354 Mr. PETRIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



apartments between the stone roof and the coved ceiling of the oratory. That 

 all these buildings are of a remote antiquity their architecture sufficiently 

 shows ; and that they may have been erected by the celebrated personages 

 whose names they bear, I see no good reason to doubt. The great difference 

 between some of these buildings and those which are unquestionably duirtheachs 

 is, that they combined within them, under the same roof, the double object 

 of an oratory and a dwelling, a diiference not very essential, and which might 

 have owed its origin to local circumstances. And the greater size of St. 

 Columb's House at Kells, and St. Kevin's at Glendalough, might be attributable 

 to the rank of the illustrious ecclesiastics for whom they were erected. 



Should it be objected that St. Kevin's House at Glendalough, unlike that 

 of St. Columb at Kells, had all the features which characterize a church for 

 public worship, as nave, chancel, sacristy, and belfry, the answer is, that it 

 certainly had not all these features originally ; the chancel, with its connecting 

 arch, and sacristy, are obviously subsequent additions, as an examination of the 

 structure clearly shows; and it is extremely probable that the small, round, turret- 

 belfry, placed upon the west gable of the nave, was also added at the same 

 time. Illustrations of these curious structures will be given in a subsection 

 following, headed HOUSES. 



3. USE. It can scarcely be questioned that this class of buildings were 

 originally erected for the private devotions of their founders exclusively ; and 

 if there were any doubts of this, they would be removed by the fact that, in the 

 immediate vicinity of such oratories, we usually find not only the cells, or the 

 ruins of them, which served as habitations for the founders, but also the tombs 

 in which they were interred. And it is worthy of observation that in the great 

 island of Aran, in the Bay of Galway, called Ara na Naomh, as O'Flaherty 

 says, from the multitude of saints interred there, such oratories and tombs 

 usually belong to the most distinguished of the saints of Ireland, who passed 

 into it to spend the evening of their life in prayer and penance, and to be in- 

 terred there : and hence, I think, such structures came, in subsequent times, to 

 be used by devotees as penitentiaries, and to be generally regarded as such ex- 

 clusively. Nor is it easy to conceive localities better fitted, in a religious age, to 

 excite feelings of contrition for past sins, and of expectations of forgiveness, 

 than these, which had been rendered sacred by the sanctity of those to whom 



