70 Mr PETKIL'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



rence of religious festivals. Tlio Phccnicians themselves constructed their buildings on the same 

 principle ; and, in the temple of Tyre, where stood the two famous columns dedicated to the Wind 

 and to Fire, there were also pedestals, we are told, whose four sides, facing the cardinal points, bore 

 sculptured upon them the four figures of the zodiac, by which the position of those points in the 

 heavens is marked. With a similar view to astronomical uses and purposes, the Irish Round Towers 

 were no doubt constructed ; and a strong evidence of their having been used as observatories is, 

 that we find them called by some of the Irish annalists Celestial Indexes. Thus in an account, given 

 in the Annals of the Four Masters, of a great thunder-storm at Armagh, it is said that ' the city was 

 seized by lightning to so dreadful an extent as to leave not a single hospital, nor cathedral church, 

 nor palace, nor Celestial Index, that it did not strike with its flame.' Before this and other such 

 casualties diminished it, the number of these towers must have been considerable. From the 

 language of Giraldus, it appears that they were common in his time through the country; and 

 in thus testifying their zeal for the general object of adoration, by multiplying the temples 

 dedicated to its honour, they but followed the example as well of the Greek as of the Persian fire- 

 worshippers. 



" There remain yet one or two other hypotheses, respecting the origin and purposes of these 

 structures, to which it may be expected that I should briefly advert. By some the uses to which 

 they were destined have been thought similar to that of the turrets in the neighbourhood of Turkish 

 mosques, and from their summits, it is supposed, proclamation was made of new moons and ap- 

 proaching religious festivities. A kind of trumpet, which has been dug up in the neighbourhood of 

 some of these towers, having a large mouth-hole in the side, is conjectured to have been used to assist 

 the voice in these announcements to the people. Another notion respecting them is, that they were 

 symbols of that ancient Eastern worship, of which the God Mahadeva, or Siva, was the object ; 

 while, on the other hand, an ingenious writer, in one of the most learnedly argued, bvit least tenable, 

 of all the hypotheses on the subject, contends that they were erected, in the sixth and seventh cen- 

 turies, by the primitive Coenobites and Bishops, with the aid of the newly converted Kings and 

 Toparchs, and were in tended as strong-holds, in time of war and danger, for the sacred utensils, relics 

 and books, belonging to those churches in whose immediate neighbourhood they stood. To be able to 

 invest even with plausibility so inconsistent a notion as that, in times when the churches themselves 

 were framed rudely of wood, there could be found either the ambition or the skill to supply them 

 with adjuncts of such elaborate workmanship, is, in itself, no ordinary feat of ingenuity. But the 

 truth is, that neither then nor, I would add, at any other assignable period, within the whole 

 range of Irish history, is such a state of things known authentically to have existed as can solve the 

 difficulty of these towers, or account satisfactorily, at once, for the object of the buildings, and the 

 advanced civilisation of the architects who erected them. They must, therefore, be referred to 

 times beyond the reach of historical record. That they were destined originally to religious pur- 

 poses can hardly admit of question ; nor can those who have satisfied themselves, from the strong 

 evidence which is found in the writings of antiquity, that there existed between Ireland and some 

 parts of the East, an early and intimate intercourse, harbour much doubt as to the real birth-place 

 of the now unknown worship of which these towers remain the solitary and enduring monuments." 

 History of Ireland, vol. i. p. 29 36. 



