114 Mr. PETRIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



dition, it scarcely deserves comment. If there were a tradition of a recluse 

 having lived in the tower of Drumlahan, it must have referred to a period not 

 very remote ; and the circumstance of a religious enthusiast having taken up 

 his residence there, as the hermit of Killarney did in the abbey of Mucruss,- 

 would no more make the one than the other an anchorite stone, or tower. But 

 1 have the authority of the Rev. Mr. Beresford, the present Rector of Drumla- 

 lian, that the only tradition relative to the Tower preserved there is, that it 

 was a cloictheach, or belfry. 



The true origin, however, of this story of the clocli-ancoire and of the tra- 

 dition will, I think, be found in the following passage from the Annals of the 

 Four Masters, with which Harris must certainly have been acquainted, though 

 he did not find it convenient, or deem it prudent, to bring it forward. 



" A. D. 1484. 6pian Ua paipceullai^, Succapc DO cionpccam cloc anjcoipe DO Denarii 

 ug cempoll mop tDpomu learrain, o'ecc." 



" A. D. 1484. Brian O'Farrelly, a priest who commenced to build a clock angcoire at the great 

 church of Druim-leathan, died." 



A really " skilful critic in Irish" Mr. O'Donovan to whom I submitted 

 the preceding extract, has favoured me with the following observations on it : 



" It is remarkable that in the ancient written Irish language the term cloc cmjcotpe, i. e. lapis 

 anachoretce, is always applied to an anchorite's cell, while in the living language and in modern 

 printed litanies the same apparent form of the term is invariably applied to the anchorite himself. 

 1 never heard any name for a hermit or anchorite in the spoken Irish language but cloc-an^coipe ; 

 it literally means, the recluse of the stone, or, of the stone habitation; for there can be no doubt that 

 the word cloc, which literally signifies a stone, was often used by the Irish to denote a stone 

 building, as I could show by many examples from the Irish Annals ; and so far will etymology 

 alone induce us to believe that the Irish anchorite secluded himself in a stone domicile; but this was 

 certainly not a cloigt/teac/t, or Round Tower. Cloc-anjcoipe, when it signifies, as in the spoken 

 language, an anchorite, is a compound word, the first part of which is in the nature of an adjective, 

 like church in the compound church-door in English. But it is not a compound word as used in 

 the above passage by the Four Masters, for anjcoipe is in the genitive case, governed by cloc, and 

 therefore means the stone, or stone domicile of the recluse.' 1 '' 



What description of cell the clock angcoire of Drumlahan was, or whether 

 it was of any particular form, it is scarcely necessary to our purpose to inquire. 

 It is enough for us to know that it was certainly not the existing Tower, 

 which is of a very remote antiquity, nor a building of the Round Tower form 



