136 



be replied that the state of warfare in which the Danes held Ireland 

 might have made structures necessary there, which were not in their 

 native country, it is as obvious that consistently with such a notion 

 they should be found all over England, Normandy, and other Euro- 

 pean countries, which the Danes are known to have visited with 

 similar tyranny and oppression. Again, if they were Danish, they 

 would naturally be confined to those places where the Danes settled, 

 and be most frequent where they were best established, but the fact is 

 otherwise ; they are found in every part of Ireland, and very many of 

 them in places which were never possessed by the Danes,* while 

 Waterford and Wexford, the strong holds of that people, do not present 

 one, (for Reginald's tower in the former city does not come within 

 this class.) 



All the inferences of probability being thus favourable to the opi- 

 nion that these towers were of native construction, the consequence 

 must be, that as they are the most laboured piles of architecture in 

 Ireland, they must have been erected before the Danes had settled 

 there, with manners and religious rites wholly unassociated with these 

 edifices, and Math such vigilant persecution as would have necessarily 

 debarred the natives from applying themselves to works so general, 

 so laborious, and so massy. Here the Irish annals can alone support 

 the investigation, and in the most ancient of these the Round Towers 

 are recorded. •!■ The Ulster annals even mention the fall of no less 

 than fifty-seven of them in consequence of a dreadful earthquake, 

 (" ingenti terrae motu,") in A. D. 448,1]; while the circular arches, 

 that occur over the doors of many of them, give internal evidence of 

 their high antiquity. Neither can the ornaments in relief on the wall 



* Lanigan's Eccl. Hist. vol. 4. p. 403. 



t See O'Conor's Rer. Hib. Script, vol. 1. Prolog, p. 2. p. ccvii. 



X See O'Conor's Rer. Hib. Script, vol. 4. p. 2. 



