CHAPTER XIV. ARCHITECTURE AND ANCIENT BUILDINGS. "O tract of tyme, that all consumes to dust, And brightest things bring quickly out of minde. Thou wasts and weares and leaves the walles but bare." In the foregoing papers considerable space has been devoted to descriptions of such architectural antiquities as have come under my immediate observation. Monuments of former ages are identified with national history, and are objects, not only of interest but importance to every country, as the unquestionable and faithful record of the past. The character of nations and of governments lives in the edifices reared under them; and had the annals of Egypt, of Greece, or of Rome descended to us without the glorious structures that still ennoble these fallen countries, how many casuists would have flung the odium of barbarism on their former population ! The origin of the Irish round tower is involved in as profound obscurity as that of the Egyptian pyramids, and if the latter extraordinary monuments excite our curiosity in a country where the same gigantic taste pervaded every work of sculpture as well as architecture, how much more impressive is this solitary remain, that stands "Sublime and sad, Bearing the weight of years!" A recent writer on the subject, warmed into enthusiastic declamation, apostrophises-" The unrivalled pillar tower in all its primitive beauty, venerated, undisturbed, and, after a reign of fourteen hundred years, still the pride and the ornament of modern, as it heretofore had been of ancient Ireland.” Beside these buildings, of which more than fifty are at present standing, none others in Ireland deserve notice as works of art, the date of whose formation is not known. On the Round Tower, therefore, rests the only proof of the skill and knowledge of the early inhabitants of Ireland: ponderous masses of uncouth stones, tumuli and mounds being works equally common to the rude state of other nations. The vulgar belief that these pillar towers were the produce of supernatural agency has been already mentioned. "Travellers into the east," says Sir Joshua Reynolds in his Discourses, "tell us that when the ignorant inhabitants of these countries are interrogated concerning the ruins of stately edifices yet remaining amongst them, the melancholy monuments of their former grandeur and long lost science, they always answer that they were built by magicians. The untaught mind finds a vast gulph between its own powers and those works of complicated art, which it is utterly unable to fathom, and it supposes that such a void can only be passed by supernatural means." The conjectures offered as to the use of the Round Tower are at once numerous and unsatisfactory.* By some they are supposed to have been the abodes of solitary anchorites; by others, to have contained the sacred fire worshipped before the Christian era; some, again, maintain that they were places of temporary penance, and others state them to have been belfries; nor does any peculiarity of situation, except the vicinity of a church, assist the antiquary in his inquiry. It may be tiresome, and would answer little purpose, to recapitulate the various arguments produced in favour of these several opinions, but the latter, that of their being belfries, is the one commonly received. It is needless also to enter into particular descriptions, as the drawings and measurement of those at Cloyne and Ardmore convey a general idea of Irish round towers, and embrace the most remarkable difference between them, that of circular stone belts, which are rather unusual. All that seems certain about these buildings is, their existence before the invasion of the English in the time of Henry II. as Giraldus Cambrensis expressly mentions "turres ecclesiasticæ, quæ more patrio arctæ sunt et altæ necnon et rotundæ." From their very great similarity it is evident that they were the work of the same age and the same people, and they have been attributed to the missionaries who first introduced Christianity into Ireland. There are many almost conclusive arguments in favour of this conjecture; one, however, which I have not heard, is, that every round tower has * Mr. W― of the Ordnance, whilst on an official tour of inspection in Ireland, seeing a labourer near one of the Martello towers on the coast, carelessly asked him if he knew for what purpose it was built?" To be sure I do, your honour," replied he archly; "for the same purpose as our ould ancient round towers." "And pray what may that have 66 been?" inquired Mr. W— in the belief of receiving some traditional information. Why, your worship," returned Pat, "the only use in them that I can see is just to bother posterity." its patron saint, whose legendary fame still survives in the surrounding districts as well as in old chronicles: St. Colman and St. Declan are the tutelary guardians of those at Cloyne and Ardmore. After the round towers should be noticed the oratories, or stoneroofed chapels, so often to be found near them. These are very small heavy buildings, with wedge-like shaped roofs of stone, of which the one at Killaloe affords a characteristic specimen. When King Henry II. visited Dublin in 1171, we are told by historians that there was no house there capable of containing that monarch's retinue; "and therefore," to use the words of Sir Richard Cox, "he was necessitated to build a long cabin with smoothed wattles after the fashion of the country, and almost in the nature of a tent, which (being well furnished with plate, household stuff and good cheer) made a better appearance than ever had been seen in Ireland before that time, and accordingly it was admired and applauded by the Irish potentates, who flocked thither to pay their duty to the king." Having such models as the round tower, it is evident that the want of stone buildings in Ireland cannot be ascribed to ignorance. Sir John Davies appears to point at the real cause in the customs of tannistry and gavelkind, both of which rendered the inheritance and division of property a matter of much uncertainty, and the cause of frequent disputes. It was certainly, remarks that writer," against all common sense and reason" to expect any man "would plant, or improve, or build upon that land which a stranger whom he knew not should possess after his death." The English adventurers seem, immediately after their landing, to have built castles for their defence and the protection of the districts they had overcome, there being few if any fortifications in the country the work of the Irish. The towns of Dublin, Cork and Waterford were walled, and probably founded by the Danes. The Irish appear to have been the inhabitants of forests and of mountains, where they dwelt in a kind of savage freedom, despising restraint, from their ignorance of its advantage. 66 When Sir John De Courcy, one of the first English settlers who built many castles in the north of Ireland, gave two of them as a mark of friendship to Mac Mahon, a native chieftain, the latter almost immediately destroyed these buildings, declaring that he valued not stones like land, and that it was contrary to his nature to live within cold walls whilst the green woods were within his reach. Story mentions that the first castle ever built in Ireland, as to any pile of lime and stone," was at Tuam, in the year 1161, by Roderick O'Connor, which was called, on account of its rarity, "Castrum Mirificum." So long after this as 1584, Stanihurst tells us that such of the Irish chieftains as possessed castles annexed to them a large mud cabin, in which they dwelt, only retreating to the castle at night for security. To the present day the same feeling exists; and it is no uncommon circumstance for a peasant, on a principle of comfort, to strip the slates off the cottage of which he has become the tenant and replace them with thatch, alleging as his reason" the couldness of the slates," though most probably, owing to his slovenly method of thatching, the wind and rain are admitted through numerous crevices. To an English observer this practice must appear absurd-but it is nevertheless characteristic. "The fern forms and fern tables" of O'Neil, spread under the stately canopy of heaven, are mentioned by Sir John Harrington, who wrote about fifteen years after Stanihurst. Dr. Smith, in his History of Cork, gives an inscription discovered on a chimney-piece in throwing down some old walls at Castle Lyons. “Lehan O'Cullane Hoc fecit MCIIII." This has been repeatedly produced as proof that stone dwellings were used by the Irish in the twelfth century; but the inscription on which an assertion so important has been grounded appears to me either to have been inaccurately copied, the C being substituted for D, or that letter having |