Antiquitates Celto-Scandinaviae furnish a highly interesting evidence 

 of their other apphcation,* which might perhaps be also derived from 

 oriental usage. Such was the cave at Engeli, in which David and his 

 men concealed themselves, (1 Sam, xxiv.) such were "the dens in the 

 mountains, and caves, and strongholds," that the children of Israel 

 constructed to protect themselves from the Midianites, (Judges, vi. 

 2.) such the use of the caves of Arbela near Gallilee, according to 

 Josephusj-f' and of those beyond Damascus, mentioned by Strabo, 

 (Geog. lib. 16.) such the caves in which the men of Israel hid them- 

 selves, when " they saw that they were in a strait," (1 Samuel xiii. 

 6.) Certainly the period of our story is approaching, when the na- 

 tives of Ireland were too frequently reduced to such straits, when, in 

 the language of the prophet, they might have said "to the mountains 

 — cover us ! and to the hills — fall on us !" We will not, however, 

 admit that up to this interval, caverns were their ordinary habita- 

 tions. 



It has been already intimated, that on the introduction of Chris- 

 tianity, communities were collected, and little cities established round 

 the cells of holy men, as at Glendaloch, where a city grew up under 

 the patronage of Saint Kevin, ("clara et religiosa in honore S. Co- 

 emgeni crevit.") J The sites selected were, for reasons already assigned, 

 in the vicinity of those round towers, which had been appropriated to 

 the pagan religion of Ireland, but it must not be inferred that the ruins 



' * '^ Leifus. autem piraticam occidentem versus suscepit, et Hiberniam armis infestavit, 

 ubi cellam magnam subterranejim invenit, quam intrans tenebras offendit ; ille autem progres- 

 sus usque quo splendorem vidit gladii, quem vir quidam manu tenuit, quo occiso gladium et 

 ingentes alias opes inde reportavit ; postea Horleifus [Leifus gladii] appellatus est. Multis in 

 Hiberniae locis piraticam exercuit et magnam praedam reportavit, ibi decern servos cepit quorum 

 nomina sunt Dufthakus, &c." — Ant. Celt. Scand. p. 14. 



t Ants. lib. 14. c. 15. and Bell. Jud. lib. 1. c. 16. 



:j: Usher, Primord. p. 956. 



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