Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland, $c. 79 



such they undoubtedly are, there is a striking agreement to be found with that 

 of many ancient monuments in Ireland, as well as with the Cyclopean remains 

 of Greece and Italy, I am far from denying. On the contrary, I can claim the 

 merit of having been the first to direct the attention of the learned to this inte- 

 resting circumstance a fact which I consider as of far greater value and impor- 

 tance, to the history of the British Islands, than even the settlement of the ques- 

 tion of the origin of the Round Towers in my Essay on the Ancient Military 

 Architecture of Ireland, presented to the Royal Irish Academy in 1836, and 

 which was honoured with the gold medal of that distinguished body. But, as 

 I shall hereafter show, there are radically distinctive characteristics in all these 

 remains, which are not found in our Round Towers. To Mr. Windele, how- 

 ever, the resemblance of the Round Towers to the Nuraghes of Sardinia ap- 

 pears so striking that he jumps at once to the conclusion that the former were 

 not only fire-temples of the Guebres, but also in part sepulchres or monuments 

 of the dead, as the latter are known to have been. " This," he states, " would 

 not be very inconsistent with the character of the Irish towers ; human bones 

 having been found interred within that at Ram Island in Antrim, and similar 

 relics, but having undergone the ancient pagan process of Cremation, were 

 recently discovered in the tower of Timahoe." But, I would ask, where are 

 the evidences of either of these facts? and I must add that I utterly disbelieve 

 the statement, respecting the recent discovery of the burned bones in the Tower 

 of Timahoe. Mr. Windele, however, was fortified in his conclusion, not only 

 by the Sardinian Nuraghes, but also by an opinion advanced by O'Brien, the 

 author of " The Round Towers of Ireland," that amongst their other uses these 

 buildings were occasionally, in part, applied to sepulchral purposes, like some 

 of the Guebre Towers in Persia, and the Ceylonese Dagobs, and also by the 

 fact, that " Sir William Betham at once declared that he fully adopted that 

 opinion." Thus doubly armed, Mr. Windele, communicating a portion of the 

 enthusiasm so excited to the gentlemen of the South Munster Society of Anti- 

 quaries, inflamed that zealous body with such ardour to .substantiate his hypo- 

 thesis, that they set out on journeys of discovery to the principal Round Towers 

 remaining in their own province, to excavate the very foundations of those 

 Towers in search of the wished-for human remains. The result will be best 

 told in Mr. Windele's own words, as given in the Cork Southern Reporter : 



