133 



where the wood was felled, to be put together elsewhere, are shewn to 

 have been very common in England, so late as the days of Henry the 

 Sixth ; and this is the very architecture, whose disappearance is re- 

 gretted with such keen satire in the preface to Holingshed's histories, 

 " When our houses were built of willow, then we had oaken men, but 

 now our houses are come to be built of oak, (i. e. the bird-cage houses,) 

 our men are not only become willow, but a great many altogether of 

 straw." Forests in these days were only valuable on account of their 

 acorns and beechmast, the Saxons only estimated the value of a tree 

 by the number of hogs that could lie under it ; it is therefore not to be 

 wondered at, that a material, so otherwise worthless, should be as 

 eagerly appropriated as it was obviously adapted for architecture. 



Abundant evidences could here be adduced, to illustrate the pecu- 

 liar beauty and elegance of the wattled or timber framed houses of the 

 Irish ; they are, however, reserved for a subsequent period* of this 

 Essay, but if the reader will for the present concede in deference to the 

 arrangement that such structures might have existed, it may well be 

 asked, what greater traces of that magnificence could Tara be expected 

 to present than it does at this day : all that was unperishable remains, 

 and what grander monuments have the Romans left in Britain, though 

 they occupied it even in the Augustan age and for centuries after. 



Perhaps it will be answered, that the Romans held Britain but 

 with the desultory occupation of war, but he who knows the early 

 History of Ireland, will oppose the objection with fatal re-action, for 

 at what period of that history was an Irishman suffered to enjoy his 

 home w ithout a terror of barbarous invasion ? In the interval in 

 consideration, it was six times desolated by "Royal Danes," and were 



• Post, Period 2. sect 5. 

 R 2 



