Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland, fyc. 439 



had such a division at their west end as the church of Melbourne presents. 

 Neither will the conjecture of Mr. Collier, who, in his Church History, under- 

 stands the word portions as applied to the porch, which, in Gothic, and even 

 occasionally in Norman churches, is found in front of the entrance doorways, 

 for nothing of this kind occurs in connexion with any of the Irish churches, 

 nor, I believe, in any of the English churches, ascribed, with any appearance of 

 probability, to the Saxon times. Thus we find that the meaning of the word 

 portions, as used by Bede and other Saxon writers, remains still to be deter- 

 mined, and so, perhaps, must the Irish word erdam, till more distinct evidences 

 be discovered. We have indeed ascertained that the Irish word erdam and the 

 Latin word portions were similarly applied, and hence that the former was a 

 porch of some description. And this fact seems to be corroborated by the fol- 

 lowing passage in the Vision of Adamnan, an Irish work ascribed to that distin- 

 guished person, and preserved in the Leabhar Breac ; for though the writer 

 only describes imaginary things, yet the words employed in the description of 

 objects must have been previously applicable to objects that had a real exis- 

 tence. The writer, after describing the situations of the different classes of 

 the righteous in heaven, relatively to the position of the Lord, thus writes : 



" Oca Din plaich aoampu pop ^nuip ooib, uabiB paip-oepp; 7 pial jlonibe ecuppu, 7 epoao 

 opoai ppip anepp, ocup cpicpioe imancucecpum oelba ocup popcuo muincipe mme." _ Fol.127,4. 



" There is an illustrious Lord before their face off from them to the south-east ; a glass veil 

 between them, and a golden erdam to the south of him, and through it they see the countenances 

 and shade of the people of heaven." 



This passage is, no doubt, obscure enough, but the writer seems obviously 

 to have had in his mind some such separation between the Deity, with the 

 heavenly choir and the souls of men, as existed between the laity and clergy 

 in the larger churches, where the latter were separated from the former by the 

 veils which hung from the arch of the sanctuary, and that the heavenly choir 

 were seen through a porch on the south side. 



In a subsequent passage the writer, after having stated that an angel con- 

 ducted Adamnan's soul from heaven to hell, and returned with him, thus pro- 

 ceeds : 



" Rucao iap pin in animtn la bpapao pula cpep an epoam n-6pt>a, ocup rpep an pial njloinioe, 

 co cip na noem." Fol. 128, a. 



