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their own previous habits. Some few, erected towers or small 

 castles of defence, but the great bulk of the people held in contempt 

 the customs of oppressors whom they hated, and adhered to their 

 national customs. Hence, the very small remains of domestic ar- 

 chitectural antiquity; a circumstance which has so often been 

 brought forward as a proof of the barbarity of the Irish. But in; 

 this adherence to old customs, they persevered even in Queen Eliza- 

 beth's reign, when she had laws enacted compelling them to build: 

 bawns, or small castles of defence, and laying down various rules 

 for their arrangement, and the distribution of lands according to 

 their size. But still the chiefs felt, and boldly expressed the same 

 dislike of the Norman Castles, their thick walls, and narrow win- 

 dows, comparing them to gloomy prisons, the dwellings of the 

 cowardly, which the Saxons had so strongly evinced in England. 



Such is the feeling now existing among the Cognate Colchial 

 tribes of Caucasus, where the princes and nobles esteem it so dis- 

 graceful to live within solid walls, that a fortress or a stone wall 

 dwelling-house would brand the possessor with the character of a 

 coward, who was incapable of defending a habitation of the usual 

 construction :* this is most commonly of wattle, plastered within 

 and without, sometimes also of smooth planks, and often of mud; 

 These are curious coincidences in the continuing habits of one 

 branch, and the recorded habits of another branch from the same 

 parent stock; coincidences which strongly bear out the claim of the 

 Irish to Oriental origin, and subsequent Oriental connexion. These 

 tribes, though surrounded by Tartar and Lesgae hordes, preserve 

 their blood unmixed, proudly prefering a claim to Median descent, 

 which is in great measure confirmed by the circumstance that 



* Klaproth's Travels in the Caucasus, p. 336. 



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