380 Mr. PETRIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



" Cfipcpeoip, .1. aipqieach a cpeoip 05 beitn chluij 7 05 oplojab cetnpaill ; no, uaip- 

 cpeoip, .1. uaip bip a cpeoip, in can ip clog clojcio ; no, ipcpeoip, .1. ipel a cpeoip, in can ip 

 lamchloj." H. 3, 18, fol. 94. 



" Aistreoir, i. e. changeable his work in ringing the bell and opening the church; or, uaistreoir, 

 i. e. high his work, when it is the bell of a cloictheach ; or, istreoir, i. e. low his work, when it is 

 a hand-bell." 



In like manner, in another tract of the Brehon Laws, entitled, Aithgedh 

 Eicis, the Punishments of the Eicis, or Professional Classes, preserved in 

 an ancient vellum MS. in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, the following 

 allusion to the belfry occurs : 



" Qitheo aepa ecolpa cpopcao, 7 apao lapam nao njeba a paicep nnc a cpeoo, 7 nao 

 cec DO pacappaic, 7 oo aubaipc; mao aep jpaio, no aep cpeiotne im coig a cluicc, no im 

 coif a alcoipe, 7 apao napo otpppithep puippi, 7 nao m-bencep cloc oo cpacaib." 



" The punishment of the people of a church is fasting, and afterwards a restraint that they say 

 not their pater nor their credo, and that they go not to communion, nor to the offering ; if 

 they be the aes graidh [ecclesiastics], or the aes creidmhe [religious] about the house of their bell, 

 or at the foot of their altar, and the restraint is, that they [the former] offer not on it, and that 

 they [the latter] ring not a bell for [canonical] hours." 



From the preceding notices it appears certain that one of the principal 

 duties of the aistire a name obviously formed from the Latin ostiarius was 

 to ring the bell in the cloictheach, or Eound Tower ; and, if it can be shown 

 that the office of aistire existed in the Irish Church under St. Patrick, in the 

 fifth century, a not improbable inference may be drawn that bell-towers were 

 then in existence, as otherwise this duty could not have been performed. Now 

 it is perfectly certain not only that bells, of a size much too large for altar 

 bells, were abundantly distributed by St. Patrick in Ireland, as appears from 

 his oldest Lives, those preserved in the Book of Armagh, but also, that the 

 office of aistire existed in his time, as even the name of the very person who 

 held this office is preserved. Thus, in the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, which 

 is supposed to have been originally written, partly in Irish and partly in Latin, 

 by his disciple St. Evin, in the sixth century, and which has been translated by 

 Colgan, we find in the list of the various persons who composed the household 

 of St. Patrick, at Armagh, the name " Sanctus Senettus de Killdareis, Campa- 

 narius ;" and from the prose tract treating of those persons, preserved in the 

 Books of Lecan and Ballymote, we find this Sinell called " his aistiri." 



