Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland, fyc. 1(>7 



I might, many others of the same kind, to show that the Irish, from the most 

 remote times believed as a fact that the seven ecclesiastics, enumerated in the 

 preceding authorities, were the sons of a Lombard father and of Liemania, the 

 sister of St. Patrick ; and I cannot help thinking that the very ancient inscription, 

 which I have copied at the church of Templepatrick, on Inchaguile, or the 

 Island of the Gaul, will be considered by the learned and unprejudiced as a 

 very singular and interesting evidence of the truth of those authorities. It is 

 true that our ancient manuscripts also speak of other individuals called sisters of 

 St. Patrick, who appear to have been religious persons in Ireland, as well as of 

 their sons, who are called his nephews, and moreover that some of those indi- 

 viduals, called his nephews, are spoken of not as the sons of Liemania, but of Lu- 

 pita, and also of Darerca, a name which Colgan, in consequence, believed to be 

 only an Irish cognomen of Liemania, signifying constant love; and hence Tille- 

 mont, and even Lanigan, unable to unravel the truth from materials apparently 

 so discordant, have given up the whole accounts of the recorded relations of 

 St. Patrick in Ireland as of no authority, though Lanigan acknowledges that 

 there is no doubt that such persons existed in St. Patrick's time. But ancient 

 authorities should not be thus discarded with flippant scepticism, and, however 

 suspicious may be the authorities for the relationship of the other individuals 

 named as sisters and nephews of St. Patrick, through the errors of ancient tran- 

 scribers, in writing, for example, the name Lupita, who was always called virgo, 

 an obvious mistake for Liemania, there seems to be no just reason to question 

 the authorities as far as Liemania and her sons are concerned : and I may add, 

 that a fabrication in this instance would have been without an object, as some 

 of these ecclesiastics, Lugnat for example, occupy no distinguished place in 

 Irish ecclesiastical history or the traditions of the country, and it is nowhere 

 stated that either Restitutus or Liemania was ever in Ireland. 



In the doorway of the church of Templepatrick, which I consider as a speci- 

 men of the earliest style of structure of its kind in Ireland, it has been seen that 

 no ornament whatever is used, and this was, as I shall hereafter show, the most 

 usual mode of construction also in the sixth and seventh centuries, and per- 

 haps even later ; but the doorways were not always plain in those ages, for in 

 many instances they present a flat projecting architrave, as in the doorways of 

 the oldest Greek and Etruscan buildings, as well as in those of the earliest 



