Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland, fyc. 377 



" Luxovium. 



" Cernitur prope Majorem EcclesiiB Portam Pharus, quam Luccrnam vocant, cujus omnino 

 consimilem vidi aliquando apud Carnutas. Ei usui fuisse videtur, in gratiam eorum, qui noctu 

 ecclesiam frequentabantur." 



I have now to enter on a question of perhaps greater difficulty than any of 

 those already examined, namely, as to the probable eras of the erection of the 

 Towers, and which I have assumed to have been at various periods between 

 the fifth and thirteenth centuries. 



The great difficulty which I have to contend with, arises chiefly from the 

 general absence of distinct notices of buildings in the ancient lives of the Irish 

 saints, and the extreme meagreness of the Irish annals anterior to the tenth 

 century. Thus, in the latter, the first notice which occurs of a cloictheach, or 

 Round Tower, is that at the year 950, relative to the burning of the cloictheach, 

 or Round Tower of Slane, as already given at p. 370; and the earliest authentic 

 record of the erection of a Round Tower is no earlier than the year 965. This 

 record is found in the Chronicon Scotorum, and relates to the Tower of Tom- 

 graney, in the County of Clare, a Tower which does not now exist, but of 

 which, according to the tradition of the old natives of the place, some remains 

 existed about forty years since. The passage is as follows : 



"A. D. 965. Copmac h-Ua Cilltn, t>o uib b-piacpac Gione, comopba Ciapam 7 Comain 

 7 comopba Cuama J)P ene > 7 a r a 'S e D0 P onaD cempul mop Cuama 5r ene > 7 a claijjceac. 

 Sapienp 7 penepc ec epipcopup quieuic in Chpipco." 



Thus translated by Colgan, who seems to have found it in his copy of the 

 Annals of the Four Masters, though that part of it relating to the erection of 

 the church and tower is not given in the Stowe copy of those annals, as pub- 

 lished by Dr. O'Conor, or in the MS. copies of them preserved in Dublin : 



" A. D. 964. Cormacus Hua-Killene, Comorbanus SS. Kierani, Coemani [Comani], et Cronani, 

 Episcopus, sapiens, vir valde longeeuus, qui extruxit Ecclesiam de Vuaim-grene" [Tuaim-grene] 

 " cum sua turri, decessit." Acta SS., p. 360, b. 



But, though the Irish annalists preserve to vis no earlier notices of the 

 Round Towers than these now adduced, the many references which occur to 

 those buildings, as existing in the tenth and eleventh centuries, sufficiently 

 prove that they were common in the country at an earlier period ; and, more- 

 over, their early antiquity may be fairly inferred from the frequent allusions to 

 them which occur incidentally in our oldest manuscripts. Thus, in the ancient 



VOL. xx. 3 c 



