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                        THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.

       NUMBER 33.      SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1841.      VOLUME I.

[Illustration: CAHIR CASTLE, COUNTY OF TIPPERARY]

To a large portion of our readers it will be scarcely necessary to state,
that the little town of Cahir is in many respects the most interesting of
its size to be found in the province of Munster, we had almost said in
all Ireland; and that, though this interest is to a considerable extent
derived from the extreme beauty of its situation and surrounding scenery,
it is in an equal degree attributable to a rarer quality in our small
towns--the beauty of its public edifices, and the appearance of neatness,
cleanliness, and comfort, which pervades it generally, and indicates
the fostering protection of the noble family to whom it belongs, and to
whom it anciently gave title. Most of our small towns require brilliant
sunshine to give them even a semi-cheerful aspect: Cahir looks pleasant
even on one of our characteristic gloomy days. As it is not, however, our
present purpose to enter on any detailed account of the town itself, but
to confine our notice to one of its most attractive features--its ancient
castle--we shall only state that Cahir is a market and post town, in the
barony of Iffa and Offa West, county of Tipperary, and is situated on the
river Suir, at the junction of the mail-coach roads leading respectively
from Waterford to Limerick, and from Cork by way of Cashel to Dublin. It
is about eight miles W.N.W. from Clonmel, and the same distance S.W. from
Cashel, and contains about 3500 inhabitants.

The ancient and proper name of this town is _Cahir-duna-iascaigh_, or,
the circular stone fortress of the fish-abounding Dun, or fort; a name
which appears to be tautological, and which can only be accounted for by
the supposition that an earthen _Dun_, or fort, had originally occupied
the site on which a _Cahir_, or stone fort, was erected subsequently.
Examples of names formed in this way, of words having nearly synonymous
meanings, are very numerous in Ireland, as _Caislean-dun-more_, the
castle of the great fort, and as the Irish name of Cahir Castle
itself, which, after the erection of the present building, was called
_Caislean-na-caherach-duna-iascaigh_, an appellation in which three
distinct Irish names for military works of different classes and ages are
combined.

Be this, however, as it may, it is certain that a _Cahir_ or stone fort
occupied the site of the present castle in the most remote historic
times, as it is mentioned in the oldest books of the Brehon laws; and the
Book of Lecan records its destruction by Cuirreach, the brother-in-law
of Felemy Rechtmar, or the Lawgiver, as early as the third century, at
which time it is stated to have been the residence of a female named
Badamar. Whether this _Cahir_ was subsequently rebuilt or not, does not
appear in our histories as far as we have found; nor have we been able
to discover in any ancient document a record of the erection of the
present castle. It is stated indeed by Archdall, and from him again by
all subsequent Irish topographers, that Cahir Castle was erected prior
to the year 1142 by Conor-na-Catharach O’Brien, king of Thomond. But
this is altogether an error. No castle properly so called of this class
was erected in Ireland till a later period, and the assertion of Conor’s
having built a castle at Cahir is a mere assumption drawn from the
cognomen _na-Catharach_, or of the Cahir or Fort by which he was known,
and which we know from historical evidences was derived not from this
Cahir on the Suir, but from a Cahir which he built on an island in Lough
Derg, near Killaloe, and which still retains his name.