66 Mr. PETRIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



suppose, the doors also, were in every instance of that material ; and though 

 their combustible portion might not be easily ignited by lightning from above, 

 they could evidently be fired by a hostile hand from below, as in the case of 

 the belfry of Slane, and many other belfries, recorded in our Annals to have 

 been burned. The destruction of their inflammable parts is the only injury 

 which we are to suppose the cloictheachs suffered on those occasions ; and we 

 have no more reason to conclude that they were wholly of wood, than that the 

 damhliags or stone churches were so, which are so constantly mentioned in 

 those Annals as having stiffered the same fate. Besides, can any thing more 

 absurd be imagined than that the ecclesiastics should fly for safety with their 

 holy treasures from a band of savage plunderers to a wooden belfry, while 

 they had a stone edifice of any kind to shelter in ? Such an improbability 

 would hardly obtain credit from any one but a person ready to believe any 

 thing for the sake of a favourite theory. 



Dr. O'Conor, however, Avas so deeply intent on establishing his hypothesis, 

 that he lost no opportunity of pressing these puerile arguments on his reader's 

 attention. Thus, in a note to a passage in the Annals of the Four Masters, at 

 the year 1097, which records the burning of the cloictheach, or bell-house of 

 Monaster-Boice in the County of Louth, he repeats these arguments, to divert, 

 as it would appear, the reader from the obvious conclusion at which he should 

 otherwise arrive, namely, that the Bound Towers were unquestionably the 

 cloictheachs or bell-houses of the Annalists. 



" Ex his sequitur, valde diversa fuisse, non solum nomine, verum et re ipsa, Hibernorum Cam- 

 pauilia a Turribus rotund is antiquissimis, more patrio constructis, juxta Giraldum, qui usque 

 hodie pel' Hiberuiam, e vivo saxo sedificata, conspiciuntur. Campanilia enim Cloiccteach, Turres 

 autem rotuudi Fiadh-neimhe dicebantur, i. e. Indicia coelcstia, uti supra ad ann. 994, et neque com- 

 buri poterant turres isti, neque pro bibliothecis aut rebus pretiosis servandis apti erant, vel ad 

 finem istum construct! censendi sunt, repugnante forma, altitudine, arctitudine, et interna con- 

 structione." Annales IV. Magistrorum, p. 670. 



These indefatigable efforts of Dr. O'Conor's zeal may well excite a smile. 

 The Round Tower Belfry of Monaster-Boice, in which the books and other 

 precious things are stated to have been burned, still exists to demonstrate the 

 absurdity of his conjectures. It is yet known only by the name given it by the 

 Annalist, namely, the "chief/teach;" and, with such a strong and lofty tower 



