where the church valuables could be deposited, and where the clergy could find refuge in times of peril or alarm. It may be also that, on critical occasions, their higher apartments were lighted up as beacons to guide the movements of friends at a distance, or were used as watch-towers to oversee the proceedings of the tribes in the neighbourhood. But it is not so evident that such was their original destination. Those who maintain that they are remnants of a civilization which existed in the country long before the Christian era,1 and that they were merely utilized by the church, can support their views by plausible, if not conclusive, arguments. It is alleged, by those who contend for their Christian origin, that they were all at one period connected with churches 2 or other ecclesiastical erections; and yet it seems strange that, in so many instances, these associated structures have entirely disappeared, whilst such a number of the round towers, 3 in a wonderful state of preservation, still exist in isolated and

read in the Irish annals of the burning of cloicth:achs, or bell-houses; but it is not easy to understand how the round towers could be burned; as the outside walls and the floors between the stories were of stone. Ibid. vol. vii. 161. Smiddy maintains that cloictheachs and cloigteachs are not to be confounded. By cloictheach he understands the house of stone; by cloigtheach the house of the bell. Essay, p. 199.

1 Moore refers to this tradition in the well-known lines :

"On Lough Neagh's bank as the fisherman strays,

When the clear cold eve's declining,

He sees the round towers of other days,

In the wave beneath him shining."

According to the old Irish annalists, Lough Neagh burst forth in the first century of the Christian era, and thus round towers and other buildings, standing on the ground it now occupies, were submerged. Keane contends that the round towers were built by the Tuath-de-Danaans.

Such is the positive statement of Dr. Petrie, Ecc. Archit., p. 34; but he has failed in the proof. It is significant that in a variety of instances we find a church belfry beside a round tower. See Ulster Journal of Archæology, vol. ix. 175. Petrie's whole argument is based on the assumption that a cloictheach is a round tower; but he has not convinced some of the most competent of our antiquarians that he has established this point.

3" About 120 of these towers are known to have existed in Ireland, and ninety of them still remain in various stages of decay, with the exception of a few still perfect to the very coping-stone of the roof." Ulster Journal of Archæology, vol. iii., p. 17. Belfast, 1855.

hoary dignity. And if the figures exhibited on some of them are heathen symbols,1 we have thus an additional evidence of their pagan foundation.2

The appearance of memorials of gentile worship on some of the round towers, as well as on certain very ancient crosses, is all the more remarkable, as images were not introduced into the Irish churches until the tenth or eleventh century. It may be that at an earlier date some pictures were displayed on the walls of a few of the more elegant temples; but it would seem that these were not intended to represent either saints or celestial beings, and that they were regarded as mere ornaments. Some maintain that the sacred edifices so embellished had been used by the natives in the

1 An awkward human figure-strangely mistaken by some for a likeness of the Saviour on the cross-over the doorway of the Round Tower of Donoughmore, County Meath, is probably a pagan symbol. See Keane, pp. 307, 161, 162. A hideous idol, two feet six inches in height, was dug up some years ago near the base of the Round Tower at Cashel. See Keane, p. 33. After stoutly contending for the pagan origin of the Round Towers, Dr. Lanigan adds :-"The strongest argument I meet with for the building of any Round Tower, according to the ancient fashion in Christian times, is furnished by that of Brechin in Scotland, which has over one of the two arches on its western front a figure of our Saviour on the cross, and between both arches two small statues of the blessed Virgin and St John.

If these figures were placed there at the time of its erection, it is evident that it must be assigned to a Christian period. But might they not have been added long after the original building of the tower, and after it was applied to some Christian purpose?"-Ecc. Hist. iv. 414. The conjecture thrown out by Lanigan seems to rest on a good foundation, as the figure of our Lord on the cross over the door of the Brechin Tower and the other two figures connected with it, are certainly not at all in harmony with the surrounding symbols. See Ledwich's Antiquities, p. 162. Plate xvi. What has been called a cross above the doorway of Antrim Round Tower is apparently nothing of the kind. See Keane, pp. 309, 119.

2 The late Professor Kelly, of Maynooth, who adopted the views of Dr. Petrie in reference to the round towers, makes incidentally the important admission that "in some of the oldest lives of St. Patrick, the Druids are introduced as predicting the advent of a foreigner who would substitute quadrangular for the round pagan buildings.”—Dissertations on Irish Church History, p. 176.

3 See Life of Petrie, by Stokes, p. 297. Dr. Petrie, so often quoted in these pages, was one of the most amiable of men. He died in his 75th year, in January,

1866.

