206 Mr. PETEIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



Ireland previously to the Danish devastations : and, moreover, it was essentially 

 necessary to my purpose to do so, before I made any attempt to ascertain the 

 ages of those architectural remains in Ireland, in which ornament has been 

 employed. 



It will be remembered that in this description Cogitosus tells us, that at 

 least one doorway of the church was ornamented ; whether the other was so or 

 not cannot be clearly ascertained from the context, but the affirmative is highly 

 probable. It does not indeed necessarily follow that these doorways were thus 

 ornamented as early as St. Bridget's time ; on the contrary, the probable infe- 

 rence would be, that the embellishments were added at the time of the en- 

 largement of the doorway : but this enlargement must have taken place before 

 the ninth century, which is sufficient for my purpose. It is greatly to be re- 

 gretted that we have not this ancient doorway to refer to, as an example of 

 the style of decoration then in use ; but this regret may possibly be diminished 

 by the consideration, that we have in the adjacent Round Tower an example 

 of an ornamented doorway, which may be supposed, with every appearance of 

 truth, to be of cotemporaneous, or at all events, not later date. It is, of course 

 by no means my object in this place to enter on the question of the antiquity 

 or use of this tower ; it will be sufficient for my present purpose to show, that 

 there is every reason to believe that its erection was not posterior to that of the 

 church described by Cogitosus, to which it belonged in the time of Giraldus, 

 and that its ornamented doorway, if an insertion of later date than the original 

 construction of the tower, which there is no reason to believe, could not 

 with any fairness be referred to a later period than the erection of the orna- 

 mented doorway of the church. That this tower was, in the twelfth century, 

 considered as of great antiquity, even so great as the time of St. Bridget, most 

 plainly appears from a story, told by Giraldus, of a hawk, which was thought 

 to have frequented its summit from the days of the patroness. The story is as 

 follows : 



" De Falcone Kyldarice quasi domestico $ mansueto. 



" A tempers Brigidse falco quidam egregius locum istum frequentabat, qui ECCLESIASTICS 

 TURRIS summitati insidere consueuerat. Vnde & a populo auis Brigidx vocabatur, & in veneratione 

 quadam a cunctis habebatur. Hie ad nutum ciuium seu militum castrensium tanquam mansueta 

 & ad hoc domestica, anates & alias aues, tarn campestres, quam fluuiales circa planiciem Kyldariaj 





