96 Mr. PETKIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



ought to do in regard to our round towers, which, in my eyes, remain as great a mystery as 

 ever? 



" The steeple of the church of Montrose was rebuilt some eight years ago, on the site of a 

 steeple which had existed beyond the memory of man. It was thought necessary to dig the founda- 

 tion of the new tower deeper than the old had been founded, and in the course of this excavation, 

 various skeletons were found buried amongst sand and gravel, the subsoil on which the town of 

 Montrose stands. The fact of bodies being buried below towers and steeples, then, will scarce 

 prove the erection to be either Christian or pagan. 



" The tracings which you sent of Cloyne Tower represent very closely the style of building of 

 the Round Tower of Brechin, especially where two or more horizontal stones are connected by 



a smaller perpendicular one thus | j i --> i i , , and also where one is laid 



with a little toe or thin part of ' / f II 1 A it projecting as it were 



beyond" itself over another stone, as above. In Brechin too, as at Cloyne, we find it impossible to 

 drive a nail into the joints of the doorway, while into some parts of the general masonry I have 

 thrust my cane with ease for several inches. Sir William Gell, you remark, gives drawings of a 

 similar mode of building in the vicinity of Rome. But is not this just a mode common to all 

 nations in their rude state, who put up as large stones as they can find or move with ease and 

 bring them together by means of smaller pieces ? " D. D. BLACK." 



On this excellent letter it is not necessary for me to make a single remark. 

 It will go far to account for the heterogeneous nature of the remains discovered 

 in the Irish Towers, and which may be further accounted for by the fact that 

 during the war in Ireland, at the close of the sixteenth century, these Towers 

 became the receptacles of thieves and wood-kerne. For this fact we have the 

 authority of an Irish sermon written at the time, in which the author laments, 

 among other evils, that " the temples were defiled, the cemeteries dug up, the 

 chapels profaned, the monasteries broken, the cloisters without protection, the 

 cells inhabited by harlots, the belfries (clogmp) inhabited by wood-kerne" ! 



I might, I think, now have done with the discoveries of Mr. Windele and 

 the South Munster Society of Antiquaries; but, as these gentlemen, or their 

 organ, have " ventured to affirm that from the commencement of their researches 

 to the present time more attention has been paid, and more practical, rational 

 investigation, has been directed to the subject" (of the origin and uses of the 

 Round Towers) " than it ever previously received," I must beg leave to ex- 

 press my dissent from such conclusion, and to offer a few remarks in support of 

 my opinion. That these gentlemen, whose antiquarian zeal I greatly admire 

 and applaud, have discovered a new species of antiquarian investigation, wholly 



