348 Mr. PETEIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



much by their inferiority of size, as difference of material, is quite obvious ; and 

 it is highly probable that, as the stone churches and other sacred edifices origi- 

 nally built by St. Patrick, became the models for subsequent structures of those 

 classes, there may have been a similar model originally to regulate the size of 

 the duirtheach. Such model, however, would be, in course of time, if not for- 

 gotten, at least occasionally deviated from, when the means, or other circum- 

 stances of the builders, made it necessary to do so. Thus, amongst the existing 

 stone buildings of this class, as amongst many of the ancient parish and abbey 

 churches, we find a great want of uniformity as to size ; but their average may 

 be stated to be about fifteen feet in length, and ten in breadth, interior mea- 

 surement ; and that this was about the usual size, we have an ancient evidence 

 in a fragment of the Brehon Laws preserved in the Library of Trinity College, 

 Dublin, H. 3, 17, p. 658, relating to the payment of artificers employed in the 

 construction of duirtheachs, daimhliags, and cloigtheachs. But as I shall give 

 the whole of this curious document in the following subsection, I need only refer 

 to it here. Such is very nearly the internal measurement of the duirtheach at 

 Grlendalough, now popularly called the Priest's House, of which I have already 

 given sufficient illustrations, p. 246, et sequen., and also of several other stone 

 oratories already noticed, as that of St. Mac Dara, on the island of Cruach Mic 

 Dara, off the western coast of Galway, noticed in p. 189, and that of St. Cenan- 

 nach, on the middle island of Aran, in the Bay of Galway, noticed at p. 188. 

 And I may add, that the stone oratories on the great island of Aran are all 

 either exactly of these dimensions, or very nearly so ; as the Teampull Beag 

 Mhic Duach, or the smaller church of St. Mac Duach, which is situated near 

 the greater church of the same saint, called his Teampull Mor, and which 

 is obviously of the same age ; St. Gobnet's oratory, which measures externally 

 eighteen feet in length, and thirteen feet and a half in breadth ; Teampull na 

 Sourney, which is nineteen feet six inches in length, and fifteen feet six inches 

 in breadth ; and the oratory of St. Benen, or Benignus, which is, externally, but 

 fifteen feet in length, and eleven feet in breadth. 



Such also is usually the size of the remarkable stone oratories in Kerry, 

 built without cement, with the exception of that at Kilmalkedar, which is six- 

 teen feet four inches in length, and eight feet seven inches in breadth. The 

 most beautiful of these oratories, that at Gallerus, described, with illustrations, 



