bawn

Noun

bawn (plural bawns)

1. (Ireland) A cattle-fort; a building used to shelter cattle.
   • But these round hills and square bawnes, which you see so strongly trenched and throwne up1596 (date written; published 1633), Edmund Spenser, A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande […], Dublin: […] Societie of Stationers, […], →OCLC; republished as A View of the State of Ireland […]...
   • The Grand Question Debated
     Whether Hamilton's Bawn Should be Turned into a Barrack or a Malt-house − 1729
     This Hamilton's bawn, while it sticks in my hand, / I lose by the house what I get by the land; / But how to dispose of it to the best bidder, / For a barrack or malthouse, we now must consider.1729, Jonathan Swift, The Grand Question Debated, Thomas Sheridan (editor), John Nichols (editor, revised edition), 1812, The British Classics, Volume 45: The works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D....
2. (Ireland) A defensive wall built around a tower house. It was once used to protect livestock during an attack.
   • He [...] then made his way
     to where he belonged in Bronding country,
     home again, sure of his ground
     in strongroom and bawn.1999, Seamus Heaney, Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page 18
   • The cattle, therefore, would be brought into the bawn at night, as is stated by the early 17th-century writer Fynes Moryson who wrote that the Irish cattle “eat only by day, and then are brought at evening within the bawns of castles, where they stand or lie all night in a dirty yard without so...2004, Colm J. Donnelly, “Passage or Barrier? Communication between Bawn and Tower House in Late Medieval Ireland – the Evidence from County Limerick”, in Château Gaillard 21: Études de castellologie...