126 Mr. PETRIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



in Ireland. This is not to be wondered at, because the general fashion of the country was to erect 

 their buildings of wood, a fashion, which in great part continues to this day in several parts of 

 Europe. As consequently their churches also were usually built of wood, it cannot be expected 

 that there should be any remains of such churches at present." Eccl. Hist. vol. iv. pp. 391, 392. 



Before, however, we deem such authorities invincible, let it be remembered 

 that on similar evidences the antiquaries of England, till a recent period, came 

 to the conclusion that the churches of the Britons, and even of the Saxons, were 

 mostly built with timber ; for, as is stated by Grose in the preface to his Anti- 

 quities of England on the subject of architecture (p. 63) : " An opinion has long 

 prevailed, chiefly countenanced by Mr. Somner, that the Saxon churches were 

 mostly built with timber ; and that the few they had of stone, consisted only of 

 upright walls, without pillars or arches ; the construction of which, it is pre- 

 tended, they were entirely ignorant of." Yet this opinion is now universally 

 acknowledged to be erroneous, and I trust I shall clearly prove that the gene- 

 rally adopted conclusion as to the recent date of our ecclesiastical stone build- 

 ings is erroneous also. 



It is by no means my wish to deny that the houses built by the Scotic race 

 in Ireland were usually of wood, or that very many of the churches erected by 

 that people, immediately after their conversion to Christianity, were not of the 

 same perishable material. I have already proved these facts in my Essay on 

 the Ancient Military Architecture of Ireland anterior to the Anglo-Norman 

 Conquest. But I have also shown, in that Essay, that the earlier colonists in 

 the country, the Firbolg and Tuatha De Danann tribes, which our historians 

 bring hither from Greece at a very remote period, were accustomed to build, 

 not only their fortresses but even their dome-roofed houses and sepulchres, of 

 stone without cement, and in the style now usually called Cyclopean and 

 Pelasgic. I have also shown that this custom, as applied to their forts and 

 houses, was continued in those parts of Ireland in which those ancient settlers 

 remained, even after the introduction of Christianity, and, as I shall presently 

 show, was adopted by the Christians in their religious structures. As charac- 

 teristic examples of these ancient religious structures,, still remaining in sufficient 

 preservation to show us perfectly what they had been in their original state, I 

 may point to the monastic establishment of St. Molaise, on Inishmurry, in the 

 bay of Sligo, erected in the sixth century ; to that of St. Brendan, on Inishglory, 



