360 Mr. PETRIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



is yet retained, these Towers are designated by the same term, except in a few 

 districts, where they are called by the synonymous term clogay, or by the term 

 cuilgceac, which, as I have already shown, is only a corrupted form of cloig- 

 cenc, by a transposition of letters very usual in modern Irish words. 



3. It is also certain that no other building, either round or square, suited 

 to the purpose of a belfry, has ever been found in connexion with any church 

 of an age anterior to the twelfth century, with the single exception of the square 

 belfry attached to a church on Inis Clothrann, or Clorin, an island in Lough 

 Ree, and which seems to be of earlier date. 



4. And lastly. It is further certain that this use is assigned to them by 

 the uniform tradition of the whole people of Ireland ; and that they are appro- 

 priated to this use, in many parts of the country, even to this day. 



To facts so demonstrative of this primary purpose of the Towers, it is not 

 easy to imagine an objection of sufficient weight to invalidate them, nor have 

 any been advanced. It has, indeed, been urged by several, that their internal 

 diameter at top is too small " for a bell of moderate size to oscillate in ;" and 

 by Dr. O'Conor, and others after him, that the ancient Irish belfries must have 

 been of wood, because the annalists state that, like the churches, they were fre- 

 quently burned by the Northmen. Of these objections, however, the first is 

 refuted by the fact that bells of larger size than any which the ancient Irish 

 ever possessed, are hung in many of the Towers at the present day ; and the 

 nullity of the second objection has been already fully demonstrated at p. 67. 



I may, moreover, add here, and particularly as the passage to which I am 

 about to refer, had escaped my memory when I was noticing Dr. O'Conor's 

 arguments in the First Part of this Inquiry, that Dr. O'Conor, as far as this 

 point is concerned, has refuted his own arguments, and, indeed, acknowledged 

 the appropriation of the Towers, at a very early period, to the uses which I 

 assign to them, as their original ones. This will fully appear by a comparison 

 of the opinions stated in the following passage, which appears as a note in his 

 Annals of Tighernach, p. 89, with the opinions already quoted from his Prole- 

 gomena, p. 49 ; the former published in 1826, and the latter in 1814, and which 

 will show that within this period Dr. O'Conor's opinions must have undergone 

 a very material change. 



" Hsec a quodam vetere Hibernense scripta fuere, qui Turres Ecclesiasticos Hibernorum, 



