386 Mr. PETRIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



at all, requires the supposition that the round roof on which the brother was at 

 work must have been that of a building of great altitude, and from which a 

 fall would be necessarily productive of certain death, such a building, in fact, 

 as a Round Tower, which was the only one of the kind the Irish had, either in 

 those days, or for many ages afterwards. 



I should remark that the same legend forms the tenth chapter of the Life 

 of Columba by the abbot Cumian, which was written about the year 657 ; but 

 it is of little value to the question, as the important phrase, both in the original 

 heading and the text, is simply " de cvlmine domus." But I may add, that 

 several passages, both in this Life and in that by Adamnan, allude in such a 

 manner to the use of bells, for summoning the brotherhood to religious worship, 

 as would lead directly to the inference that belfries must have existed in St. 

 Columba's time. Take, for example, the following passage from the eighth 

 chapter of the first book of the Life of Columba by Adamnan : 



" In tempore alio, hoc est, post multos a supra memorato bello annorum transcursus, cum esset 

 vir Sanctus in Hyona insula, subito ad suum dicit ministratorem, Cloccam pulsa : cujus sonitu 

 Fratres incitati, ad Ecclesiam ipso Sancto Prassule prseeunte ocyus currunt, ad quos ibidem flexis 

 genibus infit. ' Nunc intente pro hoc populo, et AIDANO rege Dominum oremus, hac enim hora 

 ineunt bellum.'" Vitce Antiquce Sanctorum, Sfc., edit. Pinkertone, p. 65. 



But, though I am thus disposed to assign this early antiquity to some of the 

 existing Towers, I have no doubt that the great majority of them were erected 

 in later times, and more particularly, as their ornamented architecture indicates, 

 in the ninth and tenth centuries. The destructive ravages of the Danes would 

 have rendered the re-erection or restoration of such structures necessary, espe- 

 cially at the close of the latter century ; and, as I shall show in the Third Part 

 of this Inquiry, many of the Towers afford sufficient evidence, in the various 

 styles of masonry, and difference of material, which they exhibit, that they have 

 been in part rebuilt in times long subsequent to that of their original founda- 

 tion. Nor are we wholly without authorities historical authorities for such 

 restorations. Thus Keating informs us, that the cloictheach, or Round Tower 

 of Tomgraney, which, as I have shown, was erected in 964, was repaired by 

 the monarch Brian Borumha ; and from an ancient fragment, supposed to be a 

 part of Mac Liag's Life of that king, preserved among the manuscripts in the 

 Library of Trinity College, Dublin, it would appear that this powerful monarch 



