Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland, fyc. 113 



in the year 974 to Armagh, hoping that he should be allowed to do so in a 

 place in which he was unknown, and far remote from that in which his sanctity 

 had procured him so much admiration. In this expectation he was disappointed. 

 His reputation had probably travelled before him, and the respect which it 

 procured for him was soon so general throughout that city that he determined 

 on withdrawing from it. As soon, however, as this intention was discovered, 

 the principal inhabitants deputed some venerable persons to request him to stay 

 a year longer among them. The request was complied with ; and when, at the 

 close of the year, he was again bent on departing, a similar entreaty was made 

 to him with the same success, and so on annually, until at length he died there, 

 on the 16th of January, A. D. 987- See Colgan'sActa Sanctorum,pp. 105, 106. 

 Thus we find that if Harris had taken upon him to affirm that it was in one of 

 the Towers of Clonmacnoise that Dunchad had shut himself up a fact which 

 nevertheless he wishes his readers to infer he would have asserted that which 

 he knew was not the truth. If the Kound Towers had been appropriated to 

 the use of anchorites, those of Clonmacnoise would have suited Dunchad's pur- 

 pose as well as any other, and he had no occasion to go elsewhere for retirement : 

 he might have locked the door of his keep or prison after drawing up the lad- 

 der, in the manner Dr. Milner conjectured and have bid defiance to all friendly 

 intruders. As to his habitation at Armagh, it is called in his Life a cell 

 (cello)- -a term which it would be surely an overstretch of the imagination to 

 apply to a tower. 



Finally, Harris says : 



" I am informed by a skilful Critick in Irish, that this slender Round Tower is called Clodi- 

 Ancoire, in that Language, i. e. the Stone of the Anchorite, and not Cloghad, or a Steeple, zsMolyneur 

 fancies; and a Tradition prevails at Drumlahan in the County of Cavan, where one of them stands 

 in the Church Yard, that an Anchorite lived on the Top of it." 



The critic, however, who communicated this piece of information, if in ear- 

 nest, gave but a bad instance of his skill in the Irish tongue. It is unquestionable 

 that the Towers are still known by no other names than cloictheach and clogas 

 words signifying bell-house or belfry in every part of Ireland in which the 

 Irish language still remains ; and there is not a shadow of proof that they were 

 ever known by the name of cloch-ancoire, or stone of the anchorite, an appel- 

 lation, which it would have been absurd to apply to a tower. As to the tra- 



VOL. XX. Q 



