388 Mr. PBTRIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



recovery or future redresse, yea some of the best sort were compelled to servitude and bounden 

 slavery, both Human Lawe and Gods fear were sett aside. In sume it was strange how men of 

 any fashion cou'd use other men as the Danes did use the Irish-men at that time. But King Bryan 

 Borowe was a meet salve to cure such festered Scares, all the phissick in the world cou'd not help 

 it else where, in a small time he banished the Danes, made up the Churches and Eeligious houses, 

 restored the nobility to their Antient patrimony and possessions, and in fine brought all to a notable 

 reformation." 



In addition to the devastations of the Northmen, the original Towers must, 

 from the nature of their structure, have often suffered, or been destroyed from 

 natural causes, as lightning and tempests ; and of such casualties we have a 

 remarkable record in the Annals of Clonmacnoise, as translated by Mageoghe- 

 gan, and which is particularly valuable, as indicating the number of structures 

 of this kind that was in Ireland in the tenth century : 



" A. D. 981. There was such boisterous winds this year that it fell down many turrets, and 

 amongst the rest it fell down violently the steeple of Louth and other steeples." 



I am further persuaded that some of the Towers were erected as late as the 

 twelfth century, as their architectural characteristics sufficiently prove : and it 

 is not improbable that the great Round Tower of Clonmacnoise, which is so 

 remarkable for the beauty of its masonry, may be of this late period ; for though 

 the Registry of Clonmacnoise, a document of the fourteenth century, ascribes 

 the erection of this Tower to Tergal O'Rourke, king of Connaught, about the 

 middle of the tenth century, yet, as I have already shown, in treating of the 

 church at the same place, called Teampull Finghin, Part II., pp. 265, 266, that 

 document is of a character too apocryphal to entitle it to much weight, when 

 opposed to the authentic annals of the country. The passage in the Registry, 

 relative to the erection of this Tower, as translated from the original Irish for 

 Sir James Ware, by the celebrated Duald Mac Firbis, is as follows : 



" And the same O'Ruairk of his devotion towards y e church undertook to repair those churches, 

 and keep them in reparation during his life upon his own chardges, and to make a Causey, or 

 Togher from y e place called Cruan na Feadh to lubhar Conaire, and from Jubhar to the Loch ; 

 and the said Fergal did perform it, together with all other promises y he made to Cluain, and the 

 repayring of that number of Chapels or Cells, and the making of that Causey, or Togher, and hath 

 for a monument built a small steep castle or steeple, commonly called in Irish Claicthough, in 

 Cluain, as a memorial of his own part of that Cemetarie : and the said Fergal hath made all those 

 Cells before specified in mortmain for him and his heirs to Cluain ; and thus was the sepulture of 

 the O'Ruairks bought." 



