Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland, fyc. 65 



may however add, that those Annals and the Lives of our ancient saints show, 

 that trees were a usual ornament in the immediate vicinity of the ancient Irish 

 churches, and, having been often planted by the hands of the very founders of 

 those buildings, were preserved with the most religious veneration, and their 

 accidental destruction deplored as a great calamity. Thus the Annals of the 

 Four Masters, at the year 1162, commemorate the burning of the yew tree 

 planted by St. Patrick at Newry, the memory of which is still perpetuated in 

 the name of that flourishing town. And the remains of the yew tree supposed 

 to have been planted by St. Kevin, at Glendalough, have been preserved even 

 to our own time. 



Having now, as I trust, satisfactorily disposed of Dr. O'Conor's proofs, as de- 

 rived from etymological conjecture, 1 proceed to combat his arguments a task 

 of much less difficulty. 



We are called on to conclude that the cloictheachs, or belfries, noticed 

 in the Annals, were not the Round Towers, because those Annals also show 

 that the belfry of Slane, containing the holy treasure of the monastery and se- 

 veral of its ecclesiastics, was burned a circumstance which, according to the 

 Doctor, could not possibly refer to a Round Tower, first, on account of " its 

 form, which, being round, could not hold so many persons and precious things ; 

 and, secondly, of its material, which, being of stone, and in no part of wood, 

 could not be burned, though it might be broken down by lightning." The 

 fallacy of these arguments can be very easily exposed. 



1. So far from the rotund form of the Towers being inconsistent with the 

 capacity to contain a number of persons and things, the very contrary is evident. 

 There are few, if any, of the Towers, which would not have held from fifty to 

 eighty persons, at the moderate average of ten to each floor ; and it is remark- 

 able that their peculiar fitness as places of safety for the clergy and their holy 

 utensils, &c., on occasions of sudden invasion, has been so apparent to many 

 most distinguished antiquaries, that, without any other evidence than that which 

 their construction afforded, they supposed them to have been erected for that 

 purpose solely. 



2. When Dr. O'Conor asserts that the Round Towers could not be burned, 

 because they were in no part (nullibi} of wood, he must have been strangely 

 forgetful of the mode of their construction, in which the floors, and, we may 



VOL. XX. K 



