276 



Mr. PETRIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



believe that its erection should be assigned to a much earlier age ; for, in the 

 first place, without attaching much weight to the tradition of the place, which 

 ascribes the erection of the present cathedral church to Brian Borumha, and of 

 this stone-roofed church to St.Molua, or his successor, St.Flannan, it is scarcely 

 possible to suppose that the cathedral church, erected within his own hereditary 

 principality by so powerful a monarch as Brian, would have been of dimensions 

 so much smaller than those of most of the cathedral churches of the earliest 

 antiquity, or so remarkable for the simplicity of its architectural features. The 

 nave of this church, which is all that at present remains, is internally but 

 twenty-nine feet four inches in length, by eighteen feet in breadth, and the 

 chancel was only twelve feet in breadth, as appears by small portions of its 

 walls still remaining, and could not have been of much greater length. In fact 

 this little church, in all its features, with the exception of its ornamented door- 

 way, is perfectly identical in style with many of the earliest churches and 

 Round Towers of Ireland ; as will appear from the annexed illustrations, repre- 



2>rr:~7 



senting the windows which lighted the apartment placed above the nave, within 

 the sloping sides of the roof, and of which that in the west gable has a semi- 

 circular head, and that in the east, the triangular, or straight-sided arch. The 



