 661), Hogg (1957) and most recently and judiciously by Simpson (1969a, 26). Some writers, for instance Raftery (1951, 214) and Hogg (1957, 33) have suggested that the origins ofchevaux-de-frisein Britain and Ireland should be sought in the Iberian Peninsula, where they occur in greater numbers (Hogg, 1957 and Harbison, 1968, a), andchevaux-de-friseare often taken as one of the most important pieces of evidence of close ties between Spain–Portugal and Britain–Ireland during the Early Iron Age. The purpose of this paper is to put forward a hypothesis that the Spanish–Portuguese examples on the one hand, and the Scottish–Welsh–Irish–Manx ones on the other, are not so closely related to one another as has hitherto been thought, but that both are merely distant cousins in so far as both are descended from a common ancestral wooden prototype which originated probably in Central or Eastern Europe.

THAT the year which is now drawing towards its close has been, as regards weather, a true annus mirabilis is a commonplace of conversation, and all the more so by reason of the contrast between this and last year. Not only has the summer been remarkable for its length, its heat, its brilliance, but the autumn, even since the weather has broken, has been characterised, unless I am mistaken, by an unusual tendency to relapse into bright sunshine: the storms have cleared up with great rapidity; the sunshine has been peculiarly clear, and mist and fog remarkably rare.