If Cashel is the most remarkable ecclesiastical ruin in Ireland owing to
its situation, Dunluce Castle is, for the same reason, the most remarkable
military one. Cashel has, however, the advantage of being remarkable from
whatever side it is looked at; but Dunluce is remarkable only when seen
from the sea, or from the strand from which the rock the ruins rest on
rises. From the road that goes along the shore, Dunluce looks absolutely
disappointing, because the road is as high, apparently somewhat higher,
than the castle itself. But seen from a boat on the sea under it, or from
the base of the cliffs on which the road to it runs, it forms the grandest
and most imposing sight of a Viking's ruined stronghold that is to be seen
anywhere in Europe. The rock on which the ruins stand rises sheer from the
sea to the height of over a hundred feet. Before the castle was built on
it, the rock was completely isolated, and must have been an island,
standing about thirty feet from the mainland. Across the profound gulf
that separated the rock from the land, a mighty bridge of solid masonry
has been erected, over which all who enter the castle must pass. This
bridge is only about twenty inches wide, and few, except masons, or those
who are accustomed to ascend heights, would care to cross it, for there is
not, or at least there was not in 1873, a rope, railing, or protection of
any kind for those who wanted to visit the ruins of the castle. No one but
such as have steady nerves and good heads should think of crossing this
bridge, for a fall from it would mean certain death on the jagged rocks
more than a hundred feet below.
[Illustration: DUNLUCE CASTLE.]
The first thing that strikes one after examining the ruins is the unusual
thinness of the walls. They are no thicker than those of a modern
stone-built house. The reason of this is easily understood; for when the
castle was built, which must have been before cannons were so perfected
that they could be used for battering down buildings, it was absolutely
impregnable, as no battering-ram, or mediaeval siege-engine, could by any
possibility approach near enough to the walls to be used against them.
There was, therefore, no necessity that the walls should be thick. The
space on the top of the rock is entirely covered with the ruins of the
castle. The walls rise up sheer from the most outward margins of the rock.
On looking out from one of the narrow windows the sea is straight below
one. When the castle was inhabited its inmates must have had an awful
experience during the storms that so often sweep over the wild west and
north coast of Ireland, when the giant waves of the stormiest ocean in the
world beat against the rock on which the ruins stand. If such a place was
secure against the assaults of men, it was not secure against the fury of
the elements; and it would seem that some of the cliff did at one time
give way, for there are some gaps in the walls that appear to have been
caused by rock, upon which they were built, having given way.
The Giant's Causeway and Dunseverick Castle are both in the immediate
vicinity of Dunluce, only a few miles west of it; both are well worth
seeing; but nothing on all that magnificent, iron-bound, cliff-guarded
coast of Antrim can compare in interest with Dunluce. The isolated, almost
sea-surrounded rock on which it stands, the great bridge that connects it
with the mainland, the narrow and dangerous footpath overlooking horrible
depths, and over which the castle can only be entered, make it one of the
grandest and most suggestive ruins in the world. Dunluce is a revelation.
It shows, perched on its storm-beaten, once impregnable rock, the awful
savagery of the time when might was the only law recognised by humanity;
and that only a few centuries ago life and property were no safer in
Christendom than they are to-day in the Soudan.
The name Dunluce is a combination of the two most generally used Irish
words to express a military stronghold _dun_ and _lios_, and may be
translated "strong fort"; and strong it must have been in olden times,
when cannons were either unknown altogether, or principally remarkable for
the noise they made, and the greater danger they were to those who used
them than to those they were used against. The name of this place is
spelled _Dunlis_ or _Dunlios_ in ancient annals. The earliest mention of
it by the Four Masters, and in the "Annals of Loch Key," is under the year
1513. It does not appear to be mentioned in any of the other Irish annals,
unless it is mentioned in the "Annals of Ulster"; but as they have been as
yet translated only down to the year 1375, the question cannot be yet
decided.
It is remarkable that so little is known about the early history of such a
remarkable place as Dunluce Castle. No trustworthy statement as to when
and by whom it was built has, so far, come to light. It was in the
possession of the Mac Quillins, spelled _Mac Uidhlin_ by the Four Masters,
in 1513. It then, by conquest or in some other way, passed into the hands
of Sorley Boy, one of the Scotch McDonnells, who kept it until 1584, when
it was besieged and taken by Sir John Perrott, Lord Chief Justice of
Ireland. Fifty thousand cows, and all his land in Antrim County, of which
he had an immense quantity, were taken from Sorley Boy. But he repaired to
Dublin, made his submission to Queen Elizabeth, and was reinstated in his
possessions in Antrim, but we are not told if he got back his cows.
Dunluce seems to have become a ruin early in the seventeenth century, and
is becoming more ruined every day, for it is not in the nature of things
that the sea is not gradually undermining and weakening the rock on which
the ruins stand, exposed as it is to the wrath of the stormiest ocean
probably in the world. It is said that long before Dunluce was abandoned,
the kitchen and its staff of cooks were swallowed up on a night of a
fearful gale of wind. This could only have happened by part of the rock
foundations of the castle having been washed away by the sea. The gap in
one part of the walls would seem to indicate that some such catastrophe
did occur.
Dunluce must have been built before the invention of what is now known as
artillery. It is not possible to tell by the style of its architecture in
what century it was built, for there was practically no change in the
architecture of Irish castles for nearly four centuries. The art of
castle-building was just as well understood in the twelfth century as in
the fourteenth. Those who pretend to be able to tell within a century of
the time when a castle was built, by examining its masonry and
architecture, draw greatly on their imaginations. If Dunluce was built
after artillery had become so perfected that castles could be destroyed by
it at half a mile, or even a quarter of a mile distant, those who built
Dunluce were fools, for guns could be brought within fifty yards of it. If
it was built to resist artillery, the walls would have been made three
times as thick as they are. It was evidently built before artillery began
to be used for battering down walls. It must, therefore, have been built
before the year 1400, for even at that early date the principal use that
was made of artillery was for battering down walls. Half a dozen shots
from the very rude and imperfect artillery of the date mentioned would
have made a heap of ruins of the thin walls of Dunluce Castle.