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Mr. PETKIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



most curious and perfect churches in the Norman style in the British empire. 

 The erection of this church is popularly but erroneously ascribed to the cele- 

 brated king-bishop Cormac Mac Cullenan, who was killed in the battle of 

 Bealach Mughna, in the year 908 ; and it is remarkable that this tradition has 

 been received as true by several antiquaries, whose acquaintance with Anglo- 

 Norman architecture should have led them to a diiferent conclusion. Dr. 

 Ledwich, indeed, who sees nothing Danish in the architecture of this church, 



supposes it to have been erected in the tenth or beginning of the eleventh 

 century, by some of Cormac's successors in Cashel; but he adds, that it was 

 " prior to the introduction of the Norman and Gothic styles, for in every respect 

 it is purely Saxon." Dr. Milner, from whose reputation as a writer on archi- 

 tectural antiquities, we might expect a sounder opinion, declares that " the 

 present cathedral bears intrinsic marks of the age assigned to its erection, 

 namely, the twelfth ; as does Cormac's church, now called Cormac's hall, of 

 the tenth. 1 ' Milner'' s Letters, p. 131. And lastly, Mr. Brewer, somewhat 

 more cautiously indeed, expresses a similar opinion of the age of this building : 



