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Mr. PETRIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



if its stone roof remained, measures on the inside but sixteen feet six inches 

 in length, and twelve feet six inches in breadth ; and its walls, which are three 

 feet in thickness, are built in a style quite Cyclopean, the stones being through- 

 out of great size, and one of them not less than eighteen feet in length, which 

 is the entire external breadth of the church, and three feet in thickness. 



The history of this ancient church is not preserved, and the only notice 

 that I have found of the saint, whose name it bears, is given by O'Flaherty in 

 his MS. Account of the territory of West Connaught, namely, that " tradition 

 goes that St. Kenanach was a king of Leinster's son ;" and elsewhere, in the 

 same work, that he was the patron saint of the parish church of Ballynakill, in 

 the barony of Ballynahinch, or Connamara, where his memory was celebrated 



on the of March. It is therefore not improbable that he is the same 



as the St. Ceanannan whose festival is marked in the Irish calendars at the 

 26th of March. 



The ancient churches are not, however, always so wholly unadorned : in 

 many instances they present flat rectangular projections, or pilasters, of plain 

 masonry at all their angles ; and these projections are, in some instances, 

 carried up from the perpendicular angles along the faces of the gables to the 