4 Various drawings of these "images," as they are called by Cogitosus in his Life of Brigid-representing birds, dogs and other animals-may be seen in Keane, pp. 32, 33, 34, 133. It may here be added that the "Red Hand" of Ireland is a pagan symbol to be met with in some Eastern countries. See Keane, pp. 136, 137.

days of their paganism, as their high places of devotion;1 and that they were transferred to the Church when Christianity was established. If so, the old traditions of the country relating to its advanced civilization, long before the arrival of the national apostle, must be worthy of a larger amount of credit than has been generally assigned to them.

There is no evidence that instrumental music was employed in the services of the primitive Church. Some of the early fathers condemn its use; 2 and, at a time when Christians were obliged to meet together secretly for spiritual fellowship, it was not to be expected that they would care for a perilous accompaniment not essential to the celebration of their simple ritual. But at length they found themselves in more comfortable circumstances; and they then sought to render their worship more attractive. Ireland was probably one of the first countries in Europe in which instrumental music was publicly employed in Christian devotion. A tradition -it may be of doubtful authority-gives a harp to Patrick;3 but there is good evidence that some of the early Irish clergy delighted in its minstrelsy, and reckoned their skill as harpers among their most valued personal accomplishments.1 In pious households the sound of the harp might be heard accompanying the song of praise when the family assembled for religious exercises.5 The Irish poet still

1 It is a curious fact that the figure of a cow or ox-an object of pagan worship— appears above what is known as the South doorway of Cormac's Chapel, at Cashel. See Keane, p. 148. Even some of the most venerated old crosses, still extant in Ireland, betray their heathen origin. Thus on the base of the cross at Kells, County Meath, are two centaurs. "The first is Kronos, the horned onei e. Osiris, and the second Sagittarius, the armour-bearer of Osiris."—KEANE, p. 152. Keane maintains that some of the inscriptions on these crosses have been made long since the formation of the crosses themselves, pp. 299-302. It has been already stated that the symbol of the cross was in use among the heathen many centuries before the Christian era. See before, p. 22, note (2).

2 See Bingham's Antiquities of the Christian Church, vol. ii., p. 485. London, 1840.

3 As to Patrick's harp, see Petrie's Life, by Stokes, p. 322. An ancient Irish author, who flourished before the English invasion, says that St. Kiaran's harp was preserved at Clonmacnois. Columbanus ad Hibernos, No. iv., p. 93, note. 4 Giraldus Cambrensis says:-"Episcopi et Abbates, et sancti in Hibernia viri, citharas circumferre et in eas modulando pie delectari consueverunt."

6 In Mac Firbis's Annals, at A.D. 720, an Irish prince is represented as coming

kindles into enthusiasm when he tells of the harp of his country

"that once through Tara's hall

The soul of music shed;"

and we can well believe that the clergy, who could play skilfully on the favourite instrument, were not slow to add its fascinations to "the grave sweet melody" of the great congregation. In their offices they were accustomed to the repetition of the Psalms; and it never appears to have occurred to them that they were not at liberty literally to comply with the commandment, "Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving: sing praise upon the harp unto our God."1

"to the private house in which his younger son was lodged, and he remained listening to what was going on in that house; but he heard nothing there but thanksgiving to God for all that they had received, and gentle melodious harpplaying, and songs of praise to the Lord being sung; and the King perceived that the fear and love of God were in that house."-Fragments of Irish Annals, p. 25. Dublin, 1860.

1 Ps. cxlvii. 7.

CHAPTER VI.

FROM THE FIRST ATTACK OF THE NORTHMEN ON IRELAND TO THE DEATH OF BRIAN BORUMHA. A.D. 795 TO A.D. 1014.

THE invasion of Ireland by the Northmen inaugurated a new era in its ecclesiastical, as well as in its civil, history. According to the best authorities, the inroads of the Vikings1 commenced about five or six years before the beginning of the ninth century. Ireland was not the only country attacked by these freebooters; as Scotland, England, and France shared in the misery created by their depredations. The unsettled state of the tribes on the borders of the Baltic, and the parts adjacent, accounts for their irruptions. For many years Charlemagne waged war against the Saxons, in the hope of compelling them, by brute force, to embrace the Gospel; and, though he thus succeeded in making many nominal converts, he drove multitudes far away towards the north, and inspired them with a deep detestation of Christianity. The expatriated warriors, necessitated to seek out new homes in Scandinavia, disturbed the aboriginal population; and led them to think of those daring maritime enterprizes which they subsequently prosecuted with so much energy and perseverance. The Vikings greatly excelled their contemporaries as hardy and skilful seamen. In vessels, some of which were of considerable size, they ventured across the most stormy seas; and landed suddenly, in large

1 Vic signifies a bay or fiord. The coasts of the countries inhabited by the Northmen are fringed with such indentations. Vikings mean Bays-men, and not Sea-Kings, as has often been alleged.