82 Mr. PETRIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



a letter, subsequently addressed to the Editor of the Cork Southern Reporter, 

 and afterwards published in the sixth number of the Archajologist, in which he 

 states, that he " had the folly to imagine that the recent discoveries at Ardmore 

 and Cloyne would have had a sedative effect on the too long vexed question of 

 the Round Towers." But he was, I think, a little too sanguine in his expecta- 

 tions. I, for one, must declare that I am no more satisfied with the proofs on 

 which he rests his conclusions than his Munster opponent Quidam, whose ob- 

 ject appears to have been to enjoy a laugh at all the theorists on this subject, 

 by gravely propounding a new one more absurd than any previously advocated. 



I shall examine Mr. Windele's discoveries separately in the order in which 

 they were made, first noticing, however, his statement given on the authority of 

 Sir William Betham, that similar discoveries had been made in the Towers of 

 Ram Island and Timahoe ; on which I must observe, that such vague state- 

 ments should be considered as of no value whatever in an inquiry of this kind. 

 For, granting that human bones were found in those two Towers, I would ask 

 Could they only have been interred there cotemporaneously with the erection of 

 the Towers. To make the fact worth anything it should be satisfactorily proved 

 that this was necessarily the case. I know myself many Round Towers, into which 

 it has been usual for a long time to throw the bones dug up in the cemetery, and 

 the custom is continued at the present day. Sir William Betham has, indeed, 

 stated, that the bones found within the Tower of Timahoe, a Tower which I 

 shall prove to be of Christian construction, were cremated, and contained 

 within a pagan urn; but what proof has he given us for this fact? Mr. Win- 

 dele himself appears to have some doubts about it, for in a letter to me, dated 

 Cork, 12th August, 1841, he asks : "Is it a fact that an urn containing burnt 

 bones was found in Timahoe?" And he adds this remark, "this, if true, would 

 settle the age of these buildings" a conclusion, however, in which I can by no 

 means concur, as the erection of a Round Tower in Christian times on the site 

 of a pagan sepulchre would not be a very unlikely circumstance. 



Proceeding now with Mr. Windele's recent and better authenticated disco- 

 veries, I shall, in the first place, remark, with respect to the Tower of Ardmore, 

 that what he calls the ingenious solution which was offered respecting the 

 erection of that Tower in a more ancient Christian cemetery, is, in my opi- 

 nion, not only an ingenious one, but the most rational that could possibly be 



